Fables and journalism students II

There has been some considerable talk about the earlier item pointing readers to the essay purported to be by a former journalism student, saying she had cheated her way through assignments, making many of them up.

I should reiterate that the reference to Ryerson was my own speculation and has since been made unlikely, given a few clues I didn't pick up on in the story. Further speculation, by others, is that if the story is true at all, the school referred to may be Concordia, or Carleton. Other comments have been to the effect that the writer may have been fudging various facts to cover her tracks. Or, as I say, it may be a complete fiction.

But most interesting is that some people involved in journalism teaching acknowledge that there is cheating, that a good deal of it isn't caught (and consequences are mild, even if it is) and that many students simply shrug about it. Further, that this merely exacerbates a culture of "cut and paste" plagiarism and sloppy attribution that is fairly wisespread in higher education. (In one hilarious example relayed to me, a student faked radio news reports, which required collaboration and conspiracy -- almost more work than it would have taken to simply do the job properly!)