Turnitin.com There Is Overwhelming Evidence

¶ … Turnitin.com

There is overwhelming evidence that plagiarism is a growing problem not only on college campuses but also in middle schools and high schools. This paper shows all sides of the argument, and presents incriminating data about plagiarism that cries out for a solution. Students don't want to have their papers subjected to detection software, and instructors don't want students to cheat. What to do? The answer is not easy, and not forthcoming.

EDUCATION DIGEST (supporting details from the article): Why has academic dishonesty, in the form of plagiarism, become such a significant problem on college campuses? Research into this topic - according to an article in Education Digest (Strom, et al., 2007) - indicates that many high school students have already developed bad habits with reference to cheating, and they bring those habits to college with them. Over eighty percent of "Who's Who among American High School Students," who answered a recent survey, admitted cheating on tests. Meanwhile, the authors of this article assert that students "lack training regarding ethical practices for searching the Internet." In other words, their parents taught them to be honest but those students didn't get specific training in how to use the Internet honestly. A poll of high school parents shows that 63% "felt certain that their child would not cheat in any circumstance."

The Education Digest article offers several ways in which teachers may discourage or prevent cheating in classrooms, and offers opinions from students on why they cheat. But the salient point of the piece is that younger students are developing habits involving plagiarism and it's reaching a point of national disgrace. To wit, the Center for Academic Integrity surveyed middle schools nationwide and discovered that 73% of 7th graders and 66% of 6th graders admitted to"...regularly borrowing materials" - in a cut-and-paste style of cheating from Internet sources - without giving credit.

Article #2: COLLEGE STUDENT JOURNAL: (supporting details from the article): an article by Stacy L. Carter, et al., focuses first on "various treatments" for addressing the ongoing problem of academic cheating. First of all, the article sites data reflecting, "Academic dishonesty has been reported to occur at rates..." up to 82% and even 88% in some surveys. Given that such a substantial number of students apparently are cheating (plagiarizing) to one degree or another, it is unfortunate, the article continues, that many instructors and professors don't know how to properly punish student misbehaviors in this regard. So, given this problem of acceptable treatment for plagiarism, the study reported by Carter, et al., surveyed 267 students (47.1% male; 53.9% female) at a "large Southwestern public university." Students received credit for taking the survey, and their participation was voluntary and their answers were confidential. The 267 students were given a description of a college student who had plagiarized a research paper. They were given five possible treatment vignettes, and asked to choose which one was the most fair given the circumstances. The results showed that the "least acceptable" punishment from the students' perspective would have been to require the plagiarizer to meet before a review board in public; the review board would have the power to expel the student from the university. On the other hand, the most acceptable treatment, the survey showed, would be to give that student a failing grade and allow him or her to redo the assignment.

Article #3: TIME (supporting details from the article): This piece states that there are "hundreds of online paper mills" [i.e., web sites that produce research papers] which cater to "all the stressed-out, disaffected or just plain lazy students" who have credit cards and Internet access. And the Time article asserts that according to Rutgers professor Donald McCabe's research (a survey of 13,248 students), some 67% admitted to having cheated "at least once on a paper or test." That having been said, it is also true that colleges and universities are fighting back against the tidal wave of cheating by purchasing the services of www.turnitin.com, a Web site that reportedly has a database of "billions of Web pages, tens of thousands of journals and periodicals" and an estimated 40 million student papers. Turnitin.com claims 7,000 educational institutions use its services, and an estimated 100,000 student papers are fed into www.turnitin.com daily.

Hence, if a plagiarized paper is run through Turnitin's software, it should show up as a fraud, a copy of someone else's original work. Not every university has signed on to this service. And some students object to having a for-profit company making money (87 cents per student per year is charged to universities who use (www.turnitin.com) off their work. Some student protests have resulted in campuses canceling their contracts with www.turnitin.com students claim it creates a "...culture of mistrust, a culture of guilt." Duke University recently cancelled Turnitin. How do you reconcile this [service] with a place that's trying to presume honor?" asked Duke's vice provost for undergraduate education.