Chasing the Dragon's Tale

Yesterday's Detroit Free Press (freep.com) article, New Software Detects Plagiarized Passages, graphically illustrates the magnitude of Internet use by students and a significantly lower level of sophistication by university faculty members:

"Clearly, plagiarism is a growing problem. In a survey of 30,000 undergraduates at 34 colleges, 37 percent admitted committing cut-and-paste plagiarism using the Internet, up from 10 percent in 1999. Only 20 percent of their professors use plagiarism-detection tools, according to the survey by Rutgers University professor Don McCabe, founder of the Center for Academic Integrity. Plagiarism detectors can be relatively cheap insurance against intellectual property sins, but many businesses and even educators remain reluctant to use them. Some fear lawsuits if they accuse someone of cheating. And deciding what amounts to actual plagiarism remains a judgment call that humans must make, creators of the software say."

Few universities want to adopt a big brother posture...but this (Internet plagiarism) Dragon has serious implications for academia as well as industry. Gaining ground on the Dragon may or may not be a priority for many institutions... and it would be a shame if the first efforts at grabbing the Dragon's tail have such negative implications.