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EDUCATION

Anti-plagiarism university head quits after being accused of ‘plagiarism’

A Spanish university chancellor who's institution developed a system to catch plagiarists was forced to quit his post on a national education commission on Thursday -- having been accused of plagiarism.

Published: 16 December 2016 09:33 CET
Anti-plagiarism university head quits after being accused of 'plagiarism'
The chancellor of the King Juan Carlos University has been forced to quit.

Head of the King Juan Carlos University in Madrid since 2013, Fernando Suarez has been accused of numerous counts of plagiarism, perhaps over as much as 10 years.

Suarez was forced to quit his position on the permanent commission of the conference of Spanish university chancellors, which said it was due to “information published about the presumed plagiarism”.

He is suspected of copying work by students as well as colleagues, both at home and abroad.

One person Suarez is suspected of having copied is French historian Bernard Vincent, who claims his work appeared in an article the Spaniard sent to the University of Santa Barbara in California.

“I'm absolutely indignant. It's scandalous,” Vincent told AFP.

“He copied two of my paragraphs on the repression carried out under the Inquisition in Spain, but he borrowed entire pages from five other colleagues.    

“Of the 30 pages in his article, 26 or 27 were 'borrowed'.”    Last month, Suarez had written to his university's board claiming to be the victim of “defamation” and “harassment”.

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EDUCATION

Sweden’s Social Democrats call for ban on new free schools

Sweden's opposition Social Democrats have called for a total ban on the establishment of new profit-making free schools, in a sign the party may be toughening its policies on profit-making in the welfare sector.

Published: 18 April 2024 16:09 CEST
Sweden's Social Democrats call for ban on new free schools

“We want the state to slam on the emergency brakes and bring in a ban on establishing [new schools],” the party’s leader, Magdalena Andersson, said at a press conference.

“We think the Swedish people should be making the decisions on the Swedish school system, and not big school corporations whose main driver is making a profit.” 

Almost a fifth of pupils in Sweden attend one of the country’s 3,900 primary and secondary “free schools”, first introduced in the country in the early 1990s. 

Even though three quarters of the schools are run by private companies on a for-profit basis, they are 100 percent state funded, with schools given money for each pupil. 

This system has come in for criticism in recent years, with profit-making schools blamed for increasing segregation, contributing to declining educational standards and for grade inflation. 

In the run-up to the 2022 election, Andersson called for a ban on the companies being able to distribute profits to their owners in the form of dividends, calling for all profits to be reinvested in the school system.  

READ ALSO: Sweden’s pioneering for-profit ‘free schools’ under fire 

Andersson said that the new ban on establishing free schools could be achieved by extending a law banning the establishment of religious free schools, brought in while they were in power, to cover all free schools. 

“It’s possible to use that legislation as a base and so develop this new law quite rapidly,” Andersson said, adding that this law would be the first step along the way to a total ban on profit-making schools in Sweden. 

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