College Plagiarism Reaches All Time High: Pew Study

Cyber-plagiarism is at an all time high among college students, according to a survey of college presidents from the Pew Research Center.

It appears college students are finding it more tempting than ever to cheat from the web. A majority of college presidents (55%) said that plagiarism in students' papers has increased over the past ten years. Among those who have seen an increase in plagiarism, 89% said computers and the internet have played a major role.

Pew and The Chronicle of Higher Education conducted telephone interviews with 1,055 college presidents from both public and private of two-and four-year institutions.

The survey also examined the future growth in online learning. Half of college presidents predicted that ten years from now most of their students would take classes online, while 62% said they foresaw half of undergrads using digital books by 2021.

A subsequent study also followed up with 2,142 members of the public over the age of 18 by phone interviews. Although their views closely matched college presidents, the one area where they begged to differ was the value of online courses. Just 29% of American adults said a course taken online provides an equal educational value to one taken in a classroom, whereas over half of college presidents (51%) said online courses provided the same value.

Comments

[glowbug25]

07:45 PM on 09/05/2011

I don't understand how plagiarism is on the rise. The college I attended required that all students submitted their work through turnitin.com.

[Larkin31]

07:47 AM on 09/05/2011

Part of the difficulty is that in the world of business and writing (and art) beyond academia, modeling and lifting and copying and sampling parts of other people's work is actually even expected. I am a teacher, and there are times that I think that we in academia are too reactionary about low levels of what gets called "plagiarism" which beyond a school would not even turn a head. But, yeah, large scale copying (cut and paste) is a real problem with the ease of the internet and the growing number of digital versions of books and other papers.

[fredgladys]

07:28 PM on 09/04/2011

Plagiarism is a growing problem, China, India and England just to name a few countries have growing levels of cheating. China is concerned because the level of plagiarism detected in their scientific research is damaging their reputation. England is concerned because cheating in college/university particularly by international students, they have set up a special plagiarism organization that uses more sophisticated software to detect cheats.
The excuse by a number of students that they didn't know plagiarism is wrong is suspect, if you have managed to obtain college/university level and don't know this already you must be either scared, lazy, inept or lying.

Frank Furedi, professor of sociology at the University of Kent, rejected this interpretation, saying that students knew when they were cheating - and that universities preferred to "turn a blind eye" rather than confront the problem.

"A culture has been created which sends the message that second-hand, unoriginal work and cheating are part and parcel of university life," he said.

"In the 'customer-client culture', degrees are seen as something you pay for rather than something you have to learn. It's the new ethos of university life."

[geo999]

07:25 PM on 09/04/2011

Funny thing is, yesterday's student plagiarists probably had a better familiarity the material they were appropriating than do kids today.

Back in the old days, one had to go to the library, look up the text, read it, and physically copy the passages that one was lifting.

Nowadays it's just google-cut-paste-print.

[lewk0117]

08:09 PM on 09/04/2011

So true.

[Cheri Quinn]

02:03 PM on 09/04/2011

As a university professor being forced to offer online graduate courses it does not surprise me that college presidents think students are getting the same 'bang for the buck.' They aren't! Teaching online takes much more time than teaching in person and you have no way to know if the student enrolled is actually the person doing the work. Of course, college presidents typically don't teach any classes, let alone an online class. For college presidents the bottom line is student credit hour production. If you want to conduct a study that gets to the heart of the matter why not go to the source and ask professors and students?

[Chipper1]

02:13 PM on 09/03/2011

Cheating has to do with basic values. Americans are losing theirs more and more. Most students I caught plagiarizing said, "I didn't know it was wrong". I've had their parents tell me, "We didn't know it was wrong" .Apparently Americans just don't know what's right and wrong anymore. So sad.

[Mr Anonymous]

11:14 PM on 09/03/2011

As a teacher, all you have to do is explain it at the beginning ot the year or semester and have them sign a note saying they understand it. Then, no more excuses about how they didn't know.

[Warhammer Jones]

01:58 PM on 09/02/2011

What a worthless survey. How many papers do college presidents grade? College presidents spend most of their time on fundraising.

That's not to say cyber-cheating isn't a huge problem, but even asking the students would be a much better method of determining its frequency.

[white dude lulz]

06:04 AM on 09/02/2011

This has nothing to do with students being incapable of doing the work. This is a result of the party culture that is rampant throughout our universities. Students would rather get drunk and stoned than learn something.

