Plagiarism: an inconvenient truth

I am stunned by this piece - I cannot believe that this sort of thing can still go on. There is however a very simple solution to this kind of managerial feebleness - you are marking a piece of work submitted to you anonymously on its merits ... it's plagiarised, so has no merit - therefore give it zero marks. Why would you need anyone else's approval to grade work objectively and accurately?

I've had the exact same thing happen, but with Lifelong Learning (acquiring Level 3 credits for university entrance) rather than undergraduates. I had one student, who was known to colleagues to be dyslexic in some way (exactly what way, I never discovered: she read perfectly well, and her emails were error-free), who submitted 2 assignments entirely plagiarized from internet sources. The first assignment was an oral presentation with PowerPoint. Because certain 'generic criteria' unrelated to originality and quality of writing had been met, it was possible to give the student a 'C' for effort (relevance, clarity of oral delivery, etc.). She wasn't happy with the grade. The next assignment was an essay, and hers contained only 25 words not in the online document she plagiarized from. When I failed her essay, she complained to the course leader and said she felt she had no other choice than to copy because she had been given inadequate support. This was in a situation where I only saw her for 2 hours every week, she used neither the library nor the handouts and photocopied chapters I gave her, she attended only every other class, she declined the offer of individual tutorials available to all members of the class, and ignored tutor's comments on a draft of her first assignment. When I discussed the case with a senior colleague, the sympathy was all with the student.

I have to agree with Doug Greenwell's closing question. Marking is ,essentailly, the exercise of judgement by the marker. Notions of throwing in the towel and wasting time are irrelevant here.

I have to agree with Gloria having worked in 4 different universities over 25 years and seen a few cases of plagiarism. Some universities do have a committee for assessing the misconduct outwith the departments. But then there is more form filling, hardcopies of evidence, and details such as the coursework set,what was asked and how the candidate/s repsonded, what percentage of the work forms plagiarism etc.. etc.. Even with hard copy evidence shown beyond doubt, the sanctions available can often be so weak as not to deter potential perpetrators. In one case, we discovered that the student substituted the answer book with another fully populated with answers( the exam was in a large room with too many students and too few invigilators). The sanction to the student meant that he could not continue the course for a time period but could register for another course in a different faculty in the same university! One overseas student even argued cultural differences and got away with a lighter punishment! In my experience new universities particularly need seat occupation, do not want to deter home and overseas students applying for admission by looking very strict and would do their best to deter reporting plagiarism, suggesting lower mark instead.

wow! so, now i understand! ..i am an international student in UK university and i have recently become a class representative. i ve pointed out to our tutors how easy it was to cheat in assignments and even in exams in our faculty. they did not want to know any details, instead they tried to 'shut me up' and get rid off me from the post. i could not understand!

One answer is, as suggested, just fail the cr*p. Unfortunately of course if you've got an epidemic of it, then your teaching-standards start to look like sh*t - because, to the outside world, the idea that the students themselves might be collectively wasting their lecturers' time, and don't deserve the places they've gained by being spoonfed through dumbed-down exams, is unacceptable.

At my former employer, a New University, several instances occurred where a number of students handed in identical (as evidenced in a bit-by-bit data comparison and time-date stamping) discs containing assessments. These students were NOT held to account. No penalty was assessed. This happened over and over again. Result, a PhD student module tutor was given a rough time on his dissertation defence and the cold shoulder, and I was sacked after bringing up the cases of plagiarism at a Module Assessment Board in the presence of External Examiners. Fraud abounds in UK higher education.

@Strange Consequnces (sic): You call yourself a "representative". Indeed, the sheer illiteracy of your response makes you fairly "representative" of today's generation of students...

Walter Cairns - very unfair to 'Strange Consequnces' (sic). All he/she did was fail to hit one key on his/her keyboard hard enough for a letter to register. It was otherwise correct apart from lacking capitals and one item of punctuation for which a space was made ready! You seem to be castigating the student for not necessarily being a native English speaker. In actual fact, this student's English is far better than one would expect from many home students. Sheer illiteracy? I don't think so.

