University Students and Plagiarism

“Should University Students Be Punished for Copying Essays or Articles off the Internet?”

Many college students today are trying to earn two or more degrees from different Universities or Institutes or find jobs simultaneously. This results in a busy schedule and hard-pressed time management. So, they find it hard to complete the tasks assigned by their instructors due to their huge burdens; therefore, some of them try to find an easier way to complete those tasks by copying or plagiarizing the source off the Internet. This may help them complete the tasks faster and easier with good score; however, copying or plagiarism is not forgivable for many reasons.

First, copying sources off the Internet is totally against the academic disciplines and quality expectation. Students are expected to try their best to earn the degree with their own ability. If students plagiarize, they do not use their brain much. What they need to do is just to browse for the answer and copy and paste. By doing this, they cannot improve their critical thinking skill, making them become a slow thinker and it also leads to a disastrous final result. If they pass their final, it’s just their luck, not their own ability. This low quality degree can result in low quality and embarrassment in their future work. As I remember, there was an IT staff who got his degree from a university, and was hired by an organization. What an embarrassing experience! That staff did not know even how to switch off the network server after work. He just pressed the on/off button directly without any commands, making the entire network get stuck the next day.
Second, copying the essays, articles or other sources from the Internet is unethically unacceptable. Not all the sources on the Internet are for public distribution. They are copyrighted. If students copy those sources as their work, it will break the morality since those sources are read-only. Moreover, because of the desire of best grade in class or pressure of the family demanding certain grade, some students are pushed to plagiarize. This can make their companions and family feel frustrated because they think that they are cheated.

It is true that university students have a busy schedule due to finding their financial support and study, and they need to find an easy way to complete their tasks, but they must be responsible for the quality of their grade and their future career. If they still copy or plagiarize, they will not get good job in the future since they will possess low quality. Most companies now are trying to improve the productivities of their staff as well as the quality of their products and services; therefore, they need to test to find higher quality candidates for the sake of their companies. So students with low quality degree will meet a lot of challenges.

For the sake of students as well as the fame of the universities or institutes, copying or plagiarism must be prohibited and punished. The schools must persuade students to think of the results that plagiarism can cause, and give clear reasons to students why plagiarism is punished. If those who plagiarize are always forgiven, there will be a lot of plagiarism, making the disciplines of those education centers become anarchy, and this will lead to low quality education. Human resource is the main source of country development, if the universities and institutes produce low quality degree human resource, the country will find it hard to survive.