Friday’s Headlines: MBA’s increasingly scanning essays for copy cats

Surprising as it is, MBA applicants are still plagiarizing their entrance exams. To combat unethical behavior, increasing numbers of business schools are using software to root out plagiarism on MBA application essays, as the problem is widespread, according to a Businessweek article.

There are 10 to 20 schools using Turnitin, including Penn State’s Smeal, UCLA’s Anderson School of Management and Northeastern’s College of Business Administration. Based on the software company’s assessments, their product fills a huge need:

How widespread is plagiarism in admissions essays? It’s hard to tell, but a Turnitin study of 453,000 “personal statements” received by more than 300 colleges and universities in an unnamed English-speaking country found 200,000 contained text that matched sources in the Turnitin database. Of the more than 1 million matches found, Turnitin concluded that 36 percent were cases of suspected plagiarism. “It is safe to assume,” Turnitin wrote, “that more that 70,000 applicants that applied though this system did so with statements that may not have been their own work.”

Other News:

Deutsche is selling its global asset management unit for $3 billion. [Financial Times]

Credit Agricole will sell its private-equity unit to Coller Capital. [WSJ]

BofA, Goldman and Citi had their credit grades cut by Fitch Ratings. [Reuters]

Announced acquisitions in Europe by overseas companies rose by 58 percent this year. [Bloomberg]

Russian companies listed in London are expected to use their new currency to hunt for deals worldwide. [Reuters]

Regulators in Japan suspended part of Citi’s retail banking business for 30 days and barred the selling of products tied to interest rates for 10 days. [Bloomberg]

Citi’s head of Japan banking will step down next month after the lender was punished by local regulators for the third time in seven years. [Businessweek]

Canadian bank Canaccord will buy London stockbroker Collins Stewart Hawkpoint for $394 million. [Financial Times]

Analyst says: Banks’ 2011 revenue growth is worst since the Great Depression and is unlikely to improve in 2012. [Bloomberg]

The average hedge fund lost 4.4 percent in the first 11 months of the year. [Reuters]

New York hedge fund firm Fir Tree Partners raised $96 million for a fund that will be offered by affiliate Camellia Advisors in less than a year. [Hedge Fund Net]