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If you cheat, there’s a chance it is your teacher’s fault, so says a CanWest News Service article by Amy Minsky entitled Cheating stats getting out of control: Researcher. The American Psychological Association met in Toronto this past Saturday and sited the problem of cheating as a growing concern. One of the statistics sited at the convention is that 75% of college students cheat, according to Eric Anderman, an Ohio State professor of educational policy and leadership . Interestingly, Anderman blamed academic pressure on on students to achieve as the source of cheating. This falls in line with the findings on plagiarism we reported on from Susan D. Blum in My Word! Plagiarism and College Culture.

Two unanswered questions stand out.  The first is, How is it that students are apparently unaware of the level of cheating that is going on around them?  Jordan (2001) found that students greatly underestimated the percentage of their peers who cheat.  Yet the literature shows that the majority of students are cheating.  Could it be that because students are aware that cheating is unethical they do not conceive of it being a widespread problem?  And if students believe they are in the minority when it comes to cheating, is there a level of guilt and or shame that they feel?  Could this be used somehow to decrease the incidence of cheating?

The second unanswered question is, Why is there so much cheating in colleges?  Jordan (2001) cites reasons such as extrinsic motivation and Stearns (2001) cites “mean” and “unfriendly” professors but cheating would not be necessary even in these cases if the students were familiar and comfortable with the academic material.  Therefore, the question becomes are students cheating because the material is too advanced for them or are they simply too lazy to put in the required amount of time and effort to write their own papers or take their own exams?  Or are there other factors involved such as the need to work to earn money to attend school or the modern day need for a college degree forcing students into college who might not otherwise have chosen to go?

Despite these unanswered questions, two very important and surprising facts are learned from the research.  First, students who cheat in college are more commonplace than students who never cheat.  And second, neither college administrators, teachers, nor the research experts know what to do to effectively stop the cheating.  My own viewpoint on this issue is that professors in each class should remind students of the dire consequences of cheating when giving out each assignment and before handing out each exam.  Students should be made to sign an honor pledge on their assignments and exams and understand that expulsion from school is the only consequence to cheating.

Given the amount of fraud one hears about everyday being committed by corporations and government officials though, it should not come as a surprise that there is so much cheating going on in colleges.  After all, the cheating students of today are the corporate moguls and elected officials of tomorrow.

Jordan, Augustus E. “College Student Cheating: The Role of “Motivation, Perceived Norms, Attitudes, and Knowledge of Institutional Policy.” Ethics & Behavior. Jul2001, Vol. 11 Issue 3, p233.

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Now I run the risk of alienating the men who read this but really, it just has to be pointed out – What is the problem with Sonia Sotomayor?

The world is in an uproar about her comment in a 2001 speech “I would hope that a wise Latina woman with the richness of her experiences would more often than not reach a better conclusion than a white male who hasn’t lived that life.” Seems a no-brainer to me. A wise Latina woman is certainly going to be a far better asset to this nation than any white man or white woman, given the changing dynamics of the nations population and the need for understanding of the urgency in minority problems such as adequate health care and equality in education. Give me a wise anyone who has seen first hand the struggles of a minority that is rapidly becoming the majority and I’ll vote them in! The status quo was the Bush administration; please embrace the brilliance of change and vote in “wise”, “different”, “open mouthed” and, not to overuse this word but heck, it sums up the new era, “hope”.

And then there is the woman thing…Yes, the Supreme Court needs a bit more balance in that arena also.The “wise Latina” comment has induced some to say that Sotomayor will be biased, either for her gender or towards Latinos, because she singled them out in a speech and put a “wise Latina” on a pedestal. Hmm…again, show me the fault in this. The problem with criticizing her for this statement rests in prefacing her reference to a Latino woman as “wise”. You just can’t criticize someone with her intelligence and track record in life experience for singling out someone as wise. We should all be listening and taking note of who is “wise” rather than worried about bias. I’m biased towards “wise” people too and I loath ignorance.

Please! Please! Put another judge on the bench that had to struggle for what they achieved. Struggling to achieve generally brings an awareness of the value of what one has. Give me a Justice that earned their seat and I’ll give you a Judge that thinks twice about abusing it.

