Time goes by, but the fashion for trashing teachers, universities, and education officials (in our case always just one — the minister) never passes. Like, the first are old farts who read lectures off a sheet of paper from 40 years ago and don’t know shit; the second are organizations, sort of like a club, for officially dodging the army; and the third are just ghouls methodically killing education in the country. In short, everything is bad. Oh no, not everything: thank God the ATM at least works fine and pays out the stipend.

Today let’s talk about plagiarism (so-called “copy-paste”). To start with, let’s define the term.

Plagiarism is the deliberate appropriation of authorship of someone else’s work of science or art, someone else’s ideas or inventions [Wikipedia].

Plagiarism is a very serious problem in the domestic education system. And things are so far gone that not everyone is even capable of realizing that this problem exists. As far as I could tell from personal conversations with students, quite a few do not understand that borrowing the texts of papers is, first, unethical (essentially, it’s theft), and second, prohibited by university rules.

I understand perfectly well that it’s very easy to type the topic of your term paper into Google and copy a ready-made text, a good 10 pages right away, from the first link that comes up. A few more such runs through Google — and the term paper is done.

Let’s explain the concept of plagiarism from one more angle. If plagiarism is an “unfair appropriation of results,” then the grade for such work cannot be considered fair either, which follows from the definition. Let’s consider this model of a term paper. Suppose that the norm for a term paper is a report of 40 pages of original text (excluding the title page, table of contents, sources, appendices), graded on a 100-point scale. Obviously, if a student personally prepared a paper of the required length, one that raises no objections from the expert committee, then that student receives the highest possible grade: 100 points. All fair, no one has any comments?

shkala1

And what happens if a student borrowed half of his work from other sources? Well, he was short on time or got lazy and yanked 20 little pages out of a book, a reference work, or Wikipedia? Let me remind you that an essay, a term paper or thesis, a dissertation — these are authored works; all the work should come from the author.

shkala2

The work has been completed in full: 40 pages of text are there. But is it fair to give the highest grade here? I support the principle that the grade should be reduced in proportion to the share of original material. Half the text was copied? Then the student will get 50 points for the work, assuming there are no objections to that original green part. Let me remind you that 50 points is a D under the totalitarian grading system. A weak C starts at 60.

It may seem that I am very strict and inventing some ridiculous rules for students. But then let’s turn to the experience of that country which is considered the ideal, and where some people strive to move. In a private conversation, a friend who is already there sent me a link to the policy on cheating and plagiarism at one of the departments of the University of Berkeley. Below is a close translation of several points:

Department Policy

Copying part or all of another person’s work or using prohibited sources are all forms of cheating that are not allowed. A student caught cheating will be warned by the instructor, and the following rules will apply:

  1. The instructor may: a) require the work to be rewritten; b) give the work a D or zero points; c) in cases of serious misconduct, give a D for the entire course.

  2. The recommended action for cheating on an exam or in a term paper is item 1.c (two points for the course).

  3. The instructor is required to notify the student and the dean of the department in writing of the fact of cheating, the actions taken, and the student’s right to appeal.

  4. The instructor is required to keep copies of any written work that serves as evidence of the violation.

  5. The dean of the department is required to notify the vice-rector for student affairs (in the original, Director of the Office of Student Conduct — translator’s note) of the violation, as well as the student’s name and the actions taken by the instructor.

  6. The rector’s office (The Office of Student Conduct — translator’s note) may hold a formal hearing on the violation and impose a penalty for the violation.

  7. The department will file paperwork to expel those students who are caught cheating again.

So you download a term paper from the internet, and you immediately get two points for the course without any sort of proceedings. And then you copy something somewhere else, and you get a boot up the ass. All according to democracy, not according to lies!

And we’ve only talked about plagiarism. There are also the problems of cheating on tests and exams, making up experimental results, and defending nonworking (or not even created at all) programs or models.

Student! Want to change this world — start by changing something in yourself.