To report this girl to her university?

[no1understands]

I am a private tutor, working with A level and degree students. This academic year, I have had enquiry after enquiry from university students asking me to do their coursework for them. I always say no, I'll help, point you in the right direction, do an assignment outline but I will not do the assignment for them. They show no interest! I feel like saying 'so, you are telling me you aren't prepared to put in ANY effort whatsoever to get your degree?' One girl said she has got someone to do her coursework for 2 years but now he can't do it, she's looking for someone else. She told me what uni it was and I've had others from there asking the same thing. I feel like ringing the university and telling them what's happening. I need more students to make my business viable. I feel like just doing the coursework for a wad of cash but when it comes down to it, I can't because I'm so angry with them! I feel like I should do something!

Well, it's not my lookout, Minus, but it happens and it will continue. Meh. It went on round me whilst I worked hard, but I never saw the point in grassing. It was enough for me to never have to look over my shoulder. That one time I was called in was enough to break me out in a cold sweat, but I wasn't paying close enough attention to my verb tenses or sentence structure in that essay and it was enough for her to pick up on the change in style. I tell people this, to make them aware that academics are not fools :o.

I know, penthe, I wasn't be entirely serious. Though I am working out how to acknowledge bits of MN without making myself look like crazy MNer lady.

Seriously though, I would bet this girl's tutors are just itching to get something like this as hard evidence ...

I second other posters that said do the work and then shop her. Keep a record of her emails and your copy of the report and then phone the Uni after she's handed it in

But it is plagiarism in the normal sense... Just because most people don't understand what plagiarism actually is, doesn't suddenly change it's definition.

As defined by the Oxford English Dictionary-
Plagiarism: (noun) the practice of taking someone else?s work or ideas and passing them off as one?s own

dontrun - I have only done a very little teaching, but it also seems to me it'd always be easy for a student simply to claim that he or she is naturally someone with an uneven balance of aptitude for coursework and exam work.

YANBU at all! Report this lazy, dishonest behaviour.

Agree dontrun. We have had a small, but not insignificant, problem in the past with students submitting work which they had borrowed/stolen from other students in previous years. Very difficult to detect if the lecturing team on a course is different from the previous year, and completely evades plagiarism software. We're discussing implementing rules in our department which means all assignments have to be submitted via Turnitin so that - as the archive of submitted work builds up - that kind of deception will become impossible (Turnitin also cross-references submitted work).

One year, a colleague showed me an essay that was ringing alarm bells but was not obviously plagiarised. I instantly recognised it as - word for word/in its entirety - an essay submitted 2 years previously (I had discussed the work with the first student, so it stuck in my mind). Regrettably, as we were not able to access the original essay (collected by the student and prior to Turnitin/online submission procedures), the student got away with it as we were unable to prove what had happened.

penthe that is bloody brilliant

I think most universities these days use Turn It In or such, so it would probably work

As a general rule, I think if something is serious enough to be expelled over, it should probably be reported.

Thisisanickname, that definition implies the work was taken without consent of the creator. Would it be plagairism if the creator were paid for producing it and therefore hands it over willingly? :o

I'm more gobsmacked that someone who's managed to get university needs private tuition. I kind of get GCSE tuition, but after that you choose to stay on. If you're not bright enough to cope with a degree course by yourself, why do it?

TBH I think that universities should name and shame those that they catch cheating - make sure that all students are aware of the consequences of being lazy.

Good God Penthesilia - the front of some people. I would be destroyed if caught doing something like that - which is one reason why I never could! I presume this student just carried on and got their degree?

dontrun Of course it's plagiarism. I'm actually slightly shocked that you work in academia and don't recognise that.

Please, please report this lazy, arrogant, cynical person. She is devaluing everyone else's degree by doing this.

Sansa yes it would be. The student is putting their name to something they haven't written and signed a form saying that it is their work when it's not.

The worst case I ever heard was when two academics from the department where I worked went to a conference in Europe. Some of the material in one of the papers looked familiar to both of them. There wasn't time to explore this at the conference, but it niggled them. They finally discovered the dissertation it had been lifted from on a trip back to their native country, where the university was. Busted!

That particular academic also knew of a professor caught out using a ghostwriter, without acknowledging he had done so, of course.

astro - I think sometimes tuition to sort out a particular deficit makes sense (eg. if you missed out on a particular bit of your education or you're really struggling with one aspect - I'm meant to get SPAG tuition for my PhD but can't be arsed). But what happened with one of the students my friend taught recently, who was done for plagiarism, was not that she couldn't cope - actually she would have been fine had she bothered to do the work, she was plenty bright enough. We never worked out if it was that she was too busy with other things or if she just didn't know she was actually good enough. Sad, though.

Yes report her and the others. Infact get her name and the course she is on aswell. I worked bloody hard to get my degree spending weeks and weeks researching and writing up coursework. Staying up until 5-6am every night striving to get the work done on time. To think there were people getting their work done by someone else whilst I was slaving away is disgusting.

Report her.

Yup, 2Boys. It was dreadful. But we couldn't even say anything to the student, as without proof, we would be in the wrong. All this took place between colleagues during the marking process. So the student got away with it completely.

What's worse, it was first class work. Truly shocking.

Thankfully, now we use online submission procedures, this problem seems to have subsided as students rightly don't want to risk the possibility that we can pull old essays off the system and cross-reference them.

I was playing semantic devil's advocate, dreaming .

I would do it and take the money BUT I would have one sentence that I put in her work. Then when she asked me again I would some how manage to put in the same sentance again and I would keep doing it may be rephrase it a bit . Then near the end of term I would then report her . If she leaves the course now no new person can take her place . Also there would be proof . lol

Were you not able to do a viva? Or does that also require more proof?

It is crap, I can just imagine how furious you must have been!

Ah, sorry Sansa

Report it. She doesn't necessarily have a lot of exams: it is possible to choose modules that are 100% coursework. I'm sure she will have some compulsory exams but not as many as one might expect. There is something similar going on in my class (lecturers assigning group coursework with group marks and freely admitting it is to 'bump up' those who can't cope) which makes me furious. OTOH I am very very grateful that all of my modules also include exams and the exams are worth more than the coursework - it will have an effect, but not so great as a 100% coursework module.

dreaming - I didn't say it wasn't plagiarism. I said it wasn't plagiarism in the traditional sense that someone lifts work from a book and doesn't acknowledge it. My point was that type of plagiarism is very easy to prove, providing you can locate said book/source. In this case, because the work is 'bespoke', proving that it's plagiarism is next to impossible.