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June 01, 2006
Bizarre recommendations
The review panel at Ohio University has now reported its recommendations. (OU is the place that discovered that over a 20-year span, there had been quite a number of plagiarized engineering theses.)
One of those recommendations is that two faculty members who enabled or did not attempt to prevent plagiarism be fired. Back in February I wrote about why I thought this was a bad idea; I still think so, and I'm hoping that the university doesn't follow through on this recommendation.
Another recommendation is that the students (most of whom have now graduated) be given an opportunity to rewrite! They're not talking about revoking the degrees but about rehabilitating the writers. I would assume that this recommendation is based on their having found a culture of plagiarism in that department, one so pervasive that they feel the students in it can't be held responsible for their actions. Still, I'm amazed. For one thing, if OU follows through on this as anything but an empty ceremony, they'll have to hire an extra faculty member just to read all those theses.
I regard this as the most sensational, important plagiarism case I've ever heard of. The implications of its recommendations could ripple all the way across the academy. For good or for ill.
Posted by senioritis at June 1, 2006 07:23 AM
Comments
From the article:
Krendl also noted a report by two School of Communication doctoral students. The report, called “An Honest Look at Academic Dishonesty at Ohio University,” found that 84 percent of OU undergraduates and 55 percent of graduate students admitted to behavior most people would consider cheating, according to an April 6 Post story.
Does this mean 84% of OU faculty will be getting the sack?
Of course, as your earlier post stated, we still don't know if the students in this case are sloppy citers, or if they were actually cut-and-pasting to cut corners.
Posted by: cbd at June 1, 2006 12:49 PM