Red Tape Hot Box on plagiarism
If you're one of those job seekers who thinks that a university diploma is the safest ticket to a new job or promotion, you can rest assured that you won't have much trouble getting one. Even if a deadline is threatening or you simply have no idea how to write a thesis, don't despair. All you have to do is log on to one of the hundreds of web sites where so-called "writers" offer to do the job for you.
This service has been available for quite a while, but such is its scale now that it is proving a real problem to try to eradicate. Thanks to the Internet, what was merely a part-time pocket-money earner 20 years ago is today a lucrative business for these "writers."
The charge for an MBA diploma varies from zł. 1,200-zł. 2,000, while a doctorate, including the thesis research, can cost up to
zł. 20,000. Some Internet firms also peddle previously issued diplomas that they acquire from academics around the country. This means that students can choose an essay from the firms' existing databases and use it as their own work.
The firms claim that at least a couple of thousand students have defended theses they have purchased, which have been either written by someone else or simply plagiarised. So it would seem that it's high time for the universities to look for a new means of fighting this "hidden crime."
One option is for them to purchase special computer programs that can check if a particular thesis has been copied from other documents on the Internet. Although this approach has already yielded some positive results, with many students who have committed such fraud being discovered, it is presumed that a high number of cases slips through the checks.
But even fancy computer programs alone won't remedy the situation since academic rules do not state that writing a thesis for someone else is a crime unless the student publicly presents the thesis as his own without the author's permission (plagiarism). However, a student who sells his thesis to one of the aforementioned Internet firms must forfeit his author's rights. In this case, the writers who copy the thesis are not guilty of plagiarism since they have the consent of the author. If a student were to be found guilty of plagiarism in this respect, however, then he could be sentenced to two years' imprisonment. But even if the fraud were proven in court, it would still be difficult to annul his academic title since the act on higher education does not stipulate the circumstances under which an academic title can be taken away from its holder.
Everybody knows that something should be done about the problem, but no-one knows really how to go about it. As long as the universities fail to deal properly with the problem, employers may well remain sceptical about the diplomas and qualifications their prospective employees show them.
Red tape bugging you? Tell Mateusz about it at matdem@poczta.onet.pl.
This service has been available for quite a while, but such is its scale now that it is proving a real problem to try to eradicate. Thanks to the Internet, what was merely a part-time pocket-money earner 20 years ago is today a lucrative business for these "writers."
The charge for an MBA diploma varies from zł. 1,200-zł. 2,000, while a doctorate, including the thesis research, can cost up to
zł. 20,000. Some Internet firms also peddle previously issued diplomas that they acquire from academics around the country. This means that students can choose an essay from the firms' existing databases and use it as their own work.
The firms claim that at least a couple of thousand students have defended theses they have purchased, which have been either written by someone else or simply plagiarised. So it would seem that it's high time for the universities to look for a new means of fighting this "hidden crime."
One option is for them to purchase special computer programs that can check if a particular thesis has been copied from other documents on the Internet. Although this approach has already yielded some positive results, with many students who have committed such fraud being discovered, it is presumed that a high number of cases slips through the checks.
But even fancy computer programs alone won't remedy the situation since academic rules do not state that writing a thesis for someone else is a crime unless the student publicly presents the thesis as his own without the author's permission (plagiarism). However, a student who sells his thesis to one of the aforementioned Internet firms must forfeit his author's rights. In this case, the writers who copy the thesis are not guilty of plagiarism since they have the consent of the author. If a student were to be found guilty of plagiarism in this respect, however, then he could be sentenced to two years' imprisonment. But even if the fraud were proven in court, it would still be difficult to annul his academic title since the act on higher education does not stipulate the circumstances under which an academic title can be taken away from its holder.
Everybody knows that something should be done about the problem, but no-one knows really how to go about it. As long as the universities fail to deal properly with the problem, employers may well remain sceptical about the diplomas and qualifications their prospective employees show them.
Red tape bugging you? Tell Mateusz about it at matdem@poczta.onet.pl.
