Malcolm Saunders

NOVEMBER 2009

Over the past two-and-a-half years since the departure of former Vice-Chancellor Anthony Tarr in early 2007 and the realisation that he had left the institution’s finances in a parlous state—the University of the South Pacific (USP) has frequently been in the local news.
Not only has it been passing through what is openly acknowledged as the greatest financial crisis in its 40-year history but it also has suffered unfavourable publicity about the huge salaries its senior administrative staff had been enjoying and the exodus—principally in the form of its expatriates—of many of its most experienced and skilled academic staff.
The post-Tarr USP is a much leaner operation. Earlier this year USP reported that the financial tide had turned and that disaster had been averted. The new vice-chancellor certainly deserves much of the credit for reversing the university’s fortunes. But in the prevailing concern about USP’s ability to carry on, it should always be remembered that it was set up to achieve academic rather than economic purposes. Money is a means rather than its end.
Indeed, USP often claims it is a non-profit organisation. Ultimately, USP must be judged less according to whether it always has the money to pay its staff and more according to whether it provides its students with an academically rigorous programme of courses and allows them to leave with a universally respected degree.
More than 15 years ago, Dr Mark Berger, a departing lecturer in sociology at USP, denied that the academic standards of its students were anything like as high as its then vice-chancellor (Mr Solofa) claimed them to be.
He pointed out that the university ‘continues to pass students who cannot read and write effectively’, that its academic staff ‘continue to reward students for plagiarism, or at least ignore it’ and plaintively asks "What does this say about their degree?"
Berger also drew attention to the enormous pressure on academic staff to pass undeserving students. High pass rates ‘are deemed to imply that everything is fine in a particular course’ whereas high failure rates are seen by managers—and there are many of them—‘that something is wrong with the lecturer’s method’.
To ‘the powers that be’, he claimed, a high failure rate is evidence not of deficiencies in the students but of inadequacies in either their teachers or in what and how they are taught.
What Berger wrote then is no less true today, and it is a pity that an editor chose to give it the provocative title ‘Why USP is a flop’. Berger neither believed nor claimed that USP itself was a failure (Nor does the present writer).
But his article prompted USP’s pro-vice chancellor (academic), Vijay Naidu, a man respected as a scholar and administrator, to pen an angry and trenchant reply.
Professor Naidu attacked Dr Berger’s proposition that plagiarism by students at USP was all too often excused on the grounds that copying and imitating were deeply entrenched in the cultures of Pacific Islands countries.
Plagiarism widespread
Significantly, though, at no stage did he actually deny that plagiarism was rife at USP. How could he? Denying the existence of plagiarism at USP would be as credible as saying there were no dogs in Suva.
The fact is that plagiarism is widespread at USP and my own experience there suggests that, if anything, it is worse than it was in Berger’s day.
Over six semesters I often found that as many as 80% of my students and never less than 40%, copied to a point a conscientious marker would find unacceptable. This in spite of warnings in course profiles—and special lectures and frequent reminders—that plagiarism in assignments would be penalised.
Admittedly, plagiarism of the worst kind was rare. Only infrequently did students copy all or most of something they had found on the Internet or submit an essay written by another student and represent it as theirs. In any case, plagiarism of this sort is relatively easy to detect.
Incomparably more common was the essay almost all of which used the exact expression and wording of the books on which it was based.
Yet, this too is plagiarism, because even when students acknowledge the sources of the ideas and information contained in their essays, they are effectively—and dishonestly—claiming that the way they are putting the words together is theirs. This form of plagiarism was so common as to be the norm.
In fact, to police and punish plagiarism of this less obvious sort would take more time than markers had available and would result in  failure rates that would be unacceptable to university management. In other words, markers, most of whom are the lecturers, would be punished for insisting upon academic honesty in their students. It is far easier to turn a blind eye to this insidious evil and most academics clearly do. In November 2006, a lunch-time seminar was held at USP to talk about student plagiarism. Only a handful of academics attended, all of whom had experienced  plagiarism from their students. 
But what was more notable about them was that all were expatriates from countries like Australia, New Zealand, the UK, and USA. Not one Indo-Fijian or Pacific Islander attended the seminar.
Doesn’t this say something about the academic culture of the university? About staff who are themselves graduates of USP? At the very least it suggests that many ‘home-grown’ academics have come to accept the problem and live with it.
