Academic Piracy: More Walk Plank [Sunday Times, 2007-06-10]

Publication: Sunday Times Issued: Date: 2007-06-10 Reporter: Prega Govender

Academic Piracy: More Walk Plank

Publication	Sunday Times
Date	2007-06-10
Reporter	Prega Govender
Web Link	www.sundaytimes.co.za

Resigned: Research scientist Professor Photini Kiepiela
Charged: Professor Pumela Msweli-Mbanga
Sacked: Chief finance officer Professor Kanthan Pillay
No crisis: University of KwaZulu-Natal vice-chancellor Professor Malegapuru Makgoba. Picture: Jackie Clausen

‘Students feel that employers will be looking at them as less attractive graduates’

University left reeling after another resignation over unethical practices.

A new plagiarism scandal has rocked the University of KwaZulu-Natal still reeling from a Sunday Times exposé of the bogus doctorate awarded to Chippy Shaik.

The university’s Nelson R Mandela School of Medicine confirmed this week that a master’s thesis had been plagiarised and that the student is at risk of failing unless she provides proof in the next two weeks that it was her own, unaided work .

Research scientist Professor Photini Kiepiela who abruptly resigned last week after admitting plagiarising an article for a paper she had written was responsible for supervising the student’s work.

Professor Willem Sturm, dean of the medical school, said an external examiner had found that large parts of the student’s dissertation “had come from a published paper”.

“We are looking at whether the student copied it into the dissertation or whether the supervisor told her to put these things in,” he said.

Sturm said the student had displayed very little understanding of the thesis during an oral examination on it. He confirmed that the university would scrutinise all dissertations supervised by Kiepiela over the past few years.

Shaik’s mechanical engineering doctorate thesis;

The sacking of Professor Kanthan Pillay, the university’s chief finance officer, after a tribunal found there were multiple irregularities in the awarding of his master’s degree; and

The former dean of management studies, Professor Pumela Msweli-Mbanga, being charged in the Durban Commercial Crimes Court in April with corruption for awarding a PhD degree to Dr Nobubele Potwana, a senior lecturer at the School of Management Studies. Potwana appeared in court with her.

But in an interview with the Sunday Times this week, the university’s vice-chancellor, Professor Malegapuru Makgoba, was adamant that there was no crisis at his institution.

“There is no problem. Three isolated degrees can never be a problem in a university of 40 000 students.

“This [three questionable degrees see story below] cannot represent any form of corruption.

“There’s no question about the integrity and quality of the degrees coming out of UKZN. The quality of our degrees is as good as you’ll get anywhere,” Makgoba said.

Deans and deputy deans of faculties at the university and its executive director of public affairs and corporate communications, Professor Dasarath Chetty, made similar points.

“The high-profile nature of some cases tend to give the wrong impression,” Chetty said, adding that since the establishment of UKZN in 2004, only two degrees had been revoked because of plagiarism.

Said Chetty: “This must be seen against the background of the 25 336 students, of which 9 240 were postgraduates, who graduated during this time.”

Makgoba pointed out that the plagiarised degrees were qualifications awarded by the former so-called “legacy institutions”.

“It will not discredit our degrees because they were not degrees awarded by UKZN.”

Among these were Shaik’s degree which was awarded to him by the former University of Natal, which later merged with the University of Durban-Westville to become the University of KwaZulu-Natal.

“One degree of the famous Chippy Shaik creates drama, but it’s not the measure of the quality of excellence of the degrees of UKZN, not by any stretch of the imagination,” Makgoba said.

He said that plagiarism took place “in every university in the world”.

“The level of plagiarised degrees or work in the United Kingdom is in the order of 10% and that is a country where students’ first language is English.”

He said the incidence of plagiarism was no worse in South Africa where English was not the first language for the majority of students.

Professor Johan Jacobs, deputy dean for postgraduate studies in the faculty of humanities, development and social science at UKZN’s Howard College campus, said: .

“ [Plagiarism] is not always a clear-cut, unambiguous criminal activity from the perspective of students. There is, of course, blatant plagiarism, but a lot of what falls under plagiarism is a grey area.”

Jacobs said sometimes supervisors with large numbers of master’s and doctoral students may not have the time to “pursue every single word as scrupulously as they should”.

Professor Nelson Ijumba, dean of UKZN’s faculty of engineering, which produced 323 honours, master’s and doctoral students in the past five years, said that, despite the Shaik controversy it was his faculty’s precursor that awarded Shaik a dodgy doctorate the faculty was still “very highly regarded” .

The acting president of UKZN’s central students representative council , Magasela Mzobe, said although the incidents were isolated, they painted a harmful image of the university.

“Students feel that employers will be looking at them as less attractive graduates compared with those from other institutions because of the scandals in the media.”

The student body has been assuring parents attending graduation ceremonies recently that the university’s degrees were “legitimate”.

Makgoba said that the spirit of transparency at the university had played a pivotal role in bringing cases of plagiarism into the open.

“We don’t go out in search of plagiarised degrees. This has been brought to the attention of the university community, often by outside agencies, and we can’t sweep that under the carpet. We have to be honest with each other.”

With acknowledgement to Prega Govender and Sunday Times.