Though cheating on a paper may be easier in the Internet age, it's also getting increasingly easier to detect. It also provides links to Web pages that may have been the source of the information. John Barrie, founder of Turnitin, said 1,000 high schools and 250 colleges worldwide subscribe to the service. He said the company analyzes 1,000 to 2,000 papers daily and about 30 percent have a plagiarized element. He searched the students' topics at MetaCrawler and found their papers in about a minute.
Punishments vary for students who are caught cheating, depending on the situation.
They include a failing grade on the assignment to expulsion or suspension for repeat offenders. Because it is virtually impossible to keep a student from getting online, educators are looking at other ways to curb the problem. One option is assigning more creative paper topics. At Gateway High School, English students are required to turn in multiple drafts of a paper, said teacher Phil Gerkin. And some drafts are also written in class.