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[marymorris]

1)Does anyone ever suffer serious consequences for plagiarism, which used to more or less merit automatic explusion?

At my institution, absolutely. I don't know of an automatic expulsion, which seems extreme (see 2) but one case I know of has had deservedly dire consequences for the student. Don't worry.

2)Are college kids today really significantly more clueless as to what constitutes plagiarism, or just better at lying and whining?

In the UK at least, they honestly don't know, especially first-years. This is because in the name of IT literacy and passing exams, schoolteachers have actually *taught* them to regurgitate stuff from the internet uncritically.

On the assessment briefs here, we have a definition of plagiarism. That's a good system -- every institution should do it.

3)Whenever an academic, someone with a PhD, working as a professor, etc., is caught at this, are these people ever fired?

Once I received a strange e-mail from a colleague, A, whom I barely know accusing another colleague, B, whom I've never met (not from my institution) of plagiarising his work and others'. A was replying to an article in the same field that I've published that cited B's work. I deleted it -- no evidence, and none of my business.

My real question is, can Vladimir Putin be fired over it?

[maddy]

I challenge someone to top this one:

Student on midterm completely missed a 10 point question.  Approaches me to say that she let her friends--in other TA's classes--copy off of her during the exam because they all were in agreement that she knew the material the best.  Because that was well understood, I should see to it that both she and her friends were credited the 10 points, because she clearly had the right answer.  Even after explaining that 1. she did NOT have the right answer and 2.  She had admitted cheating to a TEACHER, she still insisted that I was being unfair.

Naturally, when her finally paper arrived at the end of the semester, I made a point of checking it for plagiarism.  Sure enough, the entire thing was lifted off the web, with no citation.

Imagine the boldness and entitlement:  She cheated once, confessed in the hopes of getting a better grade, and then cheated AGAIN!!!

All time favorite!

[harshmanate]

This one is special because it was all in the family.

I was one of many graduate students teaching a physical science class.  The course was a popular (and supposedly easy) way to get a science credit.  The class met four hours a week and most days the students worked through a fill-in-the-blank lab manual.  (This was a curriculum designed to be teacher-proof.  In fact it was nearly learner-proof.)

My wife was completing her undergraduate degree in anthropology at the time and took the class during the summer one year (from a different grad student).  She was an unnecessarily diligent student and completed every assignment to its fullest extent (she graduated with a 4.0).

In one activity, the students were given a set of primate cranium measurements and asked to analyze the data for patterns.  The point was that there were some data points that were way off the scale, and the students were supposed to realize that there were two sets of data mixed together, one for humans and one for chimpanzees.  My wife wrote what was expected, but then filled the margin of the lab manual with a tounge-in-cheek discussion of the history and dangers of inferring attributes from cranium measurements, and even cited The Mismeasure of Man by S.J. Gould.  She showed it to me and we laughed about it.

Near the end of the semester, one of her lab partners asked to borrow her lab manual overnight so he could copy some data that he had forgotten to write down.  She lent it to him.

Next year, I was teaching the course and grading the same section of the lab manual.  You can guess what happened.  Generally, it was hard to discren plagiarism because of the fill-in-the-blank format, but in this case...well...it was beyond belief.

When confronted, he said he had copied it from one of his "brothers" and hadn't really understood it, but that it hadn't been marked wrong...so....

He failed that section of the lab manual.  I'm certain he didn't learn his lesson and I'm certain that there was so much plagiarism that I missed from him and other students.  Ah, well....