University cheats targeted

By Nick Collins

The new benchmark has been designed to combat the escalating problem of plagiarism at universities, and how it should be dealt with.

It sets out a range of options for penalising students for offences in different categories, enabling disciplinary staff to add up a score for the severity of the offence and select an appropriate punishment.

For example, the punishment for a first-time offender failing to attribute one sentence would range from a formal warning to the assignment being rejected.

At the other end of the scale, a final-year student with a past record of plagiarism who submits a dissertation from a ghostwriting service could be given a mark of zero, have their qualification downgraded or be expelled.

The tariff was designed by British academics after studies showed that universities are inconsistent in how they deal with cheating students.

The problem has been exacerbated by the rise in online businesses offering bespoke essays to help students fool examiners.

Peter Tennant, a research assistant at Newcastle University, and Gill Rowell, academic adviser at plagarismadvice.org, an organisation dedicated to researching the issue, will launch their detailed guidelines at an international plagiarism conference in Newcastle on Tuesday.

Mr Tennant told an education magazine: "What we're trying to do is provide a benchmark – we're not trying to be prescriptive. We do recognise the role of academic judgement." Telegraph