Of course, there are expatriates amongst the academic staff who are none too willing to take a stand against plagiarism, but it would also seem that those prepared to voice their concern about it are more likely to be expatriates than locals.
Only months after taking up the reins at USP, the current vice-chancellor, in an interview with the students’ newspaper Wansolwara, quite rightly claimed that USP students who typically got grades A and B could ‘go anywhere and do well’.
However, most students do not get these high grades; indeed, a sizeable proportion only just scrape through. On other occasions the vice-chancellor has conceded that USP students had problems expressing themselves in written English and that they were deficient in analytical skills.
The problem for USP—and for those of its academic staff who take the assessment of students seriously—is that most of these weaker students—want to avoid the pain of finding ways on their own to say what they find in their sources. In too many cases, they are simply unable to take an idea borrowed from someone else and put it in their own words.
Bad time-management is a further problem. If left to their own devices, most will try to get by via the hastily written essay only a day or so before it’s due or by ‘cramming’ for an exam only a week or two before it’s held.
Under these circumstances, the temptation for students to take ‘’short cuts’—many of which involve one form or another of plagiarism—becomes too great to resist.
One could argue, too, that plagiarism is only part of an even wider range of dubious practices in which many students indulge. For instance, many students, if allowed, will cheat the system by turning up to classes late, leaving early, or not turning up at all.
This form of cheating, too, is widespread. It is common to glance into tutorial rooms at USP where classes are being held to observe only five or six students in attendance when something like 15 to 20 should be there. I certainly felt myself amongst the small minority of academic staff who insist upon attendance (I called a roll at each and every class I took).
Attendance, of course, is not the be all and end all of university students’ experience, but it is a pre-requisite for the sort of education that has been designed for them. A British study a few years ago proved that ignoring all other factors, university students who attend classes regularly are more likely to pass than those who attend irregularly or infrequently. In fact, it was ‘the best predictor of academic performance’.
Cheating in general, plagiarism in particular, is arguably the problem at USP. The university has so far wisely declined to follow the example of many universities in Australia, entire faculties of which have abandoned exams altogether.
Counter-measure
If implemented stringently, USP’s rule that at least 40% of a student’s assessment must consist of an exam is an admirable counter-measure against plagiarism. But by itself, it’s not enough. “Soft’ exams and ‘soft’ marking designed to get students through rather than distinguish between the achievers and non-achievers play into the hands of the habitual plagiarist. Students still have the ability to plagiarise and get away with it and as a result gain a degree based on very dubious practices.
It is nonsense for the university to claim, as Professor Naidu did, that USP has in place adequate procedures to deal with plagiarism. Its very prevalence contradicts such a claim.
As I have argued earlier and elsewhere (Quadrant, March 2005), it is farcical to have in place a system of reporting plagiarism which presents those academics who use it with many punishments and no rewards.
Scandals centred on students’ plagiarism have become almost commonplace at Australian universities. A few years ago, Wollongong and Newcastle universities were the focus of attention; in the last few months alone the University of Queensland and the University of New England have experienced accusations from outraged academic staff that complaints about plagiarism they had lodged had been ignored. What all these scandals have in common is that foreign students, whose facility with English was limited, had perpetrated the plagiarism.
USP, then, is not alone in suffering the embarrassment that raising the issue of plagiarism inevitably entails. But the problem has a longer history and is clearly more deeply entrenched at USP than in universities in countries like Australia and New Zealand.
There are obvious reasons why this should be so. For instance, whereas at Australian universities, only a minority of students are from non-English-speaking backgrounds, at USP almost all students come from homes in which English is not the preferred language and the language has not been taught especially well in primary and secondary schools.
USP retains many virtues which these universities once had but which have been swallowed up in the destructive ‘revolutions’ in higher education in these countries over the past 20-25 years.
But to argue that plagiarism is not one of USP’s special vices is to arouse the incredulity of any number of expatriates who have taught there.
Only by acknowledging the prevalence of plagiarism and refraining from shifting the blame for it from offending students and indifferent managers to conscientious staff, can USP, like all other universities, deal effectively with this insidious problem in higher education.

* Malcolm Saunders enjoyed teaching and writing history at USP between 2006 and 2009.