[Mr Anonymous]

11:16 PM on 09/03/2011

Yeah, like that hasn't been rampant for over 50 years.

[Crystal Naritai]

11:52 PM on 09/01/2011

I don't think people are necessarily plagiarizing more... I think it is much easier to get caught being able to google phrases and technology like turn it in.

[methodman]

10:46 PM on 09/01/2011

I think Amiga man that you have exposure to taking parts of things from different sources.The Amiga Magazines laid the dreams that took decades for some of us to catch on. I am working through an Open MIT courseware class in the Computers and Engineering 600 and the professor is talking about different types of complexity He brought into focus a neglected hard to teach not content but going principle. It wasn't a did or a check. See how fragmented this conversation is. It is Real as well. I can complete projects with these glimmers of hope. Did, Check, We Then Carried On, ---hm an important principle of structure Neglected by the English Literature Folks. Why do I complete my projects but flunk Literary and conversational English?

[Nullifidian]

07:01 AM on 09/02/2011

"Why do I complete my projects but flunk Literary and conversati­onal English?"

Indeed, it is a mystery.

[kclz2420]

06:04 PM on 09/02/2011

Please tell me this is a joke. Why did you flunk literary and conversational English? Because you suck at English.

[methodman]

10:35 PM on 09/01/2011

I have mixed feelings about this. If you plagurize things that are above your level to understand and physically write (not type the thing out) with larger vocabulary then you are comfortable with,. Copy a better instructer about the same subject it's far more valuable than some stupid one-syllable filled words page. No one arms themselves with enough vocabulary for the 21 century. I did this the first two years. In fact in one class where I hated the instructor I took random paragraphs copied from different volumes of Great Books of the Western
World and patched them together. And then scheduled an hour with the professor just to see what the hell would happen? I flunked the class but over time My understanding has blossomed to find and recognize Glimmers of Hope that pass others' by.

[white dude lulz]

05:49 AM on 09/02/2011

You are a horrible writer.

[WI Dude]

07:12 AM on 09/02/2011

I have absolutely no idea what you are saying in either of your posts!

[rxdumas]

09:16 PM on 09/01/2011

"Online class" really varies in what it means. Some schools like those around the Research Triangle Park conduct interactive distance classes at scheduled times with a live instructor on video feed. Duke gives its students media devices for streaming lectures. UNC has similar facilities. An online course there is way different from something from Kaplan or Phoenix University.

On the other hand, a North Carolina study from the PED (sort of the state's version of the GAO) shows that it costs as much or more money for a university to offer an online course compared to a traditional course:

http://www.ncga.state.nc.us/PED/Reports/documents/DE/DE_Report.pdf

Some other benefits are discussed that are peculiar to online courses.

[rob126]

09:14 PM on 09/01/2011

Look at the example being set by some of our institutions of higher education. Cheating in athletics is rampant. Why should students listen to a professor talk about academic honesty when they see what going on with the athletes?

Then we get to the real world. We have public figures who will say or do anything to win a vote or get elected. Why would a student care about academic honesty when our leaders can and will say anything?

Then we see our business community. "Anything goes" seems to be the motto when it comes to making money or getting ahead. If it's good enough for business, why shouldn't it be good enough for a student?

[MCTSilverlakeCA]

09:19 PM on 09/01/2011

The answer to your questions is Ethics. If you don't have them, you will be found out. When you are, nothing you can say will change another's mind.

[MCTSilverlakeCA]

09:08 PM on 09/01/2011

Plagiarism has been with college students for far longer than the days of the Internet. In the early 80's I taught in a Writing Lab in a prestigious California college and more than half of what I saw in essays was stolen directly out of books and newspaper articles- yet when I confronted them on it I was told I was being "unfair". I was also point blank told to look the other way on wealthy students assignments by a prominent college official or I might jeopardise their parents donations to the college. -- I suspect a lot of the plagiarism that doesn't get reported today in colleges is probably due to similar reasons. All of it stems from one thing - Dishonesty. It's also the reason why so many of these entrants into the workforce can't read or write well enough to do their jobs.

[NotaBene3]

07:08 PM on 09/01/2011

The value of an online class is directly related to the University and the Professor offering the course. I have taken online classes and they were wonderful.