The plagiarism problem is a rigor problem
Maybe it's too easy to get a Ph.D.?
Earning a Ph.D. is challenging for most people in most fields. I don’t know the extent to which this assumption of mine is true, but I’m standing behind it. I know people who worked very hard to earn their Ph.D. I also know people who didn’t. In the eyes of the latter, they did work hard, but compared to other graduate students in other fields, or using other research methods, or pursuing different dissertation topics, they didn’t work all that hard.
Ultimately, graduate school, specifically a Ph.D. program, is a test of endurance. This was my conclusion upon finishing my qualifying exams (the exams a graduate student takes to advance from being a student to a candidate for a Ph.D.). For my exams, we were given one week to respond to two general questions related to our area of study, and one week to respond to one question specifically related to our dissertation topic. When I say question, I mean a series of questions that fall within a specific theme—my second week “question” was more like 10 questions. Basically, I wrote three grad-school-level papers in two weeks. Then, I had to stand in front of my committee and defend it—i.e., they asked questions, I responded.
The task was time-consuming, not necessarily difficult—I was given the topics of the first two questions in advance—but students were made to feel like we had to write the best papers we had ever written, so we spent both weeks fixated on doing just that. The goal was to make it to the end of the two weeks with papers (essentially, literature reviews) showing that you had read all the things you were supposed to read—the seminal works—tied to your major and your dissertation topic. Basically, you needed to express to your committee: I know what I’m talking about.
I passed my oral defense, thus my exam, with what seemed like relative ease given the amount of time and mental energy it took to craft my written responses. I walked out of my defense thinking: they, the masterminds behind the almighty Ph.D. program, just wanted to see if I could clear this first hurdle (never mind all of the unnecessary coursework required leading up to this point).
Once upon a time, my advisor informed me, a graduate student hoping to become a candidate for a Ph.D. was placed in a room with paper, writing utensils, and their qualifying exam questions with just a few hours, maybe a day, to record their answers. No questions, or topics of the questions, were given in advance, and students certainly were not given days or weeks to come up with their answers. In some fields, such as chemistry, graduate students must successfully perform experiments to pass their exams.
I taught yoga during graduate school and one of my regulars was getting her Ph.D. in chemistry. We took our qualifying exams around the same time and when she came to class she would commiserate with me about the arduous experience. I couldn’t help but think, “wow, she is definitely working much harder than I am to earn her Ph.D.” I felt guilty complaining about any level of perceived difficulty in my program of study because she had to prove, in real time, that her experiment worked before she could even advance from a student to a candidate. I can’t even imagine how cumbersome her dissertation study and defense process was.
I earned my Ph.D. in a school of education, which, in the world of undergraduates, are notorious for grade inflation and thought of as the school of easy majors. In the world of graduate students, earning a Ph.D. from a school of education, compared to other fields, is perceived of as easy, as well.
To be sure, there are many graduate students studying various education topics who do not have an easy path to their degree. Some schools of education are more rigorous than others; some advisors and dissertation chairs set a high bar for the students they mentor; some research methods are much more difficult to execute than others; and the sheer number of hurdles a graduate student has to clear, no matter how difficult the work itself is, makes reaching the finish line achievable for a smaller number of students than the amount that entered the program.
But, for far too many aspiring education scholars, the path is too easy.
Part of the ease with which some graduate students get a Ph.D. has to do with the quality of the professors mentoring them. The professors have to care about rigor to make the path to getting a Ph.D. rigorous. Many professors see mentoring Ph.D. candidates as a burden. They became professors because they wanted to conduct their own research and do nothing else. They don’t want to be bothered with teaching classes or mentoring students. As a result, these professors pay less attention to those roles.
I heard horror stories in graduate school about how professors would agree to be on a candidate's dissertation committee but show up to the candidate’s defense having not read the dissertation, if they showed up at all (I’ve also heard these horror stories).
The role of the dissertation chair is to not only read the candidate’s dissertation but also guide them through the process of conducting the study and writing it, ensuring that at least one person on the committee knows whether the candidate ought to pass and graduate with a Ph.D. But, I have no doubt that there are crappy chairs out there that do a crappy job at this and pass candidates who most certainly shouldn’t have. I’ve read some poorly thought out and executed studies myself, and yet, those studies passed muster—the candidate earned their Ph.D.
The inattention to the work of students on the Ph.D. track and the lack of concern for rigor may allow plagiarism to slip through.
Is plagiarism rampant in education, as well as other fields? I don’t know. Do some graduate students and scholars get away with plagiarism because no one is paying attention? Maybe.
I doubt my experience is unique. I am sure other graduate students have looked around and said to themselves: Getting a Ph.D. ought to be more difficult than it is. These professors—our so-called mentors—ought to be paying more attention to their students and enforcing a more rigorous program.
Plagiarism may also occur because some graduate students don’t even know they’re plagiarizing. They talk about the work of other scholars but put the citation in the wrong place or don’t think they need to include a citation because they agree with the scholar, thus view it as their idea, too. And perhaps no one ever told them they were plagiarizing or teetering over the line, which shouldn’t be surprising if what I described above—the lack of rigor and attention to students—is common.
At this point, I should say, I am commenting on what I have witnessed or heard about other graduate students experiencing. I, myself, did not have an apathetic advisor/dissertation chair or committee. Not to toot my own horn, but I went out of my way to cultivate a committee that was going to be hard on me. At the time, I aimed to be an academic, and I wanted to graduate feeling like I was prepared to take on that role. My committee was made up of researchers who were respected scholars in their fields. I actually failed my dissertation proposal defense because they didn’t think my research project was well-thought-out enough to execute. I couldn’t start my study until I revised and resubmitted my proposal. As a result, my study was more robust and more illuminating. And my chair didn’t let anything slip, unless he wanted to defer to my committee. He worked with me from beginning to end to ensure my study and resulting dissertation was in tip-top shape—his reputation was on the line, after all.
Plagiarism is a serious offense in academia (or at least, it ought to be) because the entire enterprise exists to produce knowledge and disseminate that knowledge (or at least, that’s what it ought to be doing). If there are errors or weaknesses in that system, our institutions, products, and services, which defer to the knowledge produced in academic institutions, are built on faulty information or outright lies. But plagiarism might be a symptom of a larger problem: a negligent system that doesn’t care enough about rigor, thus makes it too easy for students to graduate with Ph.D.s.