Students and former tutors from Oxford University are to blame for encouraging essay plagiarism by contributing high-quality material to cheating websites. The revelation comes in the light of a report which found that plagiarism has become a serious problem among students at UK universities, and Oxford is no exception to the rule. Cheating is rapidly on the increase nationwide and is becoming increasingly difficult to detect, according to a recently published paper in the Journal of Further and Higher Education. It blames the pressure to succeed for forcing many students turn to lucrative essay websites for their studies. According to students, the internet is the best place to find untraceable material. There are over 100,000 essay websites to choose from with ready-made essays on almost all subjects taught at Oxford. Some sites, such as essayfinder.com will turn out a customised essay four days for £60. A spokesman for degreeessays. com said, “many of our essays are written by students and ex-tutors from Oxford and Cambridge.” One English student at St Anne’s said “a lot of my friends swap material on the essay websites. I have used some of the stuff off the free ones. You just need to be careful: cut and paste some of it and rewrite the rest yourself.” Students have also admitted to plagiarising one another’s work. Chemistry student said, “we tend to do it on at least 50% of our tute sheets, and so far have only been caught out once or twice. As far as I can tell, in the sciences it seems to be the standard technique to copy other peoples’ work.” The University takes a hard line on plagiarism in exams, and employs software such as Copycat to detect copied work in wordprocessed exam scripts and coursework. Dr. Nicolas Shrimpton, an English don at Lady Margaret Hall said, “It’s a piece of complete idiocy and a waste of everyone’s time. I’ve seen it happen as a finals examiner; it is taken very seriously. Occasionally one finds oneself plagiarised.”
ARCHIVE: 4th week TT 2003
Plagiarism Plagues Oxford
