Editor, Refer to the letter, “All varsities should acquire plagiarism detection software” (The New Times, June 5). The Ministry of Education needs to heed the calls to deal with such a scourge. Relying on the universities to eradicate this problem may not bring forth the required results as the main objective of many of them, which is to generate as much revenue as possible and not the quality of graduates they produce. This is how many universities have prospered. This reminds me of one lecturer who was employed by one of the universities and was given a class of 300 students. But to the lecturer’s surprise, only about 15 students could attend his lectures regularly. It was only when exams approached that the rest turned up for the exams. But as one could expect, only those who had attended passed and the rest failed. As the saying goes, “He who pays the piper calls the tune”, it was either the students or the lecturer to go. But the university could not afford to lose the amount of money paid by such a huge number of students; it’s that money that constitutes the life line of the university. The rest is history. With the universities unable to reign in such unserious and lazy students due to the financial interest involved, the Ministry of Education ought to urgently intervene, especially at this moment in time when we, as a country, are aspiring to become a knowledge-based economy not in the so distant future and bearing in mind that we are not generously endowed with natural resources like is the case with our neighbours who have the luxury of falling back on such resources. Abdou
