Rampant academic dishonesty is destroying Malaysia's soul

However what is surprising is the extent of it, particularly among students according to a recent survey.

These practices are not just restricted to students.

A startling but not well publicized piece of research on student academic dishonesty in Malaysia showed academic dishonesty is rampant. It was revealed that students well understand what university policies are towards plagiarism and cheating are. Yet due to peer pressure and the feeling of security of collective culture, large percentages of students partake in cheating in one or another form.

The study went on to state that 95.7% of students had partaken in some form of plagiarism, 96% had shared an assignment with other students, 93% had cheated during tests, 92% had falsified data, 86% had cheated in exams, and 90% had copied a friends assignment.

Due to the sheer number of students at Malaysian universities today, it is almost impossible to use tools like 'turnitin' to check all students work for plagiarism.

In addition universities are worried about their reputations if pass rates are poor, and often put extreme pressure on lecturers to pass students. Failing a student in some faculties within a Malaysian university would just lead to a long serious of meetings and extra work to reassess and pass someone them, many lecturers have told the writer.

Unfortunately, some staff at Malaysian universities are not good role models to students. In one of the few cases that came to public attention was two Universiti Putra Malaysia (UPM) lecturers who were caught plagiarizing materials from the internet to produce an effective writing handbook. The action taken against the authors was only a reprimand. A similar case involving a deputy vice chancellor of another university was 'pushed under the rug'. However the IEEE banned any papers from the academic in any of their journals for 10 years.

Some lecturers use undergraduate student assignments as the basis of papers they publish in academic journals. This accounts for the large number of papers some lecturers are able to produce each year. Student names are rarely added as authors to the lecturer's submissions to journals.

A number of deans and high office bearers within Malaysian universities specifically hire staff from countries like Bangladesh to be a ghost writer for them. These staff members have no other duties other than to produce papers and even books for their employers. This is in addition to lecturers also putting their superiors name on their papers to carry favour. Some staff members have also been known to employ a ghost writer to research and write their PhD thesis.

Plagiarism is extremely high among lecturers and professors within Malaysian universities, and only occasionally will any academic come out and publically talk about what is going on.

With the push over the last few years for Malaysian universities to rise in the world rankings, publishing has become a very important issue for academics. Universities have put a lot of funds into improving their volume of articles published in academic journals.

Many methods are being used to get articles published and gain citations for their work. Many Malaysian academics are using the 'checkbook' to just pay for publication. A number of academic journals are now springing up using a 'pay to publish' approach, rather than the 'double blind referee' approach, traditional to academic publishing in the past. Lecturers also give papers at conferences where proceedings are published in journals after the conference.