Academia

A friend of mine passed along this article from Inside Higher Ed (it's a couple of months old, so you may have seen it already) entitled "What They Don't Teach You in Graduate School". Depending on where you are in your academic career, you can either take it as advice on what you should do, advice on what you should have done, or as totally bogus because you know better. The article is aimed at graduate students, but there are insights to be gained by post-docs and junior faculty, as well. I particularly like this nugget: "Remember that a Ph.D. is primarily an indication of survivorship…

The Times Higher Education Supplement has produced a list of the world's top universities. They must have used a good methodology because UNSW came in at number 36. The United States dominated the list, with 20 out of the top 50 places. I wasn't quite sure exactly where all the American universities were, so I marked the locations on a map of the United States that I found here. Probably most of my readers already know where they all are, but I thought I'd share the map with you.

The story of the University of Newcastle plagiarism scandal continues: Professor Marimuthu was 18 days from signing a new five-year agreement that increased the annual fee payable by the Institut WIRA in Malaysia, where the campus was based, from $50,000 to $300,000. He asked the offshore program co-ordinator to review the problem essays "more generously" and warned recruitment could suffer "if word gets out" about large numbers of students failing, the commission heard yesterday.... Despite all students having received anti-plagiarism instruction in the…

The Syney Morning Herald has the latest evidence from the plagiarism scandal at the University of Newcastle (my previous posts are here and here) (my emphasis): The University of Newcastle sat on its "most serious" plagiarism allegations for more than four months, only acting when a television show peppered the institution with questions, the Independent Commission Against Corruption heard yesterday. But the vice-chancellor, Roger Holmes, told ICAC it was coincidental that one day after the media inquiries, the university finally began investigating…

In the latest installment in the U of Newcastle plagiarism scandal, Ronald MacDonald tries to outdo Robert Rugimbana (emphasis mine): The deputy vice-chancellor of research and internationalisation, Ronald MacDonald, said yesterday that he had originally believed the plagiarism claims by Ian Firns. Mr Firns had written to him in late February 2003 protesting at the handling of the matter. In an email, Mr Firns wrote that "it is particularly galling to know that the top mark for this assignment was awarded to an identified cheat". However, Professor MacDonald said that he had…

The Sydney Morning Herald reports (emphasis mine): In late 2002 a casual lecturer employed by the University of Newcastle to teach at its affiliated school in Malaysia, Institut WIRA, gave zero marks to 15 students in a class of 50, citing "deliberate, serious plagiarism". The lecturer, Ian Firns, found that several students had copied large sections of their essays from a paper available on the internet without acknowledging the source. In the comments he wrote on the papers before handing them to the business school, Mr Firns spelt out the web address. However,…