"Plagiarism has become a major problem in academia"

A story in dnaindia starts with a statement: a US-based business school, The Smeal College of Business at Penn State University found out 18 cases of plagiarism by applicants, of which 10 were Indian. and the story also includes the text:

Plagiarism has become a major problem in academia, say experts. “It is not limited to the admission process. We get to see instances of this during the MBA programme as well. Some students do a copy-paste job of their assignments and take passages from the internet. Such projects are given a zero right away,” said BV Krishnamurthy, director, Alliance Business School.

Apparently, many of the students of generation Y are even copying their "statements of purpose" on admissions forms. Recall the 2007 IPBiz post which included the text:

A study published on March 7, 2007 by UCAS, the Universities and Colleges Admissions Service, found that five percent of the 50,000 personal statements[in university applications] surveyed at random contained "borrowed material", lifted mostly from one free Web site: www.studential.com. Most of the material plagiarised, however, was adapted by applicants with direct copying from online sources standing at less than 1 percent, the study revealed. "There is a small problem but we're looking at ways to address it," said Byron Price, communications officer of UCAS.

The "red flag" was the appearance of hundreds of applications mentioning "burning a hole in pyjamas at age eight" working with a chemistry set.