Graduate bewildered after finding her master’s thesis stolen by teachers

It