'In its report to Chancellor Fernando Treviño, the review committee weighing plagiarism in Glenn Poshard's 1984 dissertation indicated it had "investigated the academic culture in that period, in the Department of Higher Education, and specifically, by [sic] Dr. Poshard's immediate peers and adviser."

Yet in restricting its focus to the question of plagiarism, the review committee ignored broader issues about that culture that are raised by the character of Poshard's work itself.

His dissertation reports the results of re-administering a survey of programs for gifted children conducted statewide by the Illinois State Board of Education six years earlier. Though he suggests that his interest is both descriptive and interpretive, he gathered no information upon which to base interpretations of his data. Thus, the dissertation is entirely descriptive.

What scholarly contribution might Poshard have hoped to make through this project? None, it seems, because his topic was not of academic interest. His results could have let the ISBE know whether gifted programs in the south of the state were expanding, contracting or changing in other ways, but were this of concern to the IBSE, it would have contracted for the research. The results would not merit dissertation treatment because they didn't allow for the sophisticated analysis which normally is required for a Ph.D.

This means Poshard's project never should have been approved by his dissertation adviser and committee. Indeed, it could only get him into trouble. For instance, there was no way to write a proper "literature review," since there was no literature bearing directly on his topic; hence his review meanders through the general topic of gifted education without focus, and inserts, among its 40 pages, nine from the "executive summary" of a national study.

If we subtract the 25 pages of tables and graphs from the 107-page dissertation, the inserted executive summary is 11 percent of the entire written work.

Further, a purely descriptive dissertation would allow no interesting conclusions to be drawn, and none of those Poshard arrived at were either interesting or much related to the data he obtained.

For example, Poshard writes on page 105: "It can be concluded that increased Gifted Area Service Center efforts to bring local districts into compliance emphasizing program articulation across all grade levels has resulted in the increased size of programs in many districts."

But this statement is not related to any of his research questions or findings. Most of the conclusions come out of thin air and seem geared primarily to applaud the efforts of the local Gifted Area Service Center, by which Poshard was employed at the time.

Reading Glenn Poshard's dissertation gave me some sympathy for his effort to shift blame to his dissertation committee, if for a different reason. Had its members held him to substantive standards of scholarship, he would have developed a more extensive research project and produced very different work. His plagiarism was only one aspect of the low scholarly standards for advanced degrees in SIU's Department of Higher Education.

The character of Poshard's dissertation helps us understand why he has appeared so clueless about academic standards in responding to the discovery of his plagiarism. How could he appreciate such standards when he had never been held to any, nor apparently developed them on his own? This also helps explain why it was possible for the review committee to see his plagiarism as comparatively blameless.

It appears, then, that Poshard participated in a defective academic culture, and has, these many years later, become its victim. The response to this by SIU's Board of Trustees, one of whose members hails from the Department of Higher Education, may suggest it simply does not see that culture as much of a problem.

Alternatively, it could indicate a worry that guaranteeing academic standards, both retrospectively and prospectively, is too massive and too threatening an endeavor for SIU's trustees to initiate.

The character of Poshard's dissertation raises more and weightier questions than any new plagiarism policy from SIU will answer.'