Plagiarism… Do you gain anything from it?

By: Gerardo Alfaro

Many college students plagiarize, they do it all the time, chances are you know people who plagiarize, in fact 80% of college students admit to plagiarizing. So does that make it ok? Does that mean that it’ll help you make your way through college?

First of you should be aware of what plagiarism is, it’s not borrowing or copying it’s actually stealing someone else’s work, and you might say that what that person doesn’t know wont hurt them, and that you are doing this to help yourself and not to hurt someone else but think about it is it really doing something for you?

In order to find out you must first decide what you are doing in college if you are here to just earn a degree no matter the cost then maybe you are able to rationalize plagiarizing but most students are actually here to learn; the diploma at the end of a career is just proof of this learning.

So is cheating really helping you? Think about it you are inhibiting your learning just so that you make your way around some work, and chances are you will get caught. Teachers in college have plenty of experience with plagiarism and cheating and chances are a previous student already tried to “pull off” what you are trying to do. So if you get caught you are jeopardizing your scholastic career just to save your self a couple hours work, so think about it again is it worth it?