What is it that convinces grad students to plagiarize the works of other students? Is it a sense of entitlement that comes from matriculating to the next level? Or perhaps it's simply the apathy that is inevitable for those few students after so many years pursuing higher education? Regardless of what the reason is, the practice of grad student plagiarism is offensive to those who did the real work to finish school and graduate and to writers in general who spend long hours creating and compiling reports, papers, and stories.
Grad student or not, no one has the right to copy someone else's work.
The apathetic attitude of the student is complicated by the lack of action on the part of professors and school administrations who know grad students are cheating.
It's an accepted practice.
Much like attendance as an undergrad is not treated the same way as attendance in high school, plagiarism by grad students is not viewed as serious an offense as when it is done by undergrads.
No wonder it continues to happen in our colleges and institutions.
There's no consequence if you get caught.
In fact, there's very little chance of you getting caught when you do it.
One of the main reasons for looking the other way is the difficulty in finding the original content that was plagiarized.
In Ivy League circles for instance, someone who writes a paper at Yale could sell it to a grad student at Harvard with very little chance of the original being seen by anyone at that other institution.
That territorialism and school pride that separates these two prestigious universities from each other allows students to pass their papers with no fear of reprisal of any kind.
Thankfully, that is all changing now.
The internet, a great medium for transferring information, is now also an institution's best defense against plagiarism.
When a paper is published online, it is available for all to see.
A student could copy and paste that paper, make a few quick edits, and turn it in with his or her name on it.
No one would be the wiser, right? How many professors are going to go through the trouble of checking to see if there's another version online somewhere? If you're a grad student and you're thinking like that, think again.
There are software programs available now that check for original content and matched content, by the paragraph and line in some cases, so you can't get away with copying even small portions of other student's work.
Universities have access to these software programs and they use them.
There have been instances of newspaper plagiarism and other media plagiarism for centuries now and they're not likely to stop, even with the software now available to check for them.
Grad student plagiarism and its equally damaging cousin scientific research plagiarism are far more disturbing.
The technology is available to put a halt to it, at least for papers that have been published online.
It's just a shame that we need to go that route to prevent our best and brightest from cheating to get a good grade.