In a person does own his/her original words or ideas and have privileges pertaining to those words or ideas as they are regarded as the person’s intellectual property. The Copyright act (1999) seeks to protect the author and any infringement on the author’s rights is punishable by fine or even imprisonment. This law however, is not strictly enforced as evidenced by the high level of piracy in the country.
Within the Academic Community, rate of academic dishonesty is quite high. Adeoye, Olusakin and Ogunleye (2008) stated that “Academic dishonesty, a continual dilemma on university campuses, has reached epidemic proportions in institutions”. Little or no emphasis is laid on citation and referencing and plagiarism. The concept of citation and referencing is hardly taught or enforced within the student community. A student could copy a paragraph from a book and move on to the next word without an issue or even quote definition after definition verbatim without providing any references. It is common knowledge that it is wrong to present someone else’s work as your own but this still happens in many cases.
Overall, in the context, you can indeed own your words or ideas and have rights to them. However, a lot of violations of these rights occur even within the academic community and these flagrant displays of academic dishonesty is made even more rampant by the high level of corruption in the entire system.
Impact of Globalization
Internet world statistics (n,d.) show that as at December 2009, about 16.1% make use of the internet. The percentage of people who make use of it for academic purpose is even lower (being a subset of the internet users). This figure is relatively low compared with many other countries but as low as it is, the impact is already being felt in the education sector.
The use of internet has provided easy access to wide range of information and research works of other people. This is a very good development as it provides avenue to learn and share knowledge but at the same time, this has the potential to make a bad situation worse as it is in the case because plagiarism and other forms of academic dishonesty is even made easier. “An example is a case where students offering a particular course from were given an assignment and 50% of them submitted work copied from the internet as their own.” (Adeoye, Olusakin and Ogunleye, 2008).
You May Also Find These Documents Helpful
-
A third reason, and the most challenging would be that of gaining international cooperation. This largely would be in part to the economic status of countries and their ability or willingness to participate and cooperate with a…
- 1878 Words
- 8 Pages
Good Essays -
These examples highlight how plagiarism, and in certain cases fraud, comes about and contributes to unacceptable and improper academic work that has misguidedly been passed off as the student’s own.…
- 939 Words
- 4 Pages
Good Essays -
The Rutgers University Academic Integrity Policy provides a set of comprehensive guidelines on the proper use of intellectual property in students’ academic work. It also provides for the adjudication of policy infringements and associated academic consequences for nonadherence. Additionally, ethics and integrity are stressed in the policy as faculty and students are encouraged to “foster a strong institutional culture of academic integrity.” To find out if and why students are behaving in accordance with the academic integrity policy, a survey was administered. The data gathered from the survey indicated that students’ reasons for following the policy depended on their morals. Rutgers university…
- 502 Words
- 3 Pages
Good Essays -
Academic integrity is the individual’s responsibility and personal choice, the educational institute can police, however, its up to each student to be honest with themselves and with each other, with everything they do in life. The student needs to commit to honesty, trust, fairness, respect, and responsibility during their academic and professional careers. When the student commits to these fundamentals and puts forth the necessary effort, they will be rewarded with a higher level of understanding and competency that will benefit them thru life. Trust in Academics is integral to the character building of each student. The pressures students experience are no different from those they may experience on the job.…
- 1082 Words
- 5 Pages
Good Essays -
Personally, I believe academic integrity to be an individual’s duty to maintain complete honesty in a scholarly setting; it is comprehending the importance of submitting one’s own creations. From an educator’s point of view, it signifies insuring that all students submit original content and are taught how to do so correctly. While researching the meaning of academic integrity, I realized that I have the right ideas as to what scholastic morality signifies. Academic integrity is sincere scholarship in which students are expected to give credit to others when utilizing their work to draw ideas from (“What is…”).…
- 725 Words
- 3 Pages
Good Essays -
Academic Integrity is an impressive-sounding word. The word can refer to a broad spectrum of actions, most of the time we use it to mean “don’t plagiarize,” or don’t pass off other’s ideas and information as your own. In those words, acknowledge the specific information that you get from sources, whether those sources are online or printed articles or books, interviews, online discussions, information from your sources’ ideas and information at all times. Academic integrity involves not only acknowledging your sources, but also creating your own ideas. Webster's dictionary defines integrity as "uncompromising adherence (meaning that one would always choose the “right” path, regardless of what seems to be more appealing) to a code of moral,…
- 389 Words
- 2 Pages
Satisfactory Essays -
What academic integrity means to me? Academic integrity means is to set principles and values. What it means to me is that I want to work harder in school, pay attention in all classes, and always do my homework in the library or at home even with my group friends. Integrity is all about honesty and hard work, also not get into bad behavior. I learned one thing in sociology, is the way of seeing and not seeing or you can say “perspectives”…
- 84 Words
- 1 Page
Satisfactory Essays -
