A Professor and several students of Indian origin are among those mired in a plagiarism scandal at the mechanical engineering department of the Ohio University in the US in what is possibly the biggest scandal ever in higher education.

The Columbus Dispatch and The Wall Street Journal reported on the story that has academic circles worried that there could be many more such cases in perhaps every university around the country and indeed the world over.

The Dispatch reported that 20 graduates of Ohio University’s mechanical-engineering master’s programme have tentatively agreed to rewrite their theses, dating back as old as 20 years, after being accused of plagiarising portions from past theses and books. Four others denied the charge and have asked for a university hearing to defend themselves.

The Wall Street Journal said that acting on allegations made by a former graduate student who discovered the duplicated material while combing through past theses, the 20,000-student public university is taking action against 39 mechanical engineering graduates, 36 of them from abroad. It has ordered them to address plagiarism allegations or risk having their degrees revoked.

No evidence has surfaced that the accused Ohio students (no names were given)—who come from China, India, Sri Lanka, Saudi Arabia, Thailand, South Korea, and the US—doctored lab data or fraudulently claimed others’ discoveries as their own. The alleged plagiarism was found in the so-called “literature review” sections of their theses, which often account for as much as half of a finished work. In it, students are supposed to set the stage for their original research by discussing previous inquiry in the field.

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