Turnitin.com: A Necessary Evil?

Turnitin.com: A Necessary Evil?
By: Chris Tsiropoulos

Turnitin.com (or Turnitin) is essentially a database that has indexed all books, the public internet, student papers and notes. Turnitin sells licenses to universities and high schools (and now businesses) to use their service which essentially checks if the student has plagiarized the work they are submitting. Most students are obligated to use this service as instructed by their teacher or professor, stating that an electronic copy must be submitted to Turnitin and a paper copy must be submitted as well. However, I think students should question Turnitin.com and understand what the main interests of this service are.

Students submit their work to Turnitin without even questioning the authority. I have submitted numerous papers to Turnitin, and I must admit that the submittion process is very smooth. Turnitin makes you feel like you are contributing to the greater good, that "Hey I know I'm not cheating, and I don't want someone else to cheat off my work, so I'll hand it to you guys and you can take care of that.Thanks!" Now, that's how some people feel, while others are terrified of Turnitin because they have copy-and-pasted too many sentences from Wikipedia, but that's another story. After I submit something to Turnitin, I always ask myself why I am doing this. I'm essentially uploading my work to an online service, and they are making profits from my work, and I am not reimbursed at all. The best part about this situation, is that I am obligated to do it. In most classes, a professor will give you a mark of zero if you have not submitted your paper to Turnitin.com.

So students upload papers to Turnitin, Turnitin checks if they have plagiarized, and then sends the results to the teacher or professor. As a student, I am obligated to submit my original work to Turnitin, which is a third-party company not connected to any academic institution, which then creates a massive database and sells their service to most academic institutions. I submit my paper to make sure it's not plagiarized, the university buys the license to use this service, and Turnitin generates profits. I don't think this is fair to the student. If I have to submit my paper to Turnitin.com, I am essentially guilty-until-proven-innocent. All papers are plagiarized, and until they have been scanned by Turnitin.com, you will not receive a grade for the paper submitted. This logic doesn't seem right.

Don't get me wrong, I think idea behind Turnitin.com is genuine. I mean, who is going to catch all the student plagiarizers out there? Someone has to do it! I agree with this. However, Turnitin.com has two major shortcomings: it is a for profit business and students have no choice but to submit their work to the service. The credibility of a service which makes money from papers that students must submit, and then sells their service to academic institutions must be questioned. I think this for-profit structure is the biggest shortcoming of Turnitin because they are providing this service to make money, not to "ensure academic integrity among students." If Turnitin was a social enterprise, their business would be credible in the eyes of students. If I knew that Turnitin generated enough profits to run their organization and then donate their profits back into the education system, I wouldn't mind submitting my paper to this service at all. Seriously.

I wanted to find out if anyone else has questioned the credibility and intent of Turnitin.com and according to it's nemesis, Wikipedia, there are many. Two students at McGill University decided not to submit their papers to Turnitin.com and after winning a ruling from the Senate Committee of Student Grievances their papers were graded without the use of Turnitin.com. I also found it interesting that at Ryerson University, it is entirely up to the students whether they want to submit their work to Turnitin.com or not. Also, the some of the best universities in the world such as Yale, Harvard, Princeton and Stanford have instituted a campus-wide ban on the use of Turnitin.com. If these credible institutions are banning the use of Turnitin.com, I think that others will follow their lead and begin to phase out Turnitin.com or give the students choice when it comes to submitting their work.

What is the ultimate solution? I don't really know. I think that if Turnitin.com was a not-for-profit business, students would not have a problem with it. I do believe that students must be given a choice and not simply mandated by their professors to submit their work to this service. I am all for academic integrity among students, but there must be a better solution out there.

If you have a solution to solving academic integrity among students or want to give us your thoughts on Turnitin.com, leave it in the comments.