Vice Rector fired for plagiarism

For the first time in the history of Macedonian higher education someone gets fired for plagiarism!
Scandal at the University for Information Science and Technology in Ohrid, Macedonia.
1. Article in the daily Focus newspaper
2. Report of the investigation by the university Senate

Can the problem of plagiarism in Macedonia be fixed with software?

Today (May 9, 2011)  Minister of education Nikola Todorov announced that the Ministry has commissioned new software to detect and fight plagiarism at Macedonian universities. I discussed the issue of plagiarism in Macedonia in another post. Here I would like to comment on the Minister's approach to the problem.

First, there has not been a public announcement or discussion about the nature of this software, such as who is developing it, what standards will be used, etc. As an aside, I am familiar with many information technology projects in Macedonia that received wide media coverage, and at the end they never saw the light of day, or the end result was totally useless. My personal opinion is that this new software will suffer the same fate, mainly as a result of the government's total ignorance of the root causes of the problem.

Here is how the Minister describes the project. The system will work with texts written in Macedonian, Albanian, English and other languages. So far so good. All scholarly works in the possession of the Ministry of Education will be archived in the system. The system will also include all student seminar papers, final graduation papers, masters theses, dissertations, textbooks, and all other scholarly research papers and projects. The system will become functional in six months! GOOD LUCK!

First, let me address the technological hurdle. I assume that whoever received the grant to design this system has convinced the Minister that they can duplicate Turnitin, the most well known plagiarism detection system. Is the Minister really so naive to believe that duplication of Turnititin is possible based on the available experience and resources in Macedonia? Here are some statistics from Turnitin:

• 150+ million archived student papers
• 90,000+ journals, periodicals & books
• 1+ million active instructors
• 14+ billion web pages crawled
• 10,000 educational institutions
• 20+ million licensed students
• 126 countries

All of this can be duplicated in just six months and at the cost of only twenty-thousand euros?

There are three forms of plagiarism prevalent in Macedonia: copying form previously published texts, paying someone to write the paper, and submitting an entire work (paper, thesis, dissertation, etc.) that has already been submitted by someone else. Although plagiarism of the second and third type is quite rare in most western country, it is quite prevalent in Macedonia. I think probably the Minister's aim was to fix the problem with the third type of plagiarism, which does nor require enormous technological knowhow. However, is the Minister really aware of what kind of resources are needed to archive ALL electronic media? Is he really not aware of the kind of resources available for such projects to Google and Turnitin? Twenty-thousand euros just ain't gonna do it!

Let's assume that the initial archive will consist only of texts in the possession of the Ministry of Education, and the archive will be continuously built up with new texts (seminar papers, scholarly papers, etc.). As far as I know, currently there is no legal basis in Macedonia to require authors to submit their works to this plagiarism detection system. Although this Minister would probably have no qualms about proposing such an amendment to the current law on higher education, even though such a law will most likely be in conflict with the law on copyrights. Let's suppose such a law is passed. Is the Minister not aware of the practical hurdles in archiving such documents?

The Ministry of Education probably has some good statistics on the number of theses, dissertations and scholarly papers published in Macedonia and has figured that it won't take much of an effort to archive them. But let's talk about student seminar and graduation papers. I don't know how many students are enrolled in universities in Macedonia, but 80,000 is probably a conservative figure. Let's say each semester about 20,000 are required to write a seminar or a graduation paper. 

1. How will the submission of their papers be handled practically?
2. Will each professor be legally required to require students to submit their paper?
3. Will there be a fine for professors who don't obey?
4. Will there be a fine for students who don't obey?
5. Who will be in charge of controlling students and professors to make sure they have obeyed, and what kind of resources are needed to do so? Will each faculty need to hire an individual responsible for controlling and maintaining the paper submission process?
6. Will there be seminars and workshops for students and professors where they can get instructions on how to submit papers?

As envisioned, this software will probably be quite capable of discovering exact, or almost exact copies of papers in its database. At my home institutions, as well as at other universities in the US plagiarism also includes:

1. Quoting another person's actual words, complete sentences or paragraphs, or an entire piece of written work without acknowledgment of the source; 
2. Using another person's ideas, opinions, or theory, even if it is completely paraphrased in one's own words without acknowledgment of the source;
3. Borrowing facts, statistics, or other illustrative materials that are not clearly common knowledge without acknowledgment of the source

More complete definition of plagiarism can be found on Wikipedia (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Plagiarism). I'm just not convinced that a twenty-thousand euro software can be capable of detecting all of these types of plagiarism.

Here are few more important questions.

