Page 55 - EducationWorld January 2021

had been copied and pasted from other sources.
In Russia, Ph Ds have become a status symbol and a sign
of “conspicuous consumption”, says co-author Anna Ab-
alkina, a sociology researcher at LMU, Munich and expert
on academic misconduct. Doctorates are obtained for “a lot
of businessmen and politicians to write ‘Ph D’ on their busi-
ness cards”, she says, with a subset of professors turning a
blind eye to plagiarism during the doctoral defence. Over
half of Russia’s regional governors have Ph Ds, plagiarised
or not.
As well as shedding light on the scale of plagiarism in
Russia, the study also found that governors with plagia-
rised Ph Ds performed worse in office on average, failing
to develop their regions as quickly as their counterparts,
as measured by metrics such as housing construction and
the installation of broadband Internet. “Plagiarism is a Tianjin University students: anti-bureaucracy revolt
prediction of corrupt behaviour and incompetence,” says
Dr. Abalkina. “It says something about (the plagiariser’s) make it a record-breaking allegation, which helped to draw
personality.” public attention,” he told Times Higher Education.
But this doesn’t necessarily mean the other governors The case was followed by Wuhan University of Technol-
actually wrote their Ph Ds — they may simply have avoid- ogy’s decision to backtrack on the reinstatement of former
ed detection by hiring better ghostwriters. In other words, professor Wang Pan as a supervisor. He had been suspend-
while they may not be honest, they are at least competent, ed two years ago after being accused of abuse linked to a
and thus better at governing. “It appears to be plausible student suicide. A follow-up investigation indicated that
that high-ranking officials in Russia rarely write their Ph there was “poor supervision”.
D theses themselves,” says the paper, published in Scien- In response to a notice on Dr. Wang’s proposed rein-
tometrics. statement, staff and students launched an online petition
that attracted nearly 28,000 signatures, requesting that the
CHINA university should act with “empathy and social responsibili-
Rising revolt wave ties” and “permanently cancel Wang’s graduate supervisor
qualification”. The university swiftly announced it would
A SERIES OF VICTORIES FOR STUDENT-LED not reinstate Dr. Wang as a supervisor after “receiving ob-
activism against controversial professors suggests jections”.
that the cult of the supervisor in China is increas- “Public scrutiny has played its role and pressured the
ingly being challenged. A 123-page report of evidence universities to take action,” Liu told THE. However, he add-
compiled by Lyu Xiang, a former postgraduate student of ed that “more efforts are also needed to build a long-term
Zhang Yuqing at the School of Chemical Engineering and mechanism, including improving independent investiga-
Technology at Tianjin University, went viral online in late tion by third parties on misconduct and implementing more
November and led to the institution’s swift decision to sack severe punishment where it is appropriate”.
the professor after an investigation. As a response China’s ministry of education issued
According to the allegations, at least 50 peer-reviewed a code of conduct for supervisors in December, advising
papers credited to Prof. Zhang and as many as 40 Mas- academics “not to insult graduate students, nor to keep an
ter’s dissertations produced under his supervision between improper relationship with students”. A draft of the code
2011-2020 involved plagiarism and data fabrication. Lyu warns supervisors against treating students as “cheap la-
dropped out of his course in 2016 and waited several years bour”, according to local media, reflecting concerns that the
to reveal the report, until his fellow students had all gradu- country’s traditional reverence of professors led to many
ated. essentially making their students work for them as secre-
The school responded in a statement that Prof. Zhang taries.
has admitted “his own wrongdoings” and said that other Tang Jintai, a professor in the College of Journalism and
allegations are under further investigation. Communication at Jinan University, says both incidents
Liu Pu, director of journal and yearbook management at demonstrate “the capability and growing awareness of the
the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences’ Bureau of Scien- rising young generation”, which demands “radical changes
tific Research, says it’s “shocking to see that this professor to the bureaucratic elements in the education system”.
got away with misconduct of this magnitude for such a long (Excerpted and adapted from Times Higher Education and
time”. “The rigorous structure and writing (of the dossier) The Economist)

JANUARY 2021 EDUCATIONWORLD 55