theological education

Plagiarism: An international education bubble

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Prof. John Stackhouse writes about plagiarism on his blog.  He writes:

Plagiarism is a vital problem in academic work, since the academy is a culture of both honour and honesty. (Don’t get me started on how dishonorable or dishonest the academy can be—I’m talking about ideals here.) Without honour and honesty, we can’t do our work since so much of it depends on trusting each other to tell the truth, including truth about our sources.

In my time as prof (both in Africa and Canada), I have given what I think is a disproportionate number of “F’s” for plagiarism, not because I was too hard but because too many of my students were ill-prepared for their studies at the undergraduate or master’s level.  Generally I found that my academic deans were halfheartedly supportive, for it was disruptive of the process of higher education for one of the professors to mark students so hard.  I am of the opinion that some cases of plagiarism merit immediate dismissal; other students should be sternly warned and should fail the paper or class without remediation.  But in every case, I was advised to wield a lighter hand and to allow the students second and even third chances.

In my opinion, there is an international education bubble.  We have too many schools and too many people who graduate from the schools whose diplomas don’t indicate any real competence.  I know that I’ve passed a few students who had no business being in school.  I even had one case where a student repeatedly failed remediation in a course with me, a course which was necessary for his undergraduate degree; and yet the dean still allowed him to enter into a Master’s program and to defend his thesis while never having passed my course!  He is in Congo-Brazzaville now– I heard he became a professor in a faculty of theology there.

Affirmative Action: Why American-style liberalism would be bad for Africa, I

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See the preamble to this series.

An acquaintance of mine, Dr. Tyler F. Williams laments the lack of women bibliobloggers as part of a more general discussion of lack of minority writers in blogs in general. Well, if there was ever something less worthy to fret over.  Blogs are free for the asking.  Anyone can start and maintain a blog.  Perhaps there are good reasons why men do biblioblogs and not women, but they have nothing to do with discrimination.
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“I was a soldier” / “Je fus militaire”

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A few years ago I was teaching a course in church history in Bangui, and one of my students came to see me.  He wanted to explain why he was studying at the seminary.  He said to me in French, “Je fus militaire” (I was a soldier).

I remember this because of the simple past tense, which is literary and sounds funny in spoken French.  He had been a rebel soldier and had spent years in the forest of Congo on the opposite side of the Ubangi river from Bangui; as a rebel, he could not return to Bangui until President Ange-Félix Patassé was deposed by François Bozizé, the current President.  While in the forest, he said, they had little to eat and nothing to do. They started reading the Bible together and praying, and so the soldiers in this new church elected my student to come to seminary to become an army chaplain and to lead them as a pastor.
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Obama's Attack on Charitable Giving

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I asked earlier how the economic crisis is affecting African faculties of theology.  Now the New York Times reports:

Administration officials said Mr. Obama would propose to reduce the value of itemized tax deductions for everyone in the top income tax bracket, 35 percent, and many of those in the 33 percent bracket — roughly speaking, starting at $250,000 in annual income for a married couple.

Under existing law, the tax benefit of itemizing deductions rises with a taxpayer’s marginal tax bracket (the bracket that applies to the last dollar of income). For example, $10,000 in itemized deductions reduces tax liability by $3,500 for someone in the 35 percent bracket.

Mr. Obama would allow a saving of only $2,800 — as if the person were in the 28 percent bracket.

I expect that this tax grab will be seriously detrimental to African theological faculties which depend on American donations to make ends meet.  Now imagine that for every $10,000 given in charitable donations the donor partner only receives back $2800 at tax time.  This will have a spiral effect downward, because in our experence, the tax refund cheque that we receive every year is immediately re-donated.  If the refund cheque is smaller giving by donor partners will necessarily go down.  This is bad news for theological education in Africa.  The net effect is that Obama will be stealing from Africa.  I told you not to hold your breath for benefits to Africa from Obama! He is trying to put 7% levy on every dollar given by your important partners.

But already the global crisis is having an effect on African theological education.  One president of a seminary in Africa wrote to select partners this week:

We would like to inform you that because of the global crisis, our institution … is going through very difficult time. Since the end of December 2008, we are not able to pay salaries of our staff. We are accumulating bills for electricity, water and other supplies.

We are now going to lay off part of our staff at the end of February. We are also taking several steps to minimize the impact of the financial crisis on our institution.

External Links:

Obama’s Charitable Problem, by Monte Kuligowski

Obama, Charity, and Fairness, by Gregory V. Helvering