Heath Gibson invites my comments on this interesting post about an epidemic of plagiarism among Australian university students, and of course I’m happy to oblige. It turns out that ‘plagiarism’ includes such offences as “Cited a journal article when only the abstract was consulted” As Heath says, ‘So on this definition I’m amazed that result wasn’t 100%!’
This reminds me of the claim by Jamie Kellner, Chairman and CEO of AOL/Time Warner’s Turner Broadcasting division that you are committing a breach of contract if you watch TV and leave the room during the ad break (when pressed, Kellner said you could visit the bathroom, but only if you really had to go).
More importantly, it’s bizarre that Australian universities still propound this kind of 19th century notion of honour (important note: I’m using “19th century” as a compliment here) when their managers, with a few exceptions, have abandoned all academic values in favour of market-driven competition. The vice-chancellor now driving public policy, Alan Gilbert of Melbourne, is on record as saying that 19th century texts like Newman’s Idea of a University are totally inappropriate in the modern competitive world. As Heath Gibson points out, in the world outside the university, newspapers and others recycle and plagiarise to their heart’s content, limited only by the possibility that large-scale theft will lead to action under the law of copyright. University managers have done their best to suppress the assumptions of free exchange of information in which notions like ‘plagiarism’ make sense. In the brave new world of ‘intellectual property’, you nail down what you can of your own ideas and appropriate anything from the common pool that hasn’t already been grabbed. The former vice-chancellor of Monash seemed entirely suited to the new world, and it was hypocritical to sack him.