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At my previous university, this would constitute as blatant plagiarism.

Plagiarism was punished by a "three strikes and you're out" principle. If you got caught more than twice over the three years bachelor course, you got kicked out and couldn't start the same program for a few years. You also had to explain (or defend, but rarely anyone ever got accused on false grounds) your transgression to the graduation board, with the possibility of worse punishment if you were particularly blatant about the whole thing. Obviously, you immediately failed the course you were caught on as well.

This system worked well. Cheating was rare and students appropriately shot down team members that would suggest any type of plagiarism. So, why go through the process of accusing them? Because cheating deserves worse than just a bad grade, in my opinion.



Three strikes actually seems pretty lenient


It wasn't just for cheating, though. Any form of plagiarism was punished this way.

In one exercise, we had to set up a website (basic HTML/JS/CSS stuff). To fill up this site with content, one student translated an entire other website without clear credit (there was a little link on the bottom of the index but that was about it). Despite the focus of the course having nothing to do with the content, that was a strike.

Another student I knew got a strike got one because in the first report they had to write in a group, one of their team members copied some text from Wikipedia and didn't tell anyone. That probably worked in high school, but it sure didn't work here! The entire group got a strike on their record for that, not even two months into their education.

If you were cheating particularly badly, there could be more consequences than "just" a strike. I doubt they'd let you get away with looking up answers to test questions.

In contrast, at my current university, cheating is rampant. Entire courses with known mass cheating had no measures taken because that would affect too many students. It's terrible and if things don't change I wouldn't be surprised if degrees would lose accreditation at some point.


Got it - yeah if you’re issuing strikes for minor infractions as well that’s a whole lot less lenient.




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