Academic Integrity and the Internet

By Christopher G. Mendla
January 2006

I've been an adjunct professor at a number of local colleges since 1989. I'm beginning to see a disturbing trend in today's college students. Namely, they seem to aspire to mediocrity. Perhaps the competition for students is causing the school administrations to lower standards or they are too busy adding more 'touchy feely' courses.

One disturbing trend lately is bold faced plagiarism. I recently taught a 100 level class where I mentioned at least 10 times (no exaggeration) the definition of plagiarism and that it would not be tolerated. Even then, a student submitted a paper that was a shameless cut and paste from an article on the Internet

About 2 years ago I had an even more outlandish example. I was grading papers for a 300/400 level class. One of the papers just seemed to be too well written to have been authored by a student who sat in the back of the class slouched over with a baseball cap on backwards. I took one of the sentences and pasted it into Google and found the article was a direct cut and paste from Dr. Dobbs Journal. On confronting the student, he claimed he had accidentally submitted one of the articles he downloaded for reference. OK, so I was an idiot and gave him a second chance.

On grading his resubmitted paper, I found that this one was lifted from one of the well known online term paper providers. I gave him a zero for the assignment plus I took some additional points off his paper resulting in a C-.

After the final grades were turned in, I got an email from the department chair demanding to know how I calculated the grade since the student's calculations were that he should have received a B. I explained the situation and enclosed copied of both of the original student papers and the sources of his plagiarism. The chair was not interested at all in the plagiarism, but rather she was concerned with why I didn't stick to the grading in my syllabus. I sent what was probably an obnoxiously worded email in reply along with an invoice for the time I wasted on the matter. Keep in mind that this is a fairly large and prestigious university in the Philadelphia area. Needless to say, I haven't' been assigned any more courses with that department.

By the way, I had another student in that same class who also turned in a completely plagiarized assignment. When I gave him a zero he emailed me with a sincere apology and made it clear that he would accept any penalties including flunking the class.

There are a couple of components to this problem

Students have unprecedented access to term papers and other online resources. To see the impact, do a google search for term papers. Take a look at the ads on the right hand side and on the number of hits returned. This is a huge business.

Many of today's students see nothing wrong with 'copy and paste, slap your name one the paper and turn it in.'

Schools are experiencing tough competition for students. In limbo, lowering the bar increased the challenge. Here they are lowering the standards to 'if you have a pulse and credit card, you're accepted'

There are a number of services for faculty that will help check for plagiarism. There are a couple of simple things you can do

Have all documents submitted electronically (Don't open them on your home machines though unless that machine is thoroughly locked down.

Take a piece of text, perhaps about 10 to 15 words worth and copy and paste it into a search engine such as Google. Sometimes you have to encase the fragment in quotes depending on the subject matter. See if you find any corresponding documents

Make sure that your syllabi spell out in excruciating legalese the penalties for plagiarism.

Get a feel beforehand to determine if the administration is paying lip service to anti plagiarism or if they really mean it.

Of course, plagiarism is not limited to academia. Webmasters have to also be ever vigilant in making sure that their photos, text and other intellectual property is not stolen

Some resources to help professors combat plagiarism

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