A tell-all blog post by a New York University professor claims that more than 20 business students at the elite private university plagiarized portions of the work they submitted for one of his classes. Criticism by students in their evaluation of the professor resulted in a financial penalty for him, he says.
Panagiotis Ipeirotis, a computer science professor at NYU’s Stern School of Business, discovered the plagiarism in his fall undergraduate class using Turnitin, a service that compares student writing against a huge database of published and unpublished sources. In all, 22 of the 108 students in the class admitted using their classmates’ answers, or unattributed internet sources such as journals, on assignments, he wrote. Most of the assignments included at least 20 percent plagiarized material, and in some cases far more. All received negative grades for the plagiarized assignments. Two of the students ultimately left the class.
One student emailed Ipeirotis a creative explanation involving a vacation, his best friend’s grandmother, and a huge miscommunication to clarify why his paper was 97 percent similar to a paper submitted for the same class in 2009. After learning that the paper had been processed by Turnitin, the student turned in a new assignment. The second paper was 57 percent copied from the 2009 assignment. After a three-hour discussion with Ipeirotis, the student did not return to class.
In a spreadsheet project–a modified version of one previously used in 2006–students turned in assignments that bore the names of their classmates, or the names of past Ph.D. students who prepared the solution key in 2006. As the result of that assignment, another repeat cheater did not return to class.
Ipeirotis was stunned at the extent of the cheating.
Read the full article: NYU Undergrads Accused of Plagiarism