I saw an ad that the Turks and Caicos Islands Community College (TCICC) was offering an associate degree in criminal justice online. Being curious, I decided to check out the program. While reading the program objectives, something caught my attention: Be prepared to enter a Bachelor’s Degree program in Criminal Justice without any additional academic preparation. I recognized that wording from my alma mater, Ashworth College. Upon comparing both programs' objectives, I realized they were identical, except for a few instances where TCICC edited American to reflect TCI and English (British). They also removed Ashworth from their last objective. I wonder if they have permission to do this. Is permission needed? Isn't this plagiarism? https://www.ashworthcollege.edu/associate-degrees/criminal-justice/curriculum/ https://tcicc.edu.tc/associate-degree-in-criminal-justice/
Moreover, I have experienced one lecturer uses slide decks that are entirely copied, even without changing the slide theme and format, from another instructor in a different university. No citations at all, the only change is the cover page. The most ironic thing is the one using the other person's materials taught us tort law.
Plagiarism possible? Sure. You know what's probably more likely? A small community college buying canned curriculum from Penn Foster (owner of Ashworth). If you hunt around in course objectives and descriptions for online Masters programs at schools without robust online learning programs they are often identical because it is the same company creating the course.
I had a Microeconomics course where the first lecture consisted of the professor opening up YouTube and putting on an OpenCourseWare recording from another, better professor.
Only for that class. It turned out he was not a good fit for that school and program. He refused to comply with disability accommodations granted by the school (which if not a violation of federal law is at least a violation of his contract with the school), refused to allow any technology to be used in the classrooms (which might be reasonable except that we were in a "laptop required" program, and several of the students used theirs for their accommodations), and he deliberately set dates to see assignment information on our LMS to expire several days before the assignment itself was due. I remember having an assignment due on a Friday, but if you hadn't downloaded the instructions/prompt by Tuesday you simply couldn't access it to know what you were supposed to do or how to submit the completed assignment. When asked why he would set it up like that, he replied that we should be starting work on our assignments before they're due therefore he's not responsible for us not having access to the instructions. I skewered him in the course evaluation even though I did well and hoped he wouldn't be back. I never saw him again, for what it's worth.
Major publishers give out instructor's resource kits associated with their textbooks for free, with verified institutional email. It's how they bribe us to keep assigning these textbooks.
