Ohio University trustees approve degree revocation for plagiarists

Ohio University wrestled with the issue of what to do with "bad acts" of students who had already graduated:

The trustees [of OU] also passed a resolution authorizing OU President Roderick McDavis to revoke degrees as one punishment for graduate students in the Russ College of Engineering and Technology who are accused of plagiarism.

The resolution applies the academic misconduct rules from the student handbook to graduated students and formally establishes the Academic Honesty Hearing Committee. The committee body will determine guilt and punishment for the 34 students accused of plagiarizing their masters or doctoral dissertation. [from the Post Online]

In the OU case, the bad acts were performed while the people WERE STUDENTS at OU, but were identified as bad acts later in time.

In the case of Jan-Hendrik Schon, the University of Konstanz had no trouble revoking Schon's Ph.D. for bad acts performed by Schon AFTER Schon graduated, which acts were unrelated to his work at Konstanz.

Separately, the Post noted Ohio University lost 54 full-time tenure-track faculty last year, including 29 who resigned, according to Phyllis Bernt. The trustees pressed Bernt to find out why so many faculty resigned.