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Sunday, in the Miami Herald, an article ran concerning wind power and environmental problems. It naturally caught my eye and my first reaction was one of disbelief, then disappointment. Apparently, as reported by the Miami Herald, the infrasonic waves that are caused by the motion of the windmill causes a varied amount health concerns for those who live near wind power fields. Symptoms include headaches, insomnia and stiffness of shoulders, to name a few. It is ironic that as we try to clean up the world we messed up, we still can’t get away from harming ourselves. Large wind turbines, often congregated in large wind farms, use the power of the wind to create energy. Wind turbines are capable of producing adequate amounts of power, but are constrained by geographic location and the inevitable need for wind. As a solution to these problems, many countries have begun creating off-shore wind farms. By placing large numbers of wind turbines on the ocean, many countries are able to conserve land as well as place their turbines in an area with a constant source of wind. This may be a viable alternative to land-based wind power farms that are affecting the health of near-by residents.

What needs to be done is more research on those that claiming adversary health effects from wind turbines. No formal research studies have been done on the effects of wind turbines on human health, though a causal relationship has been established by other wind farms besides those implicated in Japan.

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Remember the “Education President”? I bet you don’t. Well that was George W. Bush Jr.’s slogan and what a preposterous notion! However, thankfully, a new sherriff is in town and one that actually may be worthy of the title of Education President. According to an article in Inside Higher Eduction, President Obama is pushing the idea of a “National Skills College“, a program designed to provide access to educational courses free for community college students and high school students. $500 million a year is expected to be allotted to the program for the first 5 years in order to assist states, colleges and schools in becoming technology friendly with online books and classes.

The importance of education is stressed in countless books, articles and other forms of the mass media. Education is an especially hot topic in the United States because statistics indicate American students are falling far behind their foreign peers. However, a focus on education is not enough to ensure that American students perform well. A number of leading psychologists argue that how a person learns is just as important as the information presented in the lesson plan. The National Skills College idea runs very close to what conservative republicans scream as socialism. However, the whole idea of public education is socialist in nature and why not do it right for once. The internet provides the perfect vehicle for offering free education at an advanced level and a fraction of the cost.

Much attention is paid to the importance of education and the idea that our children are the future of this nation during political campaigns. However, the lack of government funding towards our schools paints a very different picture of how we value education in this country. As the debate over school voucher programs, No Child Left Behind, smaller classroom sizes etc. wages on, at the heart of these problems plaguing our public school system is inadequate funding. In order to address the problems that are created by the lack of funding, we must convert it from the abstract to the concrete form. In the following paper, I will address six features of inadequate school funding and discuss how they specifically effect instruction and learning in our educational system.

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* Football coach fired because he didn’t get the top recruits for two years in a row (Tyrone Willingham, coincidentally African American) and he failed to get his team to the “big money” bowl game two years in a row.
* Priest plagiarizes portion of book on the Pope! (Father Richard McBrien, accused twice of plagiarism…cleared by University once, caught with his pants down the second time!)
* Would anyone like to survey the football team and see how many of them are Catholic? (Sign me up and let me put a Vegas bet on it that it’s a little heavy on the Baptist side!)

You can see where I’m going with this. Notre Dame is abhorrent for making a fuss over the President’s policies on abortion and protesting his appearance when they are no more representative of a Religious Institution than the Knights of Columbus are at a Friday Night Fish Fry. According to Notre Dame History Professor Wilson Miscamble, C.S.C, the percent of Notre Dame staff that checks “yes” on survey as to whether they are Catholic or not is only 53%. What is going on inside the walls of Notre Dame, according to Miscamble, is nothing akin to the Catholic traditions that cosmetically denote the campus. Read more…

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Outside of plagiarism just being dead wrong, there are psychological issues involved with taking someone elses work. I’m always preaching anti-plagiarism and being careful about citing information. The resent accusations of plagiarism against Coldplay illustrate how delicate an issue plagiarism is for artists. Basically, Yusuf Islam, formerly Cat Stevens, is accusing Coldplay of stealing a guitar riff of his in the song Viva La Vida. Yusuf is a little sensative of this issue, as he has, in the past, accused several artists of plagiarism and sued one, The Flaming Lips. So Coldplay has a fight on their hands. Both sides are hurt and both sides think they are right. The only protection either side has is careful documentation of their own work, even as musicians.

