The following appeared in John Clare's Any Questions in the Education section of yesterday's Daily Telegraph:

"I wonder if your readers understand how thoroughly corrupted higher education has become. At the university where I teach, which is in the top half of the league tables, plagiarism and other forms of cheating are now endemic. Students routinely submit essays they've bought on the internet. So riddled is their course work with unacknowledged chunks of other people's work that we have to pass it all through an electronic screen in the hope of detecting the more egregious examples of plagiarism. And when they're found out, they just shrug and laugh it off, as if being caught is simply an occupational hazard. The truth is that most of our students are here not because they want to learn anything but because going to university has become a hoop they think they've got to go through - and the less effort it involves, the better. Hardly any of the 200 exam papers I've just finished marking do more than regurgitate the lecture notes that are helpfully posted on our department's website.
"After 25 years of university teaching, I have never felt so dispirited. Colleagues at other universities tell me their experiences are the same..."

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/education/main.jhtml

And here's another example:

http://www.csee.umbc.edu/courses/u...olicy.html