Proposal Revision: Plagiarism and Consumer Culture

Revision of original proposal

Original Proposal:

Writing Construct Research: Plagiarism

In the academic sphere, plagiarism is considered a violation against acceptable research and writing practices. It is commonly acknowledged that taking credit for other people’s work as your own is a form of intellectual theft and to that effect, institutions of higher learning have policies in place to penalize perpetrators of plagiarism—many go so far as expelling students for the infraction. However, each year and in each classroom, cases of student plagiarism take place leaving both the student and the teacher to make decision about responsibility and the process to which the situation will be resolved. Considering the situation of plagiarism, who ultimately bares the responsibility? How do we, as educators, effectively teach against plagiarism? This research aims to break down the relationship between writers, writing, and plagiarism as a construct.

Revised Proposal: 

Writing Construct Research: Plagiarism and the effects of the Academic Consumer Culture

Plagiarism, fraud, intellectual theft. The violation of one or more of these categories by students in academic settings comes with a range of punitive actions. Instructors may fail an assignment, request the assignment be re-done for full or partial credit, be expelled from the class, or even sent to a student judiciary hearing with the possibility of expulsion. What troubles me about this is not that students are being held accountable for plagiarism, they should be, but that institutions, who have a responsibility to be more than the figure head of a police state, seem to bear little culpability. I propose an emerging reason for plagiarism in the classroom comes from a shift in institutions' focus away from the classroom and needs of individual students, to the mass of academic consumers; the shift to higher education as a product--something to be bought, as opposed to spaces of imparting knowledge.

Proposal Reflection:

Although I like what is happening in the above proposals, I am frustrated by an apparent "missing link." Although I wanted to revise my proposal to directly implicate academic institutions and the consumerism of higher education as being part of the problem (which I did not address in my first proposal), it is not quite meshing together well, and I am specifically noting that. However, the introduction I wrote for my paper actually does the moves I want the proposal to do--so, to that end, I am also publishing my introduction along with this revision, because ultimately, I think it does a better job of saying what I want the proposal to say.

Introduction:

Although the Western consumer culture continues to embrace the concept of intellectual property and rights, and increasingly imposes punitive action against violators of intellectual theft; a continuation of plagiarism persists behind the once closed doors of academia. Study and research of plagiarism tends to favor the institution while condemning students of such actions. Exploring this research then, we see that there are significant gaps and an un-readiness to assign culpability to institutions or instructors. However, with the increasing push towards the democratization of education, the need to attend higher education longer, and for the attainment of additional degrees and certifications necessary for entry level employment, schools are flooded with a significantly growing population of students out of their depth and at a loss for how to succeed. In this essay I will argue an emergent trend in plagiarism is due to the consumer culture surrounding higher education and that the very institutions have a responsibility towards students that goes beyond effectively teaching ethical academic conduct.