Plagiarism is a serious offense and knowing how to avoid it is very important for college students. It follows you throughout your life, even if your rock stars. Lesson learned…document, document, document. Even if we are talking only 8 notes in a scale and only 7 different ones.

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TurnItIn.com is as common to college students blue books, pizza and cheap beer.  Write your term paper, submit it to TurnItIn.com and submit the paper and report to your professor. However, not all students want this process to be a part of the academic world. A group of high schools students have taken iParadigms, the owners of TurnItIn.com, to court for copyright infringement. The decision of the suite against TurnItIn.com was released this week, with the court voting that since no transformation of the work takes place, there is no violation of copyright.

This is an excellent victory for both students and colleges and universities. Services like TurnItIn.com assist in the fight against plagiarism and encouraging students to maintain academic integrity of their work. A recent study and subsequent authoring of a book about the study reveals that students care about plagiarism far more than colleges and university administrations give them credit for. Susan D. Blum reveals the results of a three year investigation into college culture and plagiarism in “My Word! Plagiarism and College Culture“. We will be reveiwing her book on this blog next week and I think most of you will be very surprised at what she finds. According to Blum’s findings, one can speculate that most students will applaud the court’s decision in favor of TurnItIn.com. If you have an opinion on the TurnItIn.com decision, we would love to hear it!

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According to the National Association of Independent Colleges and Universities, a recent trend in private universities is to offer a guarantee that if a student doesn’t graduate in 4 years, the 5th year is free! Pennsylvania’s Juniata College is one of several private schools to launch this program in hopes of attracting financially strapped parents. Since approximately only 1 in 3 college students actually graduate in 4 years, colleges like Juniata are hoping that parents will realize that two thirds of them will need to pay for an extra year they may not have budgeted for and be lured in by the 20% savings. Sound good parents? Well…wait just a minute…You have to have a bit of help from your college student… Read more…

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In a lame bit of reporting by the Chronicle of Higher Education, author Thomas Bartlett “reports” the “shocking” news of “essay mills” being a global phenomena. Even more astounding, Bartlett acts as if it is news that these companies plagiarize what they call “custom” term papers. Furthermore, he asserts that these companies are growing rapidly and “becoming” international. Bartlett’s reporting is lame due to the fact that these companies have always been owned by foreign corporations, never sold anything but plagiarism and, in fact, they are actually dying out rather rapidly. Learn more….

Paper Masters, as one of the only legitimate custom term paper companies on the Internet has tracked these foreign companies for many years. As a family owned business operating in the United States, Paper Masters has battled with these fraudulent foreign companies for many years, trying to differentiate our services from their out and out robbery of college students and plagiarism practices. Where has the Chronicle been when we were reporting on fraudulent term paper companies years ago!

I am curious why a publication of the Chronicle of Higher Education’s caliber would spend its energy on writing an article about a fraudulent company. If they were presenting a piece on the fraud that is prolific in these Essay Mills, than I could see why he would focus on the company Essay Writers. But to present a piece on cheating going global and essay mills multiplying when, in fact, they are diminishing rapidly and  have always been run outside of the United States, is just poor investigation.

Having monitored the industry for 12 years, and owning one of the only legitimate United States operated “essay mills” on the internet, the “essay mill” industry is actually becoming very small. There are only a few companies, yet to the uninformed eye, it appears like many. A few companies operate under many, many names. Note the case Axact v. Student Network Resources (http://www.chillingeffects.org/notice.cgi?sID=9146), which illustrates the true nature of these essay mills. These term paper mills are becoming extinct due to ubiquitous use of TurnItIn.com by professors. Students need customized term papers, not plagiarized essay mill products and they are no longer willing to be taken advantage of by foreign companies that never produce a product.

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Many graduate level students look towards Paper Masters in order to avoid these issues of plagiarism. In a recent discussion with one graduate student that was looking to order a research paper, the student stated that the sole purpose for searching out help and a model research paper was to have a sample of exactly how to cite properly.

Citation is confusing but as Thomas Holmes, director of the American Chemical Society (ACS) Exams Institute,  stated in regards to Bodner’s study: “I usually tell students if it’s more than four words you better be quoting them”. Great advice to live and trust your academic career on when writing a research paper at any level.

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