This annoyed me. I do wonder how you can possibly come up with a figure of 10% of all work being plagiarised if you then say that most of it is undetected. Of course, it’s just “estimated” – but on what basis, we aren’t told. What this means is – someone just made it up. Doubtless, though, since this is the BBC, the 10% figure will now get quoted as if it’s a verifiable fact.
Well, here are some facts: I have yet to meet a colleague in HE who doesn’t take the issue of plagiarism very seriously. I have never known of a colleague ignoring plagiarism. In every case of proven plagiarism I have come across, the student has been given an appropriate punishment, up to and including failure of the degree. Students are aware of plagiarism, and don’t just copy things from a screen, unless they are very stupid, or very desperate, or both- and when they do, they are usually found out.
We don’t ignore cheating by Dr Rob Spence is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 International License.