The Washington Times reports that large parts of an economics thesis written by President Vladimir Putin in the mid-1990s were lifted straight out of a U.S. management textbook published 20 years earlier.

Not surprised one bit. Long time readers know that I spent a year studying at a university in Moscow, Russia. Plagiarism is rampant and so is cheating. Russian students make American students look like angels. I'm completely serious. And I'm saying this while looking at an academic violation report on my desk right now because I caught a student cheating on the midterm. In fact, my experience was that professors not only expected what we would consider cheating, but they encouraged it. In Russian universities students are assigned a "faculty" and a "course". You might be tempted to think of this as a "major" and a "year" (ie, freshman, sophomore), but it's not like that at all. Think of it like being given a home-room assignment in high-school. All the students in a particular "course" and "faculty" take all of the same classes together pretty much for the entire time they are in college. The students learn to "help each other out". This group-think mentality is encouraged. So much so, that professors often drop off a test and then walk out of the class so that the students can work together on the answers!

Another example. The year before I went to Moscow I got to know the Russian students at my college fairly well. One of them wanted to stay in the U.S. and go to grad school. Since there really isn't the equivalent of a G.P.A. in Russia, and since his professors didn't particularly care for him anyway, he forged his Russian university records, walked over to Kinko's, and faxed them to various grad schools! What was the reaction of the other Russians? No. Big. Deal.

Jeff Quinton has more.

Posted by: Rusty at 08:52 AM | Comments (6) | Add Comment
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