Editor,

Refer to the article, "Plagiarism in varsities: How big is the vice?” (The New Times, June 3). I have worked for eight years in a public university as a lecturer. My experience is that plagiarism is a system wide failure; it only cheats the future of the country, by having universities produce substandard research, half baked graduates, demoralised academic staff...

Plagiarism is a systemic failure in the following ways:

1. Top leadership of universities (public especially) fear the power of disgruntled students (genuine or not) and hence tend to give them leeway on this.

2. Discipline policies are poorly affected again for fear of the political clout that students may have. This was especially when many soldiers were students.

3. Because of student clout in the university, the academic staff, for fear of being victimised by top leadership, turns a blind eye to massive plagiarism. I have three personal experiences on this. I was always known for my strict stance on students’ research projects in fourth year.

My solutions:

1. Solve the systematic issue, empower university management to make independent decisions and push for independent disciplinary policies.

2. Empower academic staff, for example, through a national academic staff association.

3. The Ministry of Education should intervene and take a tough stand against this evil practice.In the end, plagiarism simply robs our beloved country its future by producing half baked graduates.

Kigali Girl

**************************

My thanks to "Kigali Girl” for her openness.

As Dean of the School of Social, Political and Administrative Sciences at the University of Rwanda (UR) - Huye Campus, I am totally opposed to plagiarism and all forms of cheating.

Our strict invigilation practice and "no tolerance for cheating” policy has reduced exam cheating to zero cases in the last three semesters, but students here and all round the world are clever, and try new things from time to time: this semester I started confiscating any visible telephone (students have to write me an explanatory letter to get it back) as word circulated that students were viewing notes on their phones, even those that appeared to be off. Cheating issues are taken very seriously at UR.

Regarding research projects, plagiarism is a much bigger problem, which has yet to be dealt with effectively at the institutional level. The rules at UR are clear enough, but enforcement has not been thought through: what is needed is the software for plagiarism checking. Turnitin (visit http://turnitin.com/ for more) is currently considered the best).

I understand that the University of Rwanda is in the interminable process of procurement of a site license for Turnitin—why it takes a year to procure a software license which can be purchased online in five minutes, is beyond me — which will dramatically change the cost/benefit calculation to students of plagiarism: at the click of a mouse we will know the amount of plagiarized material in their research project.

While this will not stop those who hire someone to write their thesis, the dangers of this practice will become apparent as students are caught for plagiarism committed by the person they hired to do their writing. It is my hope and intention to ensure that plagiarism becomes a thing of the past within a very short time at my school.

The issue of group work is more complex. The university actually encourages group work, as it enhances the cooperative, interactive teamwork that is a characteristic of many projects and large tasks in the real work-a-day world.

Team work is not cheating, but it presents a problem of freeloading that can encourage academic laziness if not managed strategically. Group sizes and outcomes must reflect the goals of enhancing teamwork as well as ensuring academic excellence in all aspects of the university educational process.

Dr. Simeon Wiehler