Peter Jackson column

Mar 16 2006 By Peter Jackson, The Journal

Internet plagiarism is rife at Oxford, apparently, with students shamelessly lifting chunks of work from the web and passing it off as their own.

A senior university officer believes the problem has become so serious that all students should be required to sign an affidavit for every piece of work they submit.

Bah, this would never have happened in my day. We had to go to all the trouble of walking into the library to find books to copy out of.

I recall Simon Schama getting into a frightful bate with me once for copying most of an essay from the wrong books.

But it never did me any harm. A thorough grounding in plagiarism is one of the best qualifications you can have for a career in journalism.

This is important as university is increasingly seen as a preparation for work and nothing else.

This week, a report declared that the most powerful economies of Old Europe, such as the UK, France and Germany, are struggling to keep up with Asia's hugely expanding higher-education sector. The OECD survey says that unless Europe increases spending on education and increases social mobility, it will endanger its future economic growth.

The days are passing, it argues, when Asia was characterised by low skills and low wages. Now countries such as China and India are starting to offer a highly skilled workforce for low wages.

The report says countries which give students an extra year of education can boost productivity and economic output by 3% to 6%.

This clearly presents us with a threat and rather knocks on the head the complacent idea some of us had been entertaining that however much the East booms, we would still be secure in our knowledge economy.

It would also seem to vindicate the Government's policy of expanding the numbers going to university, although I do wonder how many Chinese or Indian undergraduates are reading peace studies.

We have to improve the standards in our universities as well as increase the numbers attending. If we do not, we shall be condemned to being a low-skill, low-wage economy.