Oct. 10 (Bloomberg) -- Georgetown University administrator Sonia Jacobson saw a rainbow of trouble after an undergraduate American history paper was run through software that detects plagiarism.

Each of the nine colors in the resulting printout highlighted a separate plagiarized source. More than 70 percent of the ``Struggle for Civil Rights'' paper wasn't original, with most of it copied verbatim from online sources, says Jacobson, executive director of the school's Undergraduate Honor Council.

Plagiarism on U.S. college campuses is on the rise. Of 51,611 undergraduates surveyed in a 2005 study by Duke University's Center for Academic Integrity, 37 percent admitted copying Internet material without attribution, compared with 10 percent in 1999.

Yet less than 20 percent of Georgetown's faculty members use the plagiarism detection software, Turnitin.com, that's made available to them and that flagged the history paper. About half of the 4,140 colleges and universities in the U.S. -- including the entire Ivy League -- don't use commercial programs, according to the software makers.

``I thought our first clients would be Harvard, Princeton, Yale,'' says John Barrie, president of Oakland, California-based iParadigms LLC, the maker of Turnitin. ``I now think our last clients will be Harvard, Princeton and Yale. They have the most to lose.''

Ivy League

Officials at Harvard College, Yale College and Princeton University say using software would undermine the trust between teachers and students. Of the three, only Princeton has an honor code for students.

``This is not a campus characterized by any kind of cheating culture or a culture where students are attempting to cut corners,'' says Peter Salovey, dean of Yale College, the undergraduate division of Yale University. ``I would rather create a culture of integrity and honesty and expect the best.''

Yale, in New Haven, Connecticut, occasionally catches a plagiarist. Salovey, 48, says he believes the offense hasn't become more prevalent during his 25 years on campus. Rather, the medium has changed: ``from library-based plagiarism to Web-based plagiarism,'' he says.

Harvard College Assistant Dean John Ellison says a campus culture where academic integrity is a pillar makes the software unnecessary. The undergraduate college in Cambridge, Massachusetts, also has concerns about privacy and retaining students' intellectual rights, he says. Papers submitted to some plagiarism-detection Web sites become part of those sites' database for checking future submissions.

``We do not think giving another company rights to hold student work is necessarily a good thing,'' Ellison says.

Instructors can use detection tools if they want to, he says.

Faculty Reluctance

Other higher education officials say faculty members resist using the software because they are wary of the technology, believe that few students plagiarize or don't want to be policing the classroom.

In the study by Duke, based in Durham, North Carolina, 82 percent of nearly 10,000 faculty members surveyed said they believed students had plagiarized material in completing assignments for them.

Yet 44 percent said they hadn't reported a student suspected of plagiarizing to campus authorities.

``Unfortunately, inaction in the face of cheating leads to even higher levels of cheating,'' says Donald McCabe, the study's lead researcher and professor of management and global business at Rutgers University in New Brunswick, New Jersey.

Tenure Pressure

Martin Snyder, former president of Molloy College in Rockville Centre, New York, and director of external relations for the Washington-based American Association of University Professors, says some faculty don't confront plagiarists because student evaluations have become more important as teachers seek tenure.

``They feel some considerable reluctance to stand up for what they believe in because they fear they're going to be punished for it, not rewarded for it,'' Snyder says.

Turnitin is used at nearly 6,000 institutions in 90 countries, says Barrie, whose company is privately held. The U.S. clients include 1,820 colleges and universities -- or 44 percent of all such schools.

Turnitin receives digital copies of up to 60,000 papers a day. The software scans each one against a daily download of 60 million Internet pages, 22 million other student works in its database and 10,000 periodicals, Barrie says.

Licensing Fees

A school licensing the software pays an annual fee of about 80 cents a student based on its enrollment. Georgetown, in Washington, pays about $10,000 a year.

Privately held Sciworth Inc. of Toronto introduced the SafeAssignment detection program in 2004. At least 60 colleges and universities have a license to use it, says Max Lytvyn, business development and marketing director. The company charges a school about 60 cents per student, and a faculty member can buy a license for $89.95.

Barrie, 38, started iParadigms in 1996 after creating Turnitin's precursor at the University of California at Berkeley. About 30 percent of the papers reviewed contain at least 25 percent plagiarized material, he says.

Barrie says Ivy League schools don't use detection software because they want to protect their reputations.

``There is no reason to think the students at Harvard constitute some bastion of ethics,'' he says.

