About two years ago, I essayed a piece or two....chatting over masters/doctoral thesis 'hunters' in Germany, who were going after political folks (mostly CDU politicians, and occasionally an SPD figure).
It's an odd hobby.
Focus (the German news magazine) brings up this topic again.
There is a university investigation going on (via the Free University of Berlin)....over German Minister of Families.....Franzika Griffey (SPD Party). The accusation? Plagiarism.
After VroniPlag (the hunter crowd) made the accusation...Griffey turned to the University to evaluate and hopes that they will agree that if there was plagiarism, it wasn't to the degree of cancelling the degree. Otherwise? She's screwed, and will resign her post....to face a personal crisis with no real resolution.
Why these plagiarism hunters go at this? Two general explanations are given (rarely do any of the journalists pick this up and you have to wonder if they have some fear of the VroniPlag crowd). One comment is that they (the VroniPlag experts) that university professors are doing a lousy job of evaluating thesis products being produced. Prior to the last decade, no one could really evaluate thesis products at 'lightning speeds', but now with software, you could go through several theseis products in a week, and identify various problems.
The second reason suggested is that it's a fail-safe way to go after certain politicians (typically non-Green or non-SPD members).
The odds that universities will be forced to lock away thesises after grading? Eventually, you will go after someone will falls apart when the plagiarism charge occurs, and they commit suicide. At that point, VroniPlag folks will go into a defense posture.....but the public will feel that this was done with some malice or serious negative intent.
The odd thing about this thesis 'game' by actual students is that the majority of them will never go and write some major paper....ever again. I sat and listened to a professor back in the 1980s who talked about the woes of thesis situations, and that most students (he was talking Americans) simply were lousy writers, and not capable of original products or research. He made it clear....students needed help in their writing and figured at least ten-percent were buying papers written elsewhere and simply copying a successful thesis.
No comments:
Post a Comment