Professors and administrators generally agree that policing student plagiarism is a worthy goal, but it’s not one that can be achieved cheaply. For a three-semester subscription to Turnitin, the most popular tool for identifying plagiarized material, the University of Arizona recently forked over $36,000, reports the Arizona Daily Wildcat.
Turnitin’s price tag has, in fact, prompted at least one institution to think twice about renewing its subscription. Administrators at the University of Kansas have told professors that they will let the university’s license to use the site lapse in October, according to The Lawrence Journal-World. The university paid $6,000 several years ago for its first year of Turnitin, but the annual expenditure for the service has since ballooned to $22,000.
Several professors told the Journal-World that it would be a mistake for Kansas to abandon the antiplagiarism tool. But Lynn Bretz, director of university communications, says Kansas is simply considering several plagiarism-detection services in order to get the most bang for its buck.
In an era of tight budgets, that seems reasonable enough. But it raises a question: Are officials at other colleges worried about the rising cost of antiplagiarism software? —Brock Read
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