A Campus Fad That's Being Copied: Internet Plagiarism

[Dave Farber <dave () farber net>]

> A Campus Fad That's Being Copied: Internet Plagiarism
>
> September 3, 2003
>  By SARA RIMER
>
>
>
>
>
>
> A study conducted on 23 college campuses has found that
> Internet plagiarism is rising among students.
>
> Thirty-eight percent of the undergraduate students surveyed
> said that in the last year they had engaged in one or more
> instances of "cut-and-paste" plagiarism involving the
> Internet, paraphrasing or copying anywhere from a few
> sentences to a full paragraph from the Web without citing
> the source. Almost half the students said they considered
> such behavior trivial or not cheating at all.
>
> Only 10 percent of students had acknowledged such cheating
> in a similar, but much smaller survey three years ago.
>
> This year's study, organized by Donald L. McCabe, a
> management professor at Rutgers University, surveyed more
> than 18,000 students, 2,600 faculty members and 650
> teaching assistants at large public universities and small
> private colleges nationwide. No Ivy League schools were
> included.
>
> "There are a lot of students who are growing up with the
> Internet who are convinced that anything you find on the
> Internet is public knowledge and doesn't need to be cited,"
> Professor McCabe said.
>
> The survey solicited students' comments about cheating, and
> one student wrote, "If professors cannot detect a paper
> from an Internet source, that is a flaw in the grader or
> professor."
>
> Another student wrote: "One time I downloaded a program off
> the Internet for my class. I hated the class and it was
> mandatory so I didn't care about learning it, just passing
> it."
>
> Forty percent of students acknowledged plagiarizing written
> sources in the last year. As with the Internet cheating,
> about half the students considered this sort of plagiarism
> trivial.
>
> Twenty percent of the faculty members said they use their
> computers, such as the turnitin.com site, to help detect
> student plagiarism.
>
> Twenty-two percent of undergraduates acknowledged cheating
> in a "serious" way in the past year - copying from another
> student on a test, using unauthorized notes or helping
> someone else to cheat on a test.
>
> "When I work with high school students, what I hear is,
> `Everyone cheats, it's not all that important,' " Professor
> McCabe said. "They say: `It's just to get into college.
> When I get into college, I won't do it.' But then you
> survey college students, and you hear the same thing."
>
> The undergraduates say they need to cheat because of the
> intense competition to get into graduate school, and land
> the top jobs, Professor McCabe said. "It never stops," he
> said.
>
> One of the students from the survey wrote: "This isn't a
> college problem. It's a problem of the entire country!"
>
> Professor McCabe said: "Students will say they're just
> mimicking what goes on in society with business leaders,
> politicians. I don't know whether they're making excuses
> for what they've already done, or whether they're saying,
> `It's O.K. if I do this because of what's going on.' "
>
> Many of the colleges involved in the survey have begun
> trying to fight cheating by educating both faculty members
> and students on academic integrity and revising school
> policies.
>
> Princeton University was not involved in the survey, but it
> is among the schools that have been taking steps to make
> sure students know that it is wrong to use material from
> the Internet without citing the source.
>
> "We need to pay more attention as students join our
> communities to explaining why this is such a core value -
> being honest in your academic work and why if you cheat
> that is a very big deal to us," said Kathleen Deignan,
> Princeton's dean of undergraduate students.
>
> There has not been any noticeable increase in cheating at
> Princeton, Ms. Deignan said, with 18 to 25 cases reported a
> year. Administrators have noticed, however, that sometimes
> students and parents do not understand why it is wrong to
> "borrow" sections of text for a paper without providing
> attribution, Ms. Deignan added.
>
> Princeton students are also concerned, and they have
> organized a campus assembly on integrity for Sept. 21.
>
> "We live in a world where a lot of this is negotiable," Ms.
> Deignan said. "Academic institutions need to say, `This is
> not negotiable.' "
>
> http://www.nytimes.com/2003/09/03/education/03CHEA.html?ex=1063566008&ei=1&en=707d8b58fc1ebb0e

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