Cheating and Plagiarism in College

Brenden Duncombe-Smith

Recently there has been a notable increase in cheating and plagiarism at colleges and universities. Due to the widespread use of cell phones and the internet, it is now possible for students to download term papers online or text each other answers during a test. However, there are new solutions to help prevent against this type of plagiarism. For instance, a website called TurnItIn.com will check student papers against billions of sources including web pages, books, articles, magazines, and all of the other papers submitted to the site. Sites such as this could be the perfect answer for many professors; however, some believe that this is the wrong way to prevent cheating and plagiarism. Timothy R. Austin, dean at the College of the Holy Cross, suggests that professors design their assignments to discourage cheating. For example, professors should assign texts that online essay sources are unlikely to have written or require students to turn in drafts. Lawrence M. Hinman, writer for the Washington Post and professor of philosophy at the Values Institute at the University of San Diego, thinks that the best solution would be for professors to create assignments that engage students and peaks their interests. All of these are great ideas, but alone these ideas aren't fool proof. There will always be students that have absolutely no interest in doing the work and will cheat regardless of the assignment. Ideally, the assignments themselves would be enough to discourage cheating. However, since that is not the case, resources like TurnItIn.com could provide the final anti-plagiarism tool for professors, thus ensuring academic integrity.