Student plagiarism

There have been a few pieces in the Guardian recently discussing the problem of student plagiarism in assessed work. It seems to me that, apart from the difficulty of identifying cases of plagiarism when they occur and tracking down the sources from which the plagiarizing student has copied, the issue is simpler than is often allowed. At the risk of seeming to take a draconian attitude - which doesn't really worry me since that is the attitude I take - I set out below my view about plagiarism and what should be done about it.

Plagiarism is cheating and most of those who engage in it know that. It also undermines the purposes of the educational process. The single most important mitigating factor, where it applies, is that there are students whose previous educational background hasn't made sufficiently clear to them the difference between drawing on someone else's work and simply copying it.

Here is the policy I think should be adopted where it isn't already in place:

1. All university students should be taught, as part of their induction, the difference between legitimate forms of quotation, paraphrase, citing of sources and so on, in the course of doing a piece of work on their own account, and plagiarism.

2. Plagiarism should then be a strict liability offence. You don't do it, that's all. If you do, you face the penalty.

3. The policy of the institution should be one of zero tolerance: with the mark for plagiarized work 0, whatever the consequences for the person's degree; and no second chance (of submitting an authentic piece of work) for that particular dissertation, project, essay, or whatever.

There are doubtless reasons that could be brought up against this approach to the problem, but at the moment I can't think of any.