So, I wonder about this: is there any way for a University to effectively convince its students that it is serious about plagiarism? Or to put it another way, is it possible to convince eighteen- and nineteen-year old college kids that screwing up can get them kicked out?\n
At the moment, it seems like a lot of places have some sort of mandatory session, held during orientation or shortly thereafter, which makes little to no impression on the incoming freshfolk. As with much of the orientation stuff. These kids are away from home for the first time (many of them), and although you will reach the ones that are easy to reach, those students are (a) likely to be the ones who you don’t really need to reach anyway, because they are sufficiently worried to be paying attention to things like University Policies on Academic Honesty, and (2) also likely to put whatever those policies out of their heads once the real stress of the semester comes in.\n
And of course I could be wrong about students, generally. But is seems to me from what I’m seeing that there are a big chunk of students who think that they can paraphrase big chunks out of web sites with impunity. That they won’t get caught, or that if they do get caught, there won’t be any lasting consequence to it. Most students, of course, won’t plagiarize on most papers, because they don’t want to. But when it comes time to cut corners, I’d like the students to think it’s not worth the risk<\/i>.\n
I really don’t have any ideas. They presumably tell the freshfolk that there were fourteen people expelled for plagiarism in the last four years (or whatever it is), along with however many were put on probation and so on. But part of being eighteen is (at least for many, many people) holding off the belief that things that can happen to other people can happen to you. So making examples of other people is only going to persuade the most responsible students.\n
The other way, I suppose, is just to not kick out people who do get caught plagiarizing; the University could bring its actions in line with expectations that way, and give a break to some immature saps. I have a vague sense that a couple of generations ago, it was unusual for a University to kick anybody out for cheating of any kind, but then I don’t have any real data on that. And I have a vague sense that a couple of generations before that, it was usual for Universities to kick people out for the most minor infractions, and I don’t have any real data on that, either. Hm.\n
Still. Given that I really think college students should learn about plagiarism, and should be motivated to learn the rules and keep to them, it would make me feel better if I had some sort of clue how they should go about doing that. Even if it wasn’t properly instituted at the place that employs me, I would rather believe that it was just the wrongheaded Administration screwing up the obvious thing again, rather than an intractable problem. Or that the intractable problem was the Administration, rather than the students. I’m fond of the students, really, particularly now that they’re about to leave for the summer.\n
Tolerabimus quod tolerare debemus<\/I>,
-Vardibidian.\n\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
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