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HEC's plagiarism policy
Sept 29: IT is to be hoped that the Higher Education Commission's policy on plagiarism will have a
chastening effect on those it is directed at - teachers, students and
researchers who have few qualms about presenting somebody else's work as their
own. Varying degrees of penalty, commensurate with the scale of the plagiarism
involved, have been prescribed. By having a different set of penalties for
students and teachers, the HEC has appropriately linked the scholarly status of
an individual to his/her level of awareness of plagiarism as intellectual theft.
However, what is open to question is the level of punishment - ranging from
major to minor - in the case of teachers and senior researchers. They should be
setting a positive example to their students by being above any kind of
intellectual dishonesty. Hence the penalty for teachers who plagiarise should
have been uniformly tough so that their pupils do not get the message that some
irregularities can be condoned. Admittedly, our teachers, for the most part, are
products of a corrupt education system where employing dubious means to achieve
success is not necessarily frowned upon. But this practice has to be checked
especially when the Internet provides unlimited access to published papers and
makes plagiarism such an effortless task.
Hopefully this policy will
bring about more academic uprightness in higher education institutes. The need
is also to address the problem in schools which, after all, lay the foundations
of all future academic habits. In our lopsided educational system the tendency
of policymakers is to focus on higher education while neglecting school
learning. However, all the effort that goes into improving the higher education
set-up will produce few dividends if similar attempts are not made to upgrade
primary schools. It is in the latter that young minds are moulded to
differentiate between right and wrong and to inculcate good study habits. If the
teaching is poor at this stage, then things can go wrong later on, especially
when students are completing degree programmes to enter the global job market
where competition is stiff. For reasons practical and ethical, then, it is
important that students are taught the right values from the very beginning and
are given clear guidelines on doing independent research. That is the only way
they will stay away from dishonest academic practices. Dawn
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| Education News | | Updated: 25 May, 2012 |
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