The education system is currently being poisoned by plagiarism. The concept of a student taking credit for someone else's work is nothing new. The variable that changed is the amount of access the students have to other resources, making plagiarism easier and far less detectable. With a few clicks of a keyboard a student could have created an entire project, they may have just failed to mention that they did not actually create the project, but instead, copied and pasted it. The issue of plagiarism is not only affecting the universities, but also primary and secondary education. Now that the Internet is easy to access it does not take very much skills or knowledge to copy work and submit it as your own. It has been reported that 90% of students think that cheaters will never be caught (Synomizer.) The students feel that there is no consequence for their actions, thus they feel encouraged to plagiarize.
We cannot blame this mindset only on young students, many university students are at fault as well. According to eHow.com a study was done at the University of Florida. The study surveyed 16,000 students and from that large group 10,560 students admitted to plagiarizing at least once! That is 66% of the students surveyed that admitted to cheating. Even more shocking, out of the 10,560 students that have plagiarized, 1,280 of them confessed to cheating regularly. That means that 12% of the students in the overall study admit to cheating regularly! In my opinion these statistics are a cry out for help! The student are hurting their education experience, as well as the original source of the document. Although this survey was only conducted at one university, the large and diverse group of students studied provided an accurate representation for most American universities.
As we can see, many students admit to plagiarizing. What the majority of students do not understand is the severe consequences that will happen if the plagiarist is caught. The 66% of cheating college students most likely did not realize that they could be legally punished for their actions. According to eHow.com, depending on the severity of the case, the plagiarism can be considered a Misdemeanor. The misdemeanor would permanently be on your government records and could mess up your life plans. This can interfere with getting a job, a rental contract, even loans. Not only would your permanent record be stained, but you could also have to pay fines. These fines range from $100 to $50,000 and you could receive a sentencing of one year in jail. If the plagiarized material is sold or profit is made from it then the actions could be considered a Felony. This could result in fines up to $250,000, in addition to up to ten years in jail! If students knew the severity of the consequences then they might not be tempted to cheat. Currently 90% of them feel that they are invincible and will not get caught, but there is a harsh reality waiting for them if their actions do not change.