Dear Walter Cairns, I can assure you that it was my first contribution to a blog on timeshighereducation and this is my last one as I do accept that a level of my English is not suitable to converse with academics. I dearly apologise for my spelling and grammar mistakes, I did not mean to offend anybody. I appreciate your comment. However, I believe that a perfection of English language does not make one a better class representative then I am. Many other attributes form a good class representative, e.g. negotiating, listening and leadership skills, just to name a few. In the university which I attend students are forced into class representative posts as ‘today’s generation of students’ apart of organising social events is not interested in anything else. I would like to state that despite being aware of my English I volunteered to be the class representative (a ‘suicidal’ decision) because the students in my university are treated unjustly and they are deprived of their entitlements which our student’s handbook describes (e.g. suitably qualified teaching staff*) and none of my native English speaking fellow students was willing to take the initiative. The level of my English has been already brought to my attention bitterly by my tutors after I became the class representative and I am aware myself that it is my great disadvantaged. However, the most striking result was when I passed the entry level English test better then any of my fellow native English speaking students - who do not find my ‘eloquence’ appropriate due to a lack of colloquialism and lingo expressions. I wonder why UK universities accept foreign students. Is it only their higher fees which the universities value? And, yes, my spelling is not excellent but I’ll have it checked with a spell checker for you before I publish this post, dear Walter Cairns. Please, accept my apology for not publishing my real name. It has been recently alleged that I am responsible for breaching a student’s code of conduct when I flagrantly disregarded the University’s confidentiality rules by publishing something on a blog, ouch. My disciplinary interview is next Monday; wish me a good luck, please, will you? Thank you. Yours sincerely, Bloody Foreigner P.S. *Dear Walter Cairns, if I may ask, with what attributes would you describe suitably qualified teaching staff, please? Is fluency in English or ethics one of them? As we have an international tutor and her written English is excellent. Yet my fellow students complain about her accent due to which they can not understand her. When I brought this to attention of our tutors I was informed that this tutor conducts valuable research for the university and thus we need to accept her accent. Also, when I requested help from one of my tutors with my assignment, the tutor offered to write the assignment for me himself. He did not request any sexual favour, all what he sought after was £20! I am not sure if he was just joking or desperately broke, but I will admit that I was tempted to experiment with this option, however I decided to stick to failing the module. P.S.2 Thank you, David Knight (Dr)

First of all, apologies for the misunderstanding. I understood the term "international student" to mean one who studies an international subject (international politics, relations, business, etc...), not someone whom I always describe as an "overseas student" (realising full well that using the word "foreign" will probably land me before my oh-so PC University's disciplinary committee). I was merely expressing the frustration which I am increasingly experiencing when faced with student writings which adopt the text-message approach towards communication. The "lower case i" vies with the complete disregard of apostrophes for prominence in the annoyance stakes. I am not merely referring to the cretinesque "shall i w8 4 u" type of e-mail which increasingly infests my inbox, but even to student assignments (including final year dissertations, one of which last year featured the following pearl of wisdom "it has took parliament alot of time to ammend this law"). As you say, for... I mean, international students very often write better English than the home variety. So shall we smoke the proverbial "pipe of peace" over this one and concentrate on the more serious issues raised by the original article - which is also a matter of great concern to me.

I am shocked and appalled by not only the content of this articles but also the content of the comments. These comments demonstrate a complete lack of understanding for students. “One overseas student even argued cultural differences and got away with a lighter punishment!” I personally believe institutions have a duty of care to all students that they accept onto the course, especially to some international students who are sensitive to outright exploitation by University foreign based recruitment agents. Promised the dream of the all amazing English degree. Often these students require more assistance to progress through their course, if UK HE wants their money, then they have to at least help them pass. Not just take their money, wait for them to mess up on an essay they were always going to be incapable of writing. As for the story in the above article. Here is a simple case of misconduct, however due to the institutions lack of a clear disciplinary system it is unable to deal with it. The misguided resentment behind this comment piece is unreal. As a student officer I am well aware that some students stretch the truth and some out right lie in order to protect themselves from the possible consequences of being found guilty. However the reason why some institutions bother with hearings is to hear the student’s perspective. It is an opportunity not just to be found not guilty, but a chance for the institution to hear why someone might as gone so far as to cheat. I think some academics can be accused of dehumanising students. Seeing them as nothing more than leeches on their knowledge and time. Bad things happen in life, which means that you might not be able to perform even to own your own expectations. Say for example if my parent just died and I was too emotionally distraught that the thought of writing a 3,000 word essay on Marx made my on going depression worse. I might just end up at five in the morning on the day of hand in, copy of the Internet. The systems are there to catch the people who might of missed early mitigation, for those people whose best interest would really not be best served by being punished by their institution. Why these potential situations are seemingly material for amusement amongst academics is beyond me. I wouldn’t be surprised if it is the same people who would look to cancel state benefits because some people abuse the system. Any system that seeks to recognise the disadvantaged and give them support through difficult times is intrinsically valuable irrespective of people who seek to take advantage of it. OW yeah I am dyslexic also so there is no doubt numerous mistakes above, however I do not care since, communicating a point is the only real importance of writing, so don’t bother we any comments along those lines plz.

