Andrew Ainslie, a senior associate dean at UCLA's Anderson School of Management, pictured with a Turnitin plagiarism report, says "nobody ought to be able to buy their way into business school." (Bob Chamberlin, Los Angeles Times / September 1, 2011)
Claremont McKenna College made headlines today, but not the type of headlines they wanted to make. It seems that the college is taking heat "for exaggerating the collective SAT exam scores of incoming freshman classes for the last six years, boosting statistics used for national school rankings."
In the CMC case, it's the school that is accused of wrongdoing. Oftentimes, though, it's students and potential students who break the rules. The Los Angeles Times' Larry Gordon had an interesting piece yesterday about plagiarism. He spoke to UCLA Anderson's Andrew Ainslie, who serves not only as an associate director of marketing but also as senior associate dean for Anderson's full-time MBA program.
Gordon's piece discusses plagiarism in applications to graduate schools. He writes, "The detection of such wholesale cheating in college applications is on the rise due to the use of Turnitin for Admissions, an anti-plagiarism database service that compares student essays to an immense archive of other writings. Around the country, more than 100 colleges and universities have adopted it, mainly in graduate divisions, although Stanford University is among the dozen schools starting to use it for freshman applicants this year."
"The more we can nip unethical behavior in the bud, the better," said Ainslie. "It seems to us nobody ought to be able to buy their way into a business school."
Gordon notes that In Anderson's first review of essays from potential MBA candidates this year, "Turnitin found significant plagiarism — beyond borrowing a phrase here and there — in a dozen of the 870 applications, Ainslie said. All 12 were rejected."
The article concludes like this:
At UCLA Anderson, one recent applicant didn't search far for essay material. He stole verbatim from the school's website in citing "exceptional academic preparation, a cooperative and congenial student culture, and access to a thriving business community."
If plagiarists like that are denied admissions, future business leaders may include fewer unethical careerists, said UCLA Anderson's Ainslie. "If they are going to do that," he said, "they are going to do it in every aspect of their lives."
Read the whole Los Angeles Times article here
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