Your point about the plagiarist’s failing to demonstrate competency is right in line with what Lewis says above about its not being punishment at all, and I totally agree, as long as the plagiarism in question is the wholesale type I assume in my post.

You say that your aim is to teach, which is certainly a valuable goal, both for the students and for you. But when you fail a student for a course, you produce effects that go beyond the scope of what it means to teach (at least if teaching is construed narrowly enough): a student might have to fork out more money for extra semesters, a student might not be able to get a job because of blemishes on his record, whatever.

I don’t think it goes beyond the scope at all. You’re in effect teaching them a lesson, that plagiarism is unacceptable in your class, and can hopefully iterate the reasons why. They may not get credit for that lesson, but it is a lesson to learn. Whether they learn that lesson or not is a different matter.

For me, plagiarizing comes down to this: It fails to show that the student has demonstrated competency in a specific area of the class, or for a specific assignment. For students who have plagiarized in my classes, I’ve sent the assignment in question to the Dean, with a recommended punishment (I’ve always recommended failure for the assignment). That seems like a reasonable punishment to me. Sometimes the Dean tacks on something else, sometimes the student reviewers tack on even more. I’ve found the student ethics committee is far harsher on fellow students, which I actually like. A “policing of their own,” so to speak.

For instance, I might favor a system that allows students who perform poorly in a class to withdraw the class entirely from their transcript, insofar as the consequences of a bad grade in the class go well beyond simply signaling failure in that particular course. And I might be okay with this system applying to students who receive poor marks for honest work as well as for students who cheat. I am fine thinking that, qua considerations about that course itself, the student should be disproportionately punished for cheating.

A similar explanation will have to be given for your justification, then. You say that your aim is to teach, which is certainly a valuable goal, both for the students and for you. But when you fail a student for a course, you produce effects that go beyond the scope of what it means to teach (at least if teaching is construed narrowly enough): a student might have to fork out more money for extra semesters, a student might not be able to get a job because of blemishes on his record, whatever. So the question is whether the benefit of punishment in a given case (upholding a system that deters students from wasting your time, which in turn leads to better teaching) outweighs those negative effects. My sense is that in most cases the answer is no.

That said, I don’t have any ready ideas for what a suitable deterrent might be. Once you’ve given someone a zero on the specific assignment that was plagiarized (which I agree does not constitute punishment if the work was indeed wholly plagiarized), it seems as if there aren’t many more punishments in the control of the professor beyond failure for the course. Docking points from a different assignment doesn’t seem fair somehow (though I’m not sure why it seems that way, given that failure for the entire course seems at least legitimate but it ultimately devalues every assignment). Maybe negative points? Additional assignments (a paper on why cheating is bad might be appropriate in a philosophy class, at least) isn’t a bad idea, but I don’t like pitching writing as a punishment.

The university pays the professor for n hours of work a week. Time spent grading a plagiarized paper wastes a chunk of those n hours, and those hours are not cheap.

The University has an interest in preventing waste of university resources.

Lewis – I’m very glad you wrote this, as I have mixed feelings about this particular justification. If the point is to teach a general point about courtesy or respect (ie it’s wrong to waste other people’s time), I agree that there is at least some responsibility for the teacher to teach such a thing (to whatever extent instructors are responsible for the general moral development of their students, which in my view is non-negligible).

However, there is a thin line between concern for the student’s knowledge of social customs on the one hand and hurt feelings or anger on behalf of the instructor. I do not think that “I don’t like to have my time wasted” is a legitimate reason for punishing the student. That’s not because feelings never justify action – if you and the student had a dinner date (after the semester was over, of course!!) and the student left you waiting for thirty minutes, you would arguably be justified in punishing the student due to your anger (giving them the cold shoulder or whatever). But the classroom dynamic is fundamentally different. The instructor does not cease to have personal feelings or to be a human being, of course, but by accepting certain powers (the power to give grades, etc) he thereby forfeits some of the spoils of regular human interaction, such as the right to punish someone for conduct they find personally offensive. In the same way, a cop isn’t justified in giving you a bigger fine if you don’t call him “sir”.

Great point about failure on the individual assignment, though – I think you’re precisely right that it’s not punitive at all to fail someone on a specific assignment, at least if they failed to do it in a complete way (ex hypothesi the student copied the entire thing).

Plagiarizing wastes the time and energy of the grader. My purpose in grading is to help give informative feedback to students about how well the understand the material and how well they are able to convey that understanding within the boundaries of the assignment. It is often an unpleasant activity, but, an instructor can accomplish the goal on any assignment that was written so as to honestly present the student’s understanding of the material. Plagiarized work does not serve this end, and, as a result, any time spent evaluating plagiarized work is time wasted. And time spent dealing with plagiarized work is time not spent dealing with honestly generated work. So, given that I hate wasting my time, and that plagiarism wastes my time on a pretty unpleasant activity at the expense of allowing me to spend that time actually accomplishing my main goals in grading, it seems permissible to take punitive measures against plagiarism to deter future plagiarism.