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<p>The efficiency folks in the real world think the same way.</p>
<p>Interesting – lots of the (presumably adult) posters on the thread don’t think it is a problem, but I guess times have changed, and the academic integrity codes with them. There are lots of college courses where I got a second helping of credit without having to do a whole lot of work for the second course because of work I’d done earlier – statistics and computer programming both come to mind immediately – oh, and economic geography after finishing many econ courses. </p>
<p>In the consulting world, reuse and rewriting are the norm, and at the firm I worked for, a particular style was strongly encouraged specifically to aid the reuse component.</p>
<p>I can’t believe there’s a rule against this. The student in question may learn a little less by not researching and writing two different papers, but that’s his problem, not the school’s. In my own life, whenever I can kill two birds with one stone, I certainly do it.</p>
<p>I agree with you, bceagle. Nothing wrong with efficiency. </p>
<p>And if I came up with some brilliant insight when writing a paper on Hamlet in 12th grade, and then got assigned Hamlet in English 101 at college, why wouldn’t I leverage my insight? That might be lazy but lazy =/= cheating. </p>
<p>I seem to recall that one of my kids was assigned, for summer reading, the choice between books x, y and z. She had read book x out of class for her own personal enjoyment. What’s wrong with then choosing x?</p>
<p>I’m confused as why it would be wrong as well. If you give your best work/research into paper A, do you then have to make paper B sub-par just to make it different?</p>
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<p>What you need to do is choose different topics. This student was not told to write two papers on the same topic. The student could easily have chosen two entirely different topics to write about. The student instead chose a topic that fit the topic requirements of both classes and chose to turn in the same paper. To use my earlier example, suppose the student is taking American Foreign Policy and The Politics of China. The student chose to write one paper about America’s policy towards China and submit that paper for both classes. But the student was not told to write a paper about America’s policy towards China–the student was told to write one paper about American Foreign Policy and one paper about The Politics of China.</p>
<p>I guess the policy that you cannot submit the same work for more than one course must have come up very recently since so many parents don’t think this is a problem at all. I believe most colleges now explicitly forbid the submission of same essay for more than one class unless having the prior permission of the professor for whom the essay was originally written.</p>
<p>From the undergrad college I’m attending:</p>
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<p>Actually, I don’t think you’re able to submit a professional research paper to any additional publishers while it is already being assessed by one----you have to try one publication at a time.</p>
<p>I actually found it quite interesting that my case, the professors gave me different grades on the paper. The first prof gave me the only A in the class, and said it was the most original take on the topic (analysis of Kafka’s “The Trial”) he had seen in many years of teaching. Higher grades than most of the upper level English students in the class (I was a 2nd semester freshman who had weaseled into this 400 level class because it sounded interesting). The 2nd prof gave us the exact same topic in an upper level literature class I took a year later (which he had also assigned, for someone who earlier wanted an example), and had barely any comments along with the B grade. This was at a very large university. Honestly, the complete subjectivity of that experience helped turn me off to taking any more upper level English classes.</p>
<p>Agree with those who say that I would be fired if I didn’t reuse previous work in my current job. This is another example, I think, of how academia does NOT prepare students for the real world. Don’t get me wrong, I am a big fan of a college education. But only in academia would this rule even be considered. I suppose the “right thing” in the academic world would be to say to the prof, “I’m sorry, but I have already completed that assignment for another class. Could I please have a different question to write on?” But it just sounds so stupid when you think about it in a working world context.</p>
<p>Here’s a concrete example from this past semester. In my course on parallel programming, students were supposed to do a project of their choice as long as it had an appropriate scope and was related to the topic of the course. One student was also taking a course in bioinformatics which also required a project and he chose to implement and evaluate a parallel version of a bioinformatics algorithm. Same project for both courses. Not only did I give him permission to do this, I encouraged all the students to try to leverage their other interests. This was the best project I got this semester.</p>
<p>Yale seems to have the same policy.
