I was sat in a lecture the other day and the lecturer was giving information out about the next assignment due. He asked if anyone had any questions regarding the essay to which one misunderstood student at the back asked without irony...

"What percentage of the essay is allowed to be plagiarized?"

Can anyone top that?

Not sure whether to laugh or cry!

That is an absolute classic

Please say that the lecturer said "100%"!!! I don't know was it on this forum or one of the friends who was at home over Christmas, but I heard a great story of where someone wrote something in their masters and used it again in their PhD and was accused of plagarism - of themselves!

Another indicator of how spoilt this generation of undergrads are! They complain if notes aren't posted before the lecture, are spoon fed the answers, have more resources than when we did our under-grad, yet still manage to fail spectacularly!

in my old uni, you got done for plagarism if you repeated content from your essays during the year and your exams and if you plagarised yourself across different years - which was harsh, they never caught me tho :p

Actually hate the way people say undergrads are spoon fed, they may be, but only cos they have been through exams every year of their lives (SATS and AS levels started in my year) which means they are less interested in the subject and more in 'how to pass the exam'. Lecturers often can't understand this but when you have been trained into passing-the-exam behaviour, rather than just being knowledgeable generally then you do all you can to get the most precise info possible with the least amount of effort.

I can actually understand why someone would ask that question. If you use plagiarism detection software, when you submit your essay it will give you a percentage of content that is similar to other published work. Granted, I don't think this would've been what the student meant, but still the question isn't that ridiculous.

I have to agree that the system encourages this kind of thinking - you end up focussing on what you have to do to get a good grade rather than learning about a subject because you're interested in it.