Adam Farrell, there is truth in what you say about some academics having a superior attitude and dehumanizing their students. However, your hypothetical example highlights a fundamental misunderstanding on the part of many plagiarists. Being very close to a deadline and in distress does not make copying any more reasonable a course of action. Really, a student with mitigating circumstances such as you describe would do better to hand in nothing and explain why and request an extension. All students are warned against plagiarism, and they are informed of procedures for mitigating circumstances. Perhaps they need to be made more aware that the mitigating circumstances procedures, not plagiarism, should be their first recourse if genuine difficulty makes it impossible for them to complete an assignment on deadline. Furthermore, students who are having problems ought to talk to their tutors more, otherwise how are their tutors going to be able to offer them any additional support or understand the nature of their adversity?

Addendum: in discussions of plagiarism there's too much emphasis on detection and punishment. Both of these are necessary, because without them there's no disincentive to cheat. But more energy needs to be devoted to prevention. Perhaps moreso now than in the past, students need instruction in how to go about doing academic work. When I attended university in 1990, I had left school already knowing the difference between copying, making notes and writing an essay; but many students these days seem not to know the difference, in which case universities have an obligation to provide study skills training they used not to have to concern themselves with.

Yes, Mr. Farrell, we've heard it all before (including the dyslexia): we university staff have all the student empathy of Wackford Squeers and the humanitarian compassion of Attila the Hun. From reading your little diatribe, one would never think that the Mitigating Circumstances list at our exam boards is now longer than that of the 2(1) candidates (the former naturally being intended to swell the ranks of the latter). Nor would you believe that we are now under strict instructions to mark assessed work under the motto "students may not have English as their first language". Also, never mind ailing relatives, obscure diseases and various forms of weltschmerz, "we were out last night" now readily comes to the lips of my students as an excuse for failing to do even the most elementary reading for my tutorials. So you would have us push the boundaries of state-sponsored ignorance and idleness even further - well, you may have your wish granted sooner than you think, with the ever-growing multiplicity of universities making competition for "customers" increasingly Sweeney Todd-like. Who knows - in a few years' time we may all be compelled to wear baseball caps bearing the inscription "Hi!" in our lectures and write "Respect!" on any barely passable assignment. And the Almighty Ofsted Inspector saw that it was good.

If academics get upset about plagiarism they are only speaking up for the huge majority of students, who are as critical of lax procedures and assessments as anyone (welcome them to your panel hearings - they will be stern but fair judges of their peers). Universities that do so are right to rule out mitigation for plagiarism. For every cheat there are dozens of students who would not dream of plagiarising work whatever the circumstances, and we have to remember our duty to them.

Yep, you're absolutely right. There can be no mitigation for plagiarism, only for late submission of work. I agree about lax assessments in higher education. You can scrape by in a degree; and in a Master's degree or a vocational programme like a PGCE, for which the final assessment determines only fail, pass or distinction, students can achieve a passing grade for work of a lower standard than would be demanded of them at A-level. Add in weak enforcement of plagiarism regulations and you may as well just run the degree certificates off the photocopier and hand them out during the final class of the year.

An interesting thread. However it is not all doom and gloom. I work in a new university and regularly sit on its Academic Offenses Panel to hear cases of alleged plagiarism. This procedure is taken very seriously and the potential for 'bad press' for the university has never once been mentioned to me. In all of my panel meeting we have not even once found an accused student to be 'innocent'. All were punished with a range of penalties from 0% for the assignment to expulsion. Repeat offenders are always either suspended without recourse to enrolling on another programme or expelled from the institution. I have to add that over 90% of the cases are international students. Perhaps this is because they are easier to catch with the poor English then suddenly perfect English that appears in their written work. What do others think? What experiences do others have of sitting on such Offenses panels?