[Cheating</a>, Plagiarism, and Documentation | Yale College](<a href=“http://yalecollege.yale.edu/content/cheating-plagiarism-and-documentation]Cheating”>http://yalecollege.yale.edu/content/cheating-plagiarism-and-documentation)</p>
<p>The very first topic addressed.</p>
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<p>I would suspect that there are some colleges that are not so explicit.</p>
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<p>I guess it depends on what you consider to be the point of writing papers in college. I consider the point to be to learn about a particular topic in more depth than we can cover in class. I let students choose their topics because I want them to learn about something that interests them. The student who writes one paper has learned half as much as the student who writes two papers. </p>
<p>Edited to add: Another point of writing papers is to practice writing. Students become better writers by writing. And the student who writes two papers has of course written more than the student who writes one paper. </p>
<p>Given that I let students choose their own topics, never will a student be faced with the problem of having already written on the exact same topic before. In the odd instance in which a student does receive the exact same assignment in two classes, I do think the morally correct thing to do is alert the professor.</p>
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<p>Maybe I’m misunderstanding. These topics seem significantly different to me. It is difficult for me to see how a student could supply a single paper that would adequately cover both topics. In that case the punishment wuld be a substandard grade for the paper about the Chinese political system. </p>
<p>Unless the student chose to exhaustively cover the Chinese Communist political system AND write about our government’s response to it in a single paper. THat defeats the purpose- I don’t see how it saves any work.</p>
<p>I agree, only in academia. Unbelievable that colleges actually feel the need to proscribe this. I do not see it as dishonest, I see it as industrious and a tad ingenious. I do not see it as plagarizing as one cannot theoretically plagarize their own self. What are the odds that you would take two different classes and be able to reuse previous work. If the student even edited a tiny bit on the second turn in, then the situation is even more crazy. Subjectivity is fine, if one prof gives it an A and another gives it a B…well that’s pretty much the way the cookie crumbles in life. One person’s great idea is another person’s mediocre idea. I’m just shocked that it actually gets written into some college “honor” codes.</p>
<p>I never would have thought of this rule–time to make sure our kiddos have read the entire student code of behavior!</p>
<p>(Sure glad my grad school wasn’t in communication with my undergrad…
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<p>I am surprised by the disgruntlement by the forum parents on this topic. College is not an internship for a job, it is (usually) a liberal education. This is not a case for efficiency on the job. Double-dipping a paper defeats the goal of broadly educating a student since double-dipping by its very nature misses out of the chance to explore a topic uniquely.</p>
<p>I once developed a very unique thesis for an English literature class. About a year later, I was taking another English lit class with another professor and I wanted to expound on my earlier work. I simply talked to the professors ahead of time. I even directly quoted my first paper on some of my more salient points. It was an oddly proud moment to see myself in my own Works Cited. This was not a huge burden to work with the professors to avoid double-dipping.</p>
<p>I am of the mind that it is wonderful that colleges have honor codes and that colleges have higher goals in their pursuit of imparting a liberal education to their students. The double-dipping policy makes sense, is easy to understand, and can often be worked around if the student communicates with professors. </p>
<p>Not reading and understanding the honor code is no excuse, though perhaps an argument can be made for colleges to help freshmen get up to speed on the issues since the rules (and consequences) are often much more strict than in HS.</p>
<p>It would never have occurred to me that this was against a student conduct code or considered to be dishonest. It’s the student’s own work, so it’s not plagiarism.</p>
<p>Wow, guess you learn something new every day!</p>
<p>^
Same here, would have never crossed my mind.</p>
<p>My immediate reaction was that of course this is not an ethical thing to do. I was very surprised by some of the reactions here. Maybe I’m just older than most folks or something.</p>
<p>I’m not disgruntled. 
Whether or not it’s taken care of by the school’s honor code it’s clearly not in the best interests of a student to merely recycle papers. Though I can imagine instances when expanding and developing a previous paper could be a learning experience. And I can certainly see that if you check with the two professors involved that writing one longer paper may make sense. I think many schools tell their students about the honor code during orientation, but I don’t know whether they actually make sure the students have read them. According to my CMU son they spend more time making sure they take the alcohol course than learning about academic honesty.</p>