In April, Harvard sophomore Kaavya Viswanathan was accused of plagiarizing parts of her novel, ``How Opal Mehta Got Kissed, Got Wild and Got a Life.'' The book was pulled from shelves and her contract for a follow-up was canceled. Harvard spokesman Robert Mitchell said then that the school's plagiarism policy applied only to course work.

Honor Code

Harvard and Yale educate students about plagiarism through handbooks and faculty instruction, and Yale hosts an Academic Integrity Awareness Week in October.

Princeton says using detection software would undermine campus cohesion and pride, especially when its honor code relies on student support and enforcement. ``The code creates a climate of ethical integrity,'' spokeswoman Cass Cliatt says.

``Here, cheating and plagiarizing are really something to be ashamed of,'' she says. ``Students here also take pride in their intellectual prowess and have faith in their own abilities.''

Exams aren't monitored by proctors, and students sign a statement on booklets that says: ``I pledge my honor that I have not violated the honor code during this examination.''

Classroom Commitment

Princeton students say they take that code seriously and would be offended by the use of outside methods to patrol honesty. Violators can be suspended for up to three years, and repeat offenders face expulsion, the Princeton, New Jersey, school says.

``Once you get to a place like Princeton, you are expected to be following the rules,'' says Jim Williamson, 22, senior class president and chairman of the Honor Committee that adjudicates code violations. ``The honor pledge is the only proctor needed. A software program cheapens the commitment that each side, student and professor, has to the other.''

Still, the computer science department compares projects to ensure that students haven't copied software code. And the molecular biology department requires electronic copies of research so professors can compare questionable sections with other papers or scholarly works, Cliatt says.

West Point

One Turnitin client, the U.S. Military Academy in West Point, New York, changed its usage policy after cadets objected. The academy used Turnitin in the 2001-2002 school year for an international relations course required of all 1,100 junior cadets.

However, students expressed opposition in anonymous class surveys and with professors, so the academy made the program voluntary, says Col. Michael J. Meese, head of the Department of Social Sciences.

``Limited findings of plagiarism did not outweigh the cost in terms of cadet perceptions that we did not trust them,'' Meese says. ``Students colloquially referred to it as `Turn-me- in-dot-com.'''

Cadets caught plagiarizing face expulsion for violating the academy's honor code, which says: ``A cadet will not lie, cheat or steal or tolerate those who do.'' Only the academy superintendent can reduce a recommendation for expulsion.

Google Option

At Baruch College at the City University of New York, only about 75 of 400 faculty members use Turnitin, says Gerard Dalgish, acting director of the writing program.

Some teachers don't receive papers in electronic form -- a requirement for using a detection program -- while others prefer checking questionable sections on an Internet search engine like Google, he says.

Dalgish used Turnitin to catch two plagiarists in a linguistics course in 2005. He failed them and reported them to the dean of students.

James Riley, associate professor of soil, water and environmental science at the University of Arizona in Tucson, says Turnitin is used in a Natural Science 101 course for about 200 students.

``What we tell students is: `We're not trying to catch you plagiarizing. We are telling you that we want to level the playing field,''' Riley says.

Plagiarism Education

About 10 percent of the papers are suspected of containing plagiarized material, Riley says. One or two examples a semester are egregious enough to warrant submission to the dean of students for disciplinary action.

``Many of our students truly don't know what plagiarism is,'' Riley says. ``So we use this as an educational opportunity, first and foremost.''

Syracuse University in Syracuse, New York, will try detection software next year. Even so, professor Rebecca Moore Howard says she won't use it in her ``Authors, Writers and Heroes'' course.

Howard, who researches teaching techniques to combat plagiarism, says the programs create a false sense of security for instructors.

``They deter faculty from thinking closely about how they're teaching and how they can best engage their students in the work of a course,'' Howard says. ``Instead, they set evaluation of student papers up as a policing action.''

Students should be required to submit progress reports on long research papers so they can tackle the paper in chunks, making them less likely to plagiarize, she says. Also, research topics should require more student interpretation, she says.

Level Field

Georgetown's Jacobson, 52, has developed marketing materials and holds seminars to encourage faculty to use the software.

The student who submitted the civil rights paper first denied plagiarizing it but then admitted guilt during a hearing. Georgetown imposed a one-semester suspension, and the student now is back on campus.

``The goal is to make the judgment of academic work fair for all students,'' Jacobson says. ``We know plagiarism is out there and we take it very seriously. The software, I truly believe, is a deterrent.''

To contact the reporter on this story: Emily Sachar in New York at esachar@bloomberg.net

To contact the editor responsible for this story: Josh Mills in New York at jmills16@bloomberg.net

Last Updated: October 10, 2006 09:13 EDT

Related Videos