1. What happens when an individual has submitted and is discovered that he has plagiarized a thesis or dissertation? Is he simply told to go back and write another one? And what if it is discovered that the second, and third, and fourth versions have been plagiarized as well?
2. What happens if it is discovered that a professor had plagiarized a paper, thesis or dissertation 5, 10, or 20 years earlier?
3. What happens to a student who has plagiarized a seminar paper? I noted in a previous post that I had the experience at a Macedonian faculty where ALL students in a seminar had plagiarized their seminar papers. Remember, according to the system of student assessment in Macedonian universities, students don't "fail" a course, they pass or fail exams, which they can retake as often as they please until they pass them. There is no legal procedure where a professor can say to a student, "Your paper is plagiarized, you fail the course, you must repeat the entire course." There is also no legal way for a faculty to punish repeat offenders by dis-enrolling them from the faculty for a period of time. So, students risk very little if they plagiarize, and at the end the risk is really worth it.

In his announcement Minister Todorov also says, "With the development of this software this decades long problem in higher education should stop." Minister Todorov and all educator in Macedonia should be aware that plagiarism is not a problem only in institutions of higher education in Macedonia, but for decades it has been part of Macedonian educational culture. It's prevalent from pre-school, first grade, and so on. If there is an easier way to write a paper, and if the person responsible for assigning and controlling the written project doesn't really care much, and if there are really no significant consequences, then why bother putting in the effort to write something original. My personal opinion is that all this is a result of the fact that generally speaking in Macedonian culture there is very little respect for knowledge and self-improvement. Parents, who should be most responsible for educating and enlightening their children, are also most responsible for promoting a culture of favoritism, cheating, and plagiarism.

My point above is to point to the fact that, contrary to the Minister's statement, plagiarism is not a problem only in institutions of higher education. The seeds of plagiarism are planted by the parents, and teachers in primary and secondary schools don't make much of an effort to weed out the problem. This is the reason why by the time a student enters the university the problem is really too large to handle with a 20,000 euro software. 

So, do you really want to fix the problem with plagiarism in higher education? 

1. Start fixing the problem with the parents.
2. Start fixing the problem from pre-school and first grade. Educate teachers on how to recognize plagiarism. Don't require individual teachers to be responsible for punishing offenders. That will most likely lead to bribery. Rather have each school organize a committee consisting of teachers, director, parents, etc., decide on the punishment. Make it clear at the beginning of every school year what the rules and consequences for cheating and plagiarism are and really stick by them.
3. Have the Minister assign someone at the Ministry of Education to gather documents form US universities on how they handle issues with plagiarism. You'd be surprised how well the rules work. I can tell you this from my own personal experience. I teach literature courses where students are required to write papers, and almost every semester I get one or two students who have plagiarized their papers. But after the plagiarism is discovered, and the student's parents (who are paying tens of thousands of dollars for their education) find out, and the student is forbidden to attend classes during the following semester, you can be certain that, that student will never plagiarize a paper again.

Plagiarism at universities can be rooted out within one year if professors and administrators really want to put in the effort. With the help of Google it takes me no more than five minutes to detect if a text has been plagiarized from some online resources, which is the most prevalent way that students plagiarize. Universities must have very strong and enforcible policies against plagiarism. Students should NEVER be given a second chance to write a paper in place of one that has been plagiarized. The minimum punishment should be repeating a course in which plagiarism has occurred. The next level should be dis-enrolling the student for one semester and for one year. The highest level of punishment should be dis-enrolling the student from the university forever. Plagiarizing a thesis or dissertation should require the highest level of punishment. The student should be dis-enrolled from the university forever, and the offence should be noted in the student's records. After one of these happens to one or two students, you can be sure that it won't take too long for others to realize that plagiarizing is just not worth the effort.

Finally, Minister Todorov should be commended for recognizing the problem and for trying to do something about it. I have yet to read any practical and successful solutions proposed by educators or by educational institutions. It is just unfortunate that the minister is attempting to solve this problem in a way that is certain to lead to failure. Rather than focusing all resources in detecting plagiarism, more effort should be put in making sure that it doesn't take place, or at least is reduced substantially.

Cheating and plagiarism at Macedonian universities

The first time I encountered mass cheating at a Macedonian university was in a course I taught on technical writing. Sometime in the third week of classes I decided to give a short quiz. There were about 35 students in the class in a room with about 45 seats. I was warned by colleagues that cheating in the Macedonian educational system from the first grade through the university is endemic, so I decided to give the students a long lecture on cheating and warned them that anyone caught cheating will fail the quiz. At that time the university had no general policy on punishment for cheating.

Cheating has become a culturally acceptable practice in Macedonian schools. If you walk into a very large university classroom with small number of students you will notice that all the students sit grouped tightly together. The purpose, of course, is so that they can help each other. There were several empty seats in my classroom, so I tried to encourage students to spread out a little bit. However, it was still not possible to leave an empty seat between students. As soon as the quiz was distributed students began to whisper with their neighbors. No matter how often I warned them, the whispering would not stop. Eventually I realized that I was going to have to invalidate the quiz, but I decided to let the students complete it anyway just so that I could continue observing how students go about cheating during exams. I noticed in the very first row one female student requesting help from her neighbor. I warned her twice to stop it, but to no avail. As soon as I would turn my head away from them, the cheating would continue. Finally, I decided to stand right in front of her and observe her from no more than two feet away. That did not seem to bother her at all, and she continued cheating through the remainder of the quiz. The practice of cheating was so widespread that I finally decided to reduce the number of quizzes during the semester, and I also requested a proctor to help me monitor the process.

