University Plaigarism - discuss

[Ace42X]

http://education.guardian.co.uk/students/news/story/0,,1801162,00.html

Personally, I think it is symptomatic of what education means to us today - something you are obliged to do to get certain jobs, rather than an achievement in itself. And because it is the "end" that is valued, not the "doing" - the end justifies the means to most students.

[adam_f]

I like it when you're funny.

[Kid Presentable]

I think learning is definitely the secondary function; I know when I graduate I just want the piece of paper that tells employers: "Pay me More!".

I know our University has anti-plagiarism software installed on their private network, so they can scan papers to compare them to known internet sites, and their resources.

Thing is, I know a guy who is doing his thesis, and on the cusp of gaining his degree, and the thesis is wholly plagiarised from a fellow student. Apparently most of the unit shares this values-system, and it's quite the norm.

Call me a sucker for turning in my own work, but I guess we'll see how I feel about that thesis.

[zorra_chiflada]

i very much doubt the teachers completely read our essays at art school, and it certainly doesn't seem like they care about plagiarism.

[enree erzweglle]

i very much doubt the teachers completely read our essays at art school [...]In one of the volumes of The Art of Computer Programming (I think it was one of the books in that series not one of his other books), Knuth mentioned that he uses random sampling when grading longish papers, particularly those that contain program excerpts. :)

[Ace42X]

Knuth mentioned that he uses random sampling when grading longish papers, particularly those that contain program excerpts. :)

When I was working on my A-level computing coursework, I assumed this to be the case, and just set up a series of convaluted loops and meaningless subroutines to fill up the pages, assuming that a marker would go "yeah, fuck this" and just look at the screenshots for the GUI front-end, and read the explanation of how it does what it does and why. I passed with no effort whatsoever, so I guess it must've worked.

[GetYourWarOn]

im for it

[Sarky Devotchka]

it makes me mad that the internet was so crap when I was in school. copying and pasting is way easier than sitting on your bedroom floor with a mountain of notecards to be arranged into a decent research paper.

I think everyone is just getting lazier and lazier. college seems to be more about having fun than actually getting an education. I was a partier, but I was also a nerd who wanted to do well so everyone would think I was smart. I'm also very honest. except for in the test-making class where the class was divided into groups who wrote the questions for the exams. we all just emailed the questions and answers to eachother. all except one group, because one of the girls was a kiss ass and we thought for sure she'd tattle. anyway, 7/8ths of the class had 3/4ths of the answers (as the professor wrote a couple himself). and we all generally got A's. the prof was a big doofus who cared more about showing us the website he made for his gourd collection, than actually instructing us.