Consider the High Costs of Plagiarism

Idealists in academia consider higher learning the primary purpose of attending these institutions, but few of the enrolled students share that view. For many the diploma at the end of the road is the proverbial dangling carrot, the reward for years of drudgery and late nights of studying or partying. The degree is what matters, and it's just a stepping stone to that six-figure salary waiting at the end of the rainbow.

Part of the drudgery involves writing, a serious but undervalued requirement at every institution of higher learning. Thousands of essays are submitted to college instructors each week in colleges and universities across the country. It's a fair assumption that many of those works are plagiarized or purchased outright from one of the many college term paper Web sites.

The proliferation of these sites has made it far to easy to slip through the gates of higher learning into the great big world of the 9-5 grind or the upper echelons of corporate America. What that really means is that far too many of the executives and managers in American corporations got where they are by cheating their way through college. And why not? After all, money is power. If money is the one thing we value, what does it matter that we cut corners to get what's really important.

Rampant plagiarism in the US--and perhaps around the globe--is creating a society of corrupt, uncultured, uneducated buffoons. The film Wall Street gave us the truism of our times: "Greed is good." The corollary to that seems to be that if greed is good, then cheating must also be good, for cheating, after all, is a means to the end. Then end result is a de-education of Americans. Where once education itself was valued; it is now nothing more than an assembly line creating new generations of cheaters and liars.

Look in the mirror America, that's what you are.

Statistics will tell you that most college students cheat. Perhaps that's part of the problem. If everyone's doing it, it can't be that bad right? According to the Center for Academic Integrity, 80% of college students admit to having cheated at least once (plagiarism.org). That's a staggering number. Only 20% of the students graduating from our institutions of higher learning did it all on their own. Plainly put, that means that only 20% of the people functioning at all levels of our society actually earned the degrees that helped them become gamefully employed members of our workforce.

On the high school level, it's even worse. One survey found that 97% of high school students have at one time or another allowed someone else to copy their work (McClelland). That means that almost every student graduating from high school has cheated at some point. Only 3% walking away with a diploma actually earned it.

It may be encouraging that not all of those go on to cheat in college,