In the same group of students I caught one student during a midterm exam using a cell phone to consult someone from outside of the class. When I reported the infraction to the administration I was informed that my only option was to simply give the student another chance.

Another flagrant instance of cheating took place in a class on English for information technology. There were only about ten students in a classroom with about forty seats, so it was much easier for me to monitor the class. After I collected the completed quizzes we decided to take a short 15-minute break. I went out to get a cup of coffee, and the students stayed in the classroom. As I was returning to the classroom I noticed one student standing by the door, and as soon as he noticed me he yelled something to the students inside the classroom. As I went to my desk I had noticed that during my absence the students had taken out the quizzes from my folder and tried to correct their mistakes. I was in such a shock, I was speechless, I couldn't find the words to express my anger. I dismissed the class and went to discuss the incident with one of my Macedonian colleagues. He was not surprised, but he gave me some advice on how to secure testing materials next time. I was quite surprised by my colleague's replies, because he didn't seem to think there was any need to deal with the students and their misbehavior.

Plagiarism at Macedonian universities is just as endemic as cheating. It takes place in undergraduate as well as in graduate courses. My first exposure to it was in 1997 when I was teaching in Macedonia as a Fulbright scholar. As we were discussing my teaching duties in the department my colleagues suggested that I teach a course on essay writing. Apparently, in final exams students had to write an essay, and that section of the exam had been most difficult for them. When I inquired why it was a problem, I was told that student had very little practice in writing essays. And the reason was because they were rarely assigned to write essays. And the reason why, it was because professors new quite well that most students would probably either plagiarize, or pay someone to write the essay for them. So, why would a professor want to spend hours reading, correcting and grading essays that were most likely not legitimate? Needless to say, the class did not go well for me. After we spent several classes discussing the art of essay writing, I assigned my first essay. Students were required to read the essay in class before they were to turn it in, and that's when it became obvious that most of the students did not author their essays. Some of them could not tell me the meaning of some of the words in the essays, others had not even bothered to read their essay before the class to at least be familiar with the content. My only other option was to require students to write their essays in class. This did not work either because students could not write more than about 3-4 sentences in one hour.

My other exposure to plagiarism took place in a graduate seminar on English literature. A final paper was the only requirement in the course. In discussing the length of the paper, I told them that I was not sure what the standard length of a final paper was at Macedonian universities, so they as a group suggested that 15-20 pages would be appropriate. Initially I was surprised by their suggestion because the paper was supposed to be a research paper, written in a foreign language, and it had to be completed in two weeks. I advised students to send me drafts before they turn in a final version, but none of them did. I received all papers by the deadline. The first thing I noticed was that all the papers were either single spaced, or one and a half space. I simply took it for granted that double spacing is a standard for student papers everywhere. This immediately made me suspicious, because I found it difficult to believe that students could complete long papers in such a short period of time. As soon as started reading each paper I noticed that there weren't any errors in English, which is difficult to believe knowing that the papers were written in a non-native language. A cursory search on Google revealed that every one of them had simply copied entire texts from the internet.

I sent everyone an email telling them that their papers were not acceptable because they had been plagiarized. Some of them refused to admit it until I showed them the locations from where they had copied. What was most surprising was that two of them got into an argument with me, trying to convince me that during their college education they had written many, many papers in the same way and they had never been accused of plagiarism. Apparently, this has become an acceptable practice. I doubt very much that many professors actually spend the time to guide and advise students during the writing process, nor do they bother to read carefully the papers that get turned in.

Writing a good, high quality research paper whether by undergraduate, or graduate students, or by scholars in Macedonia is a real daunting endeavor. University libraries simply don't have the literature necessary to conduct even elementary research. In recent years the internet has provided access to some resources, but students still lack the skills to use these resources in academic research.

Are there practical solutions to the problem of cheating and plagiarism at Macedonian universities? Of course there are, but only if educators start making an effort to eliminate them beginning with the first grade. My personal feeling is that at the moment primary and secondary school teachers, as well as professors at universities don't really want to be bothered with it. Although I'm sure there are policies against cheating and plagiarism at all levels, neither educators nor administrators make much of an effort to enforce them. I'm speaking here from my own personal experience having taught at three different universities in Macedonia over the past 15 years.

An American colleague who had taught at a university in Macedonia related a story to me how he tried to help a Macedonian professor get one of his books translated and published in the USA. The American professor found a US publisher willing to publish the translated text. Before the contract with the publisher was supposed to be signed, the Macedonian professor changed his mind without giving the American professor an explanation. The American professor later found out second hand that the reason the Macedonian professor had changed his mind was because apparently the book had been plagiarized, and he did not want that to become known.

An item in the daily Dnevnik confirms my observation on plagiarism by professors in Macedonia.
Професори крадат докторати (Professors steal dissertations).
Магистерски се купуваат за 20.000 денари