Cambridge copycats caught out
UNIVERSITY STUDENTS aren’t quite as clever as they would have us think. Not only do they cheat... they're actually daft enough to admit it.
Plagiarism policies are going to need a make-over as universities have found that students have new ways to cheat – copying from friends online.
Plagiarism experts have warned that education authorities need to step up to the 21st century as students are now cheating by discussing coursework on social networking sites and using friends’ work.
This warning comes shortly after an anonymous poll of 1,000 undergraduates which revealed that half of Cambridge University students have cheated at some point.
Varsity, the student newspaper, found that almost half of undergraduates have passed other students’ work off as their own.
Predictably, law students came up the worst with 62 percent admitting to breaking university rules.
One anonymous cheating student said, "Sometimes, when I am really fed up, I Google the essay title, copy and throw everything on to a blank word document and jiggle the order a bit. They usually end up being the best essays."
While these students are all cheating in one way or another, only five percent say they had actually been caught out.
Robert Foley, a professor in Biological Anthropology at King's College, Cambridge said,"It is a depressing set of statistics.”
UK Universities will be meeting with plagiarism experts on November 19 to discuss what to do about the problem. µ
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unless that is too difficult for the little dears.
It always seems to be a mystery why some people do so well in course work and not in exams. Perhaps this could be a clue.
When I did a masters' course at KCL, I did some marking of undergraduate coursework. I was particularly amused when a lecturer re-set the same questions he'd set the year before, and gave me some sample answers "in case they help".

Not only was the plagiarism obvious (mostly because students didn't have the sense to copy from those who'd get the answers right - there are far more wrong answers than right ones, so duplicates are a bit suspicious), those who'd found the previous sample answers often copied them verbatim. Even though they often weren't very good answers to the questions.

I doubt much was done. A significant proportion of the class probably failed to get a pass mark anyway (I was told to be harsh when marking, but actually I had to be very lenient; even so...), so if the lecturer actually pulled out all those I'd noted as passing but with plagiarism then it would have been a very poor year. More than one lecturer/class had the same problems. I spent a vey long time trying to put useful comments on the coursework to try to teach the students what they did wrong, in the hope that the experience wasn't entirely futile. On the plus side, I feel better about my job security.

If my experience is any evidence, the undergrads at Cambridge must at least have the wit to copy in a way that makes them more-than-averagely hard to spot cheating. Or the lecturers are just too depressed to chase them up on it.

The nearest I came to cheating as a Cambridge undergrad was being given a suggested approach to a circuit that we had to construct. Actually producing the circuit I did myself, and I also produced another valid circuit which did the same thing another way - so I don't feel I missed out too much. I don't see the point in putting yourself in debt through uni if you're not going to try to learn from it. Mind you, it took me a while to get my nose down - I may not have got a third in my first degree if I'd cheated.
Its all those video games that have "cheat" codes in em. Each and every one of these kids grew up looking online for cheat codes in order to succeed at their video games. Some games cannot be beaten at all until you find the cheat code.
So in conclusion, thats how come university kids cheat so much today -- its due to VIDEO GAMES!
1. Give people more creative assignments.
2. Fire the university's admissions department.
if the lecturers know their field and their students writing style, as they should if they are doing what they should be, they will know the content that is available on the internet and therefore recognize paragraphs they have come across before. legend has it that there is this fantastical plagiarism detector (we have been told/threatened with it for years) that compares the essay to past students work and internet searches.
plagiarism and copying happens all the time in the real world as well but nobody bats an eyelid, uni is training for the real world, so surely you should learn to do as little work as possible and learn to get away with it. 
as i understand it, Cambridge students are not allowed to have jobs during the course, and also have some of the best lecturers in the country/world there, you have time to do the work and the support of very experienced tutors, why do you need to cheat? if you were working a 30 hour week and doing your course, i could understand it.
Wheres the news?
We are taught to not lie cheat or steal, but anyone who succeeds in climbing the social ladder knows there's only 1 rule.

Don't get caught...

Its wrong i don't agree with it, but it is, what it is.... And that's why society is so fucked up, look no further...
Why don't the profs just spike the Internet with some nonsense essays? Then, when the work comes in parroting such nonsense, the undergrads get their comeuppance.
Uni Prof's are some of the laziest people I've ever met. We got past papers for our exams from the library and the questions for most of our subjects were the same, except the sentences were sometimes re-ordered with commas.

They couldn't even be arsed to use a different sentence, they just used a comma to re-order it.

Instead of being arsed enough to use a different sentence, they just used a comma to re-order it.

A comma was used to re-order the same question, because they couldn't be arsed to create a different question.

Prof's are the worst teachers I've ever had. Secondary/High School teachers were the best. Some of the prof's were very dull and just gave us paper copies of their OHP slides, wrote fast on a blackboard and failed to explain their subject.

It's no surprise that so many people don't complete their degree courses, the levels of teachig are appalling.
how smart can they be? theyre on youtube myspace facebook and all those useless websites
The spellig ain't so good either
I graduated with a 3.48 GPA from the university, and I didn't cheat. I was only 0.02 grade points from receivign honors. The consolation was that I knew that at least half of the people who get better grades than me cheated.