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Question: Why you should care if you ever plagiarise?

Answer: You Should. There are also a variety of other stakeholders to consider when you cheat as a student such as your academic institution and future employers.

There are two core, fundamental reasons why students should not plagiarise academic content:

Plagiarism is stealing: Stealing other people’s work ideas, critical arguments and sentence structure. Morally, it is a similar act to stealing a car or anything else. The concept remains the same. As a student, if somebody else stole your ideas, how would you feel?
Plagiarism represents information illiteracy: If you plagiarise somebody else’s work, you are implying that you are incapable of expressing your own thoughts and ideas in an eloquent enough manner to attain a high-grade classification. In essence, being caught plagiarising is an admission of illiteracy in handling information which is not an impression that you want to create as a student. It can also have several adverse effects with respect to the students ability to enter gainful employment in the future.
The after effects of being caught plagiarising are really quite profound. If caught plagiarising, the immediate outcome is that the student has proven themselves to be lazy and untrustworthy. These attributes are not only immediately detrimental to the success of their academic pursuits but could also cross over into their capacity to attain a high paying career in the future. From the perspective of a potential employer, there is little value in recruiting an employee who has already proven themselves to be lazy and dishonest before they have even completed a shift for the company. It is in no way an act of overstatement to suggest that this happens, and it very often does as academic referees are vital in obtaining gainful employment later in life.

Instead, the main aim for modern students should be to attain information literacy. Information literacy is essential in ensuring that students do not plagiarise academic content. This concept is defined as; “knowing when and why you need information, where to find it, and how to evaluate, use and communicate it in an ethical manner” (Chartered Institute of Library and Information Professionals) (CLIP, 2018, p.1). An alternative definition of information literacy is the capacity for students to use source texts as a basis for developing their own ability to think critically about a subject matter. The key benefit to a student developing their capabilities in the field of information literacy is that they increase their likelihood of attaining a higher-grade classification at the end of the academic year.

(Source: Viper, 03 Sep 2021)

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