UDSM Vice Chancellor, Prof Rwekaza Mukandala
The software which is widely used in the United States, Asia and
Europe will soon be installed to prevent research scholars from
resorting to plagiarism.
The Vice Chancellor, Prof Rwekaza Mukandala told The Guardian early
this week that the university through the Director of Postgraduate
studies had already procured the software for the purpose.
Mukandala acknowledged the escalating rate of academic cheating
noting that ‘the matter is typical unacceptable’ for the university that
is earmarked to be a leading centre of intellectual wealth spearheading
the quest for sustainable and inclusive development.
“Research plagiarism is a serious problem in Tanzania,” he said.
Mkandala was quick to point out that already the university
together with the Attorney General is facing legal charges at the High
Court in Dar es Salaam after having revoked a law degree it awarded to
one (name held) senior legal officer.
“He has taken the matter to court to challenge our decision,” he said without going further into details.
According to one academician who has some background on political
science and public administration said the institution was undertaking
major reforms to realise its vision 2061.
Prof Mukandala is now leading over 25,000 university students and
he believes that the software will be a solution to a long-standing
problem at the institution.
Since its establishment, the university had not instituted a
regulatory mechanism to check plagiarism and the Vice Chancellor did not
immediately disclose the name of the software.
He later detailed that a section of officials at the department were being trained to operate the software.
"Our objective is to stop plagiarism and improve the standard of
research work," said Mukandala who has led numerous transformations to
the very oldest public university in the country.
If adopted, it means all research works and theses of the scholars
would need to be approved by an officer in-charge and certified with
anti-plagiarism skills.
The officer in-charge will be responsible for scanning/screening all the submitted soft copy of the theses or research works.
The report given out by the software would clearly mention the
percentage of plagiarism in a particular research work. The scholars
would be given recommendations on the basis of the percentage and if
they still fail to rectify their respective mistakes, their research
works might be scrapped.
Meanwhile, the Vice Chancellor has announced a plan to give a fee
waiver amongst graduates interested to pursue various graduate
programmes whist volunteering as tutors and assistants.
The decision comes amid plans to improve modes of delivery of
graduate programmes where in developed nations are merely subsidised by
the government or sponsors.
He said graduate course at the UDSM were earlier relatively cheaper
due to the government commitments to release part of its other charges
‘OC’ arrangements to fund academic programmes at the institution.
“Unfortunately there have been drastic decline in OC from the
government pushing the Senate to review fee structure to reflect the
programmes.
About scholarships, he said the university is engaging with the government to extend loan provisions among graduates,” he noted.
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