Trust but Verify
Just yesterday I posted a couple of links about the growing problem of plagiarism in our academic institutions. Professors now estimate that more than 50% of their students cheat. Now students are complaining when institutions use information systems to encourage academic integrity, according to today's Washington Post. The Post didn't have space to cover the legal and copyright issues that have already been settled, and didn't mention any of the institutions that use Turnitin, like Georgetown, Tulane, and the U.S. Military Academy at West Point. I imagine West Point doesn't want their honor code to become meaningless. Turnitin doesn't say a paper is "guilty or innocent" -- it just points out sections that are just like other works. Turnitin isn't the only company that provides this service -- iThenticate does it too, although iThenticate is geared more towards publishers and peer reviewers doing due diligence.
The New York Times did this story last year. The only real news in the Post's story is that almost 1200 students have signed a petition complaining about their "intellectual property rights". If they had a real case, they could sue.
Given that academics estimate that 60% of high school students plagiarize some of their work, what do you do about it? How do you protect your non-plagiarising students? Can you imagine going from a high school that doesn't use Turnitin to a university that does?