4 NEWS
SANTA ANA COLLEGE el Don/eldonnews.org • MONDAY, OCTOBER 26, 2015
ACADEMIC
DISHONESTY
PERSISTS
District instructors use Turnitin to
find discrepancies with student work
in an effort to thwart plagiarizing.
BY MEGHAN KLIEWER / el Don
A
bout 40 percent of undergraduate and graduate students in the U.S. admit to plagiarizing
in written assignments, a decade-long study
revealed.
Donald McCabe, an academic integrity researcher,
gathered the statistics from about 71,300 undergraduates and 17,000 graduate students over the
course of 12 years in research commissioned by
Rutgers University.
In a different study spanning three years with
a sample of more than 72,000 students, McCabe
found about 37 percent of undergraduate students
and about 25 percent of graduate students had
paraphrased or copied sentences from an Internet
or written source without citation.
Santa Ana College student Zoe Berry expected the
numbers to be higher.
“Students might plagiarize because they want to
keep their GPA high, so they are able to transfer
into the school they want to go to,” Berry said. “Most
undergraduate students feel the pressure to perform
well so they are accepted into graduate programs.”
However, plagiarism is not as prevalent at SAC,
according to Rosio Becerra, the associate dean of
student development. Becerra is responsible for
disciplining offenders.
“Cases of plagiarism come in waves and usually
around midterms or finals, but there are less than 10
referrals a semester,” Becerra said.
Plagiarism and academic dishonesty at SAC are
punishable by levels of severity ranging from a
warning to expulsion.
Most times students receive a zero on the assignment, Becerra said. Students who plagiarize mention motivators like stress and personal circumstances, or claim they do not know how to properly
cite references.
“Faculty make it clear to students that they must
use MLA format to document sources,” SAC English professor Stacy Simmerman said.
While some students are told specifically what the
professor wants, others say MLA formatting is im-
“Cases of plagiarism come in waves and
usually around midterms or finals, but
there are less than 10 referrals a semester.”
—Rosio Becerra
Associate Dean of Student Development
PROBLEM / About 40 percent of undergraduate and graduate students in the U.S. admit to passing off someone else’s
work or ideas as their own, according to a decade-long study. / Photo Illustration by Itzel Quintana / el Don
plied, so expectations are not always communicated.
“I usually follow MLA format if nothing is specifically stated,” SCC student Sean Meeder said.
RSCCD uses Turnitin, a resource that compares
papers to an extensive database of published work,
Becerra said.
Instructors can also easily catch when students’
vocabulary and language change in papers, said
Tiffany Gause, honors program coordinator at Santiago Canyon College.
“Determining if a student has plagiarized is not as
black and white as it seems,” Gause said.