The
Large University Untruth
Universities
turning out more cheaters. Blame the worldwide web.
May 29, 2001
First,
it was high profile dishonesty of young Hong Kong
tycoon Richard Li then came the story of bespectacled
Singaporean, Dennis Lee.
In
the space of a few years, the career of the boyish-looking
Lee, 29, rocketed from mediocre to world class researcher
on artificial intelligence.
It
was built around several awards and fellowships from
top US universities, including Massachusetts Institute
of Technology (MIT) and Stanford, and co-authored
several books on the subject.
He
co-founded elipva, a high-tech start-up which received
funding from the government-controlled Singapore Technologies.
In
February Dennis was invited to speak at the Internet
World Asia conference in Singapore and was nominated
"Internet Visionary of the Year".
The
local graduate also gained a popular following as
moderator of Singapore's older and better-class chat-site,
Sintercom.com.
Recently
his glittering world came crashing down.
In
a front-page expose, the Business Times revealed that
most of his international awards and his books were
a mirage, fakes that never happened.
After
its own probe, an embarrassed elipva dismissed him
as chief technology officer for fraud. Sintercom.org
abruptly went off the Net and its founders are trying
to revive it.
The
story shocked academic-worshipping Singaporeans.
This
followed years of untruthful claim by son of Hong
Kong's wealthiest family, Richard Li, that he was
a computer science graduate of Stanford University.
A newspaper exposed him and he apologised.
Next
was a cheating case involving a Singapore girl in
Curtin University of Technology in Perth.
She
admitted that she had twice cheated in her assignments
by submitting essays copied from the Internet. On
her third attempt she handed in substandard work.
The
university's own inquiry had shown up all this, but
instead of sacking her, Curtin allowed the Mass Communications
student to graduate. It even withheld her identity.
Other
students and graduates were horrified about the likely
devaluation of their degrees.
The
Internet has improved our lives but it has also wrought
havoc in human values. For one thing, it is making
plagiarism very easy and allowed cheaters to escape
uncaught.
Australian
universities have recently come under fire after widespread
claims that students were buying course-work online.
The
Sydney Morning Herald reported that students were
advertising their work on websites and posters around
campuses. Some Australian students were also offering
- for a fee- to write papers for Asian students with
poorer skills.
Recently
122 students were charged with cheating after a professor
at the University of Virginia designed a programme
that showed it up. Half of them are expected to be
expelled or lose their degrees.
Plagiarism
is as old as education. In fact, recycling others'
ideas and viewpoints are common. But the Internet
is introducing a new dimension to it.
Even
before its arrival, one could obtain a degree from
universities with high-sounding names by contributing
money to its fund, PHDs or Masters.
In
a knowledge-based world where passport to a good life
is a university degree, youths are always on the lookout
for "insurance" to make sure they graduate.
The
paper chase is much more intense in countries like
Japan, Korea Taiwan and Singapore, where the brightest
students form the leadership elite.
Plagiarism
has, in fact, become an online industry. Some 10 global
sites are offering term papers at between $13 and
$35 per page. They boast a 10,000-25,000 custom-written
database.
Law
essays cost $75 flat rate for all essays. Others charge
per year for access and service of one, SchoolSuck,
is free.
There
are also web-sites that sell their service to help
universities spot the cheaters.
Both
have major flaws.
The
Straits Times tested out by buying a paper "The
Impact of Recent Global Mergers On the Singaporean
Banking Industry" from one of them and submitted
it to a senior university lecturer here for grading.
The
cost was S$240. It got a failing grade. "It's
so bad that it sounds like a schizophrenic wrote it.
There's no focus, no substance, just a lot of empty
words," he said, adding.
"If
this is what people are paying for, they are getting
ripped off."
In
the USA, a columnist submitted his own article to
a check site, plagiarism.org to test if it is original
and was shocked to be told it had been pinched. (Read
Informed View "The Web"s Plagiarism Police")
He
later found that the testing software had roamed the
web and matched it with one of his articles written
years ago.
Where
he did reproduced the works of four major authors,
Karl Marx, Oscar Wilde, Bram Stoker and Ralph Waldo
Emerson - with various changes to some words and punctuation.
Most
were either inconclusive or were passed.
The
rising trend of cheating is not due just to the web
or the frantic paper chase - but something else -
a decline in the sense of shame among young people.
"In
the past people were afraid of the public shame if
they were caught cheating. They would know where to
hide their faces," a retired teacher said. "Today
the stigma of shame doesn't excist."
In
this New World of open education, not every one agrees
that plagiarism is a serious offence that demeans
university education. It is a subjective call.
"There
are very few original viewpoints or ideas. Taking
other people's thoughts and rationalising them in
your own way is not wrong. Almost every student has
done it some time or other," one graduate said.
"What
is wrong is to copy an entire work - or large chunks
of it - and submit it as your own. That's wrong."
Seah
Chiang
Nee
