Sir, Baroness Deech, unfortunately, tells only part of the story (“Indulgent teachers ‘to blame for plagiarism’ ”, Oct 18). When I was a lecturer at degree level, it became clear to me that many students had not learnt how to “read” academic books, take notes from them or the art of debating with each other or the material.

It appeared to matter not how often and with what force we told the students how to do this, or directed them to study guides, or warned them of the dire consequences of being found guilty of plagiarism; many of them still failed to show significant signs of engagement with the material.

Many of us felt that with ever-rising staff-student ratios, this was almost inevitable, as students had less and less contact with lecturers. It is too easy to blame the ease of access to the internet: the fault is closer to home — a lack of teachers and lecturers means that students are left too much to themselves and don’t know how best to study.

BRIAN GOLDFARB
London N2

Sir, It could be that because the citing of references using the widely used Harvard system is such an extremely tedious and time-consuming process that we are seeing an increase in plagiarism. Thus, the reason for this increase may be simply laziness on the part of the students rather than the passing off of published work as their own.

Of course, computers allow access to a vastly larger number of academic sources and to cite them all correctly can take students longer than the time it takes to write the essay.

As we want to encourage students to use as many sources as possible, perhaps a new and simpler way of citing references needs to be devised.

BARRY SHOOTER
School of Pharmacy
University of London

Explore Letters

• Feedback