We're all good at sounding serious in panels (interesting that the terminology can be so different - I like 'cheating committee' myself) but since the sanctions have to be on a sliding scale the initial ones are usually pretty weak. Zero for the assignment is a light punishment in so far as it puts cheating on a par with very late submission - the least we should do is to say zero for the whole module or unit - while expulsion is usually reserved for the third or fourth infringement at least. Subtract credits from the student's record and you have a chance of making an impact; otherwise a few students will continue to play the system. On a broader issue, we like to discuss why student cultures and expectations lead them to cheat but the cultural reasons for universities' failure to punish the offence adequately are less well charted. I'm not just thinking of the fear of litigation or loss of revenue. So there's another speculative thread. Before I sign off, I have to share an anecdote. One student I know of who was expelled for repeated plagiarism committed his final offence in a dissertation, the last chapter of which contained the phrases 'in the next chapter I go on to' and - bless him - 'writing as a woman, I can honestly say...' With students like that, who needs Turnitin?

the problem is the institutional processes so in favour of the plagiariser. Adam Farell is wrong. If people are stressed, have problems, the message must be "do not hand in work". And then, to be frank, as in other domains, as professionals, lecturers must be able to dispense summary justice - grade the mark as zero, and report it centrally to be recorded in case of repeat offences. No institutional come back to the lecturer after that in the normal run of things - we must have trust in us demonstrated by our employers. As with the football referee, or the dispenser of a fixed penalty fine, there can be extremely exceptional and costly if wrongly pursued modes of appeal, but they should not be the norm. I repeat, as caring, well paid professionals, we must be given the right to dispense summary justice.

I teach English Literature at the University of Orléans in France where there is a zero tolerance policy to such acts of plagiarism. When assignments are given there is a clear note detailing that plagiarism must be avoided at all costs and that 'more than two lines of plagiarised text will result in an automatic zero grade'. Seems to work, and those who still persist in such acts of intellectual theft accept the consequence of their actions when they are caught out.

Ratsmeller, i don't know how it works at your institution but the process of mitigation works retrospectively. So you can never be guaranteed to get mitigation, which means the message is always hand something in. I don't understand why everyone is implying that disciplinary procedures are set up to avoid giving zeros to student's it is, to protect the institution and the student's best interest and that can't be decided by one individual as they pile through a stack of issues. If an academic suspects flag it up pass it on and get on with teaching and researching. With all the roles of a university academic, i don't know why you would want to put on that judge and jury.

I'm simply amazed that so many so many have and will have gotten away with plaigerism. Martin Luther King "got away with it"...because he was a member of a minority. Alex Haley wasn't so lucky. Even though he was also a minority member, he wound up paying a hefty sum to the man who was the original author. The current Vice President of the US, Joe Biden was accused of plaigerism and he owned up to it and apologized. Seems to me that there are very few who are really original. Myself, I'd rather be "sui generis" than "rara avis."

This is quite fascinating for me, as an undergraduate at an excellent engineering school in the United States. I have been aware of different "levels" of plagiarism, but on an entirely different scale. In my (in)experience, plagiarism ranges from "The student did not cite sources correctly" or "The student paraphrased from Murray et al. without clearly indicating that the thoughts were not original", to "The student copied a phrase word-for-word without correct attribution" or, the very worst, "The student has plagiarized a significant portion of the assignment and has copied a great deal of text without attribution or correct citations." If anyone here did the latter, that student would receive an F in the course and would be up for review to decide whether expulsion or a one-year (or longer) suspension was appropriate. It is truly not a game, not something that can be excused away. If a student claims dyslexia, or stress, etc., then the university authorities would likely remind the student that this claim is tantamount to saying, "My dyslexia forced me to copy someone else's work, lie about it to a professor, misrepresent my understanding of the subject, and conveniently forget the stern warnings which students receive, reminding us to cite our work properly." In short, this nonsense would not be tolerated. I can only hope that the sort of anecdotes which have been related here are odd cases and that the average student who commits the worst and most egregious form of plagiarism - copying whole paragraphs - is summarily booted.

I lecture at a Marine College, teaching law and managemnet to ships' naviagtion officers at the senior level. When I first started at the college I found the copy/paste mentality of many of teh students difficult to tolerate and when presented with 4 exact copies to the same assignment I'm afraid I rather hit the roof. Simple inclusion of a plagiarism policy in the Instition's charter allows the lecturer to give an acceptable mark and move on. If the student wishes to challenge the decision that is their choice and it is only fair that they have that option. Our college uses the following guidelines: Where the academic irregularity concerned is one of plagiarism, the Examination Board may have regard to the following guidelines in arriving at a decision on what action is appropriate (under paragraph 6.4.2 above): Degrees of Plagiarism Total derivative >70% All arguments Zero mark Heavily derivative 21% - 70% Key arguments Deduct 30% Derivative 10% - 20% Major arguments Deduct 20% Derivative Passages>10% Minor arguments Deduct 10% NB: These are only guidelines and are not mandatory; if used, they may need to be adapted, for example, to suit the marking scheme used for the assessment in question (e.g. by deducting a number of marks rather than a percentage).