Blog 6, Chen, Zheng

Nowadays, the rampant plagiarism keeps growing in almost all universities. And cultures of both international and domestic students play an important in these cheating behavior. 

The growing number of plagiarism may be the result of the increasing number of international students and the relatively high academic misconduct committed by them.

Growing in different culture environment, especially in those don’t consider some plagiarism behavior as cheating or stealing, has a undeniable negative effect on international students. For example, some students from Asian countries, maybe China, were taught that lifting words directly form others’ works without citation is not plagiarism, instead, it is just the opposite, showing respect to the original authors. ‘All the articles are based on the ideas of others’. These students may have difficulty in adapting the western concepts of plagiarism. More over, the language barrier makes them shy or not know how to express their confusion of these academic policies. As a result, international students are more likely to commit academic misconduct. 

In order to restrict the rampant and increasing plagiarism, the school may take even more strict policing and punishment.

But, the more strict policing plagiarism may have a counterproductive effect. More strict policing could reduce the quality of the school. The more concern of the professors put on the detecting cheating means the less concern they put on teaching students the real beauty of academy. It would destroy class morale too. Being considered to be a possible academic misconduct suspect, Students suffer more stress and are less likely to put all attention on pursuing knowledge, but instead, care avoiding committing cheating and anti-detecting more. The the more strict policies’ effect on stopping plagiaris is not optimistic.

To my opinion, there is no panacea for the cheating among students but to teach them the real virtue and beauty of academic integrity.