Melbourne: After violent attacks and expose
of migration scams, the woes of Indian students in Australia
seem to be mounting with new scandal breaking that a large
number of overseas students had copied their masters thesis
particularly in the IT programme.
The fresh scam exposed by an Australian newspaper
said several overseas students, including Indians, were found
to have graduated from University of New England with copied
masters thesis which gave them better chance of getting
permanent residency.
The paper said some of the students were allowed to
graduate even after a probe began into the scam. The scandal
was more prevalent for a master programme in the Information
Technology offered by the New South Wales University.
This has been an attractive course for students hoping
for permanent residency as skilled migrants, the paper said.
According to the report, most of the students were from
the Indian subcontinent but their characteristic English was
interspersed with polished American and British English.
When contacted, a University spokesman told PTI that
most of the students were from Pakistan, Bangladesh and India.
The degree, begun with a commercial partner in 2004,
turned out 220 plagiarised thesis of the 230 that were
checked. To date, no UNE staff member responsible for the
programme has been publicly held to account. The course was
taught by the Melbourne Institute of Technology - UNE's
partner.
Material for one thesis had been lifted from 'The
Guardian' newspaper in Britain and a US business magazine.
Several other thesis were also found similar, the report said.
It said the whistle-blower, mathematician Imre Bokor,
claimed that the official count was that 220 of 230 thesis
were plagiarised.
"When I first let them know, there were fewer than 100
thesis involved. By the time they investigated, it had grown
to 230," he said, adding that a visiting Polish academic
alerted him in July 2006 to the abysmal standard of one of the
first thesis to emerge from the programme, begun in 2004.
"I realised, just by reading the first page, it was
obviously plagiarised," he said.
Bokor said he had already approached his two immediate
superiors with concerns about poor standards in the programme
and the risk of plagiarism. "They just pooh-poohed me and told
me to go away," he said.
The report said that education commentators praised UNE
vice-chancellor Alan Pettigrew for resolute action when he
went public about the scandal in August 2007.
He said UNE would not "shy away from taking the most
difficult steps" and might strip students of their degrees.
Bokor claimed plagiarism had been first raised in
November 2006 and in just one case. But he said UNE had
quickly established that "a significant proportion" of 210
thesis appeared to be plagiarised.
Bureau Report
First Published: Thursday, July 30, 2009, 12:46