The paper responds to this proposition with a thesis that understanding the ethical reasoning provided by students in defending plagiarism is crucial in preventing it in student populations. The reasons can provide the basis for specific action-orientated recommendations to reduce plagiarism and to design programs to encourage originality and academic honesty within the relevant educational institutions. Moreover, the authors explain that this study has broader implications, given the link between educational plagiarism and the organisation and profitability of businesses.…
- 1295 Words
- 5 Pages
Better Essays -
The importance of writing, both academically and professionally is to be able to communicate your thoughts properly to everyone whom you communicate with. I believe being able to write academically give you the foundation in which you are going to use when you write professionally. When you write professionally its important to be able to communicate to co-workers as well as potential clients. I feel they are both important in the sense they help you communicate to your peers, colleagues and everyone else in an effective manner through email, letters and corporate memos.…
- 328 Words
- 2 Pages
Satisfactory Essays -
Academic dishonesty such as plagiarism has been a major factor in education that has affected students’ success and academic achievements in recent years. Plagiarism according to Park (2003) is the act of appropriating or copying another person’s work and passing them on as one’s idea without acknowledging the original source. Park (2003) noted that plagiarism is a growing problem and has been a misuse of the writings of another author, their ideas, hypothesis, theories, research findings and interpretations. Furthermore studies by Chao, Wilhelm and Neureuther (2009) emphasised that the rising trend of plagiarism among students can be attributed to several factors such as academic literacy, language competence and the technological advancements in the world today in terms of high speed internet facility available in hostels and computer labs. These factors according to Chao, Wilhelm and Neureuther (2009) has enhanced the ability of students to plagiarise a whole assignment by obtaining papers on the internet relating to their assignments which is as easy as copying and pasting.…
- 1092 Words
- 5 Pages
Good Essays -
In the articles “Academic Integrity and Student Plagiarism :a Question of Education, Not Ethics” by Susan D. Blum, and the article “Studies find More Students Cheating, With High Achievers No Exception” by Richard Perez-Pena both talk about cheating and academic dishonesty. This topic is worthy of discussion because it will teach students and professors about cheating and why it happens and how to stop cheating. Perez-Pena and Blum both have similar ideas but they also have a lot of different ideas.…
- 711 Words
- 3 Pages
Good Essays -
The topic of academic integrity and how it applies to the real world got me to think how innocently breaks can occur in integrity. There can be some blurring of the line between right and wrong. Not all breaks in integrity are obvious and this is a topic that everyone needs to evaluate critically from time to time. The three that I will expand on are bribery, misrepresentation, and facilitating academic dishonesty. We can mostly all agree that failing to follow these guidelines is wrong but sometimes wrong doing can occur almost obliviously.…
- 695 Words
- 3 Pages
Good Essays -
The presentation regarding Academic integrity at Rutgers was very informative. I learned about things that I did not know before, but also acquired more knowledge and information on things that I already knew. For example, I already knew, from high school, what plagiarism was and some of the consequences it could cause. However, in my high school they did not really enforce it or pay much attention to it, but the consequences it can cause in college caught me by surprise. In addition to plagiarism, I also learned about the different types of things that can breach academic integrity, such as changing grades, selling/buying all papers, and turning in old homework again.…
- 248 Words
- 1 Page
Satisfactory Essays -
Universities generally incorporate a component on plagiarism in the policy and procedures they use to assess students. It is indicated that they regarded plagiarism as an ethical issue since it allowed students to obtain marks for work that was not their own and this was unfair to other students. However, they felt that it was difficult to know exactly what constituted plagiarism as they often wrote essays after discussing their ideas with other students or taking detailed notes from reading materials. As a result, it was not easy to identify who actually owns the ideas that were expressed in their writing. Several of the interviewees stated that university regulations on plagiarism where difficult to interpret and no attempt had been made to explain what was acceptable when using the ideas of other authors. Several studies have surveyed students regarding academic misconduct and found that plagiarism is frequently used by students when writing assignments. Some studies have found that the amount of plagiarism taking place over time has increased. Student cheating has garnered much public attention recently. A perception reflected in media accounts is that acts of academic dishonesty among students in college. Plagiarism is not a new phenomenon. However, recent reports in the literature and the popular media have raised and continue to raise concerns about the high incidences of plagiarism in higher education (Times Higher Educational Supplement (THES), 2005a, 2005b, 2004a, 2004b, 2000; Park, 2003). Not only does plagiarism undermine academic integrity and standards, it also denied the principles of intellectual property rights. Equally too, the genuine efforts, the worth and laudable achievement of students who do not plagiarise are seriously undermined by activities of the few who plagiarise. There is little doubt that plagiarism occurs among university students (Bennett, 2005). However, understanding why…
- 685 Words
- 3 Pages
Good Essays -
Describe cultural attitudes toward and presumptions about whether a person can own words and knowledge. Have modern trends such as globalization and easy access to information affected these presumptions? Consider how academic integrity is also applicable in an organisation. Do you believe the same presumptions hold true in your career as an employee of an organisation? How might this assignment be relevant in your workplace? Provide an example situation in which you were, or may be, asked to provide research and reference on specific materials for a sector of your organisation. You may wish to do additional research to support your views.…
- 289 Words
- 2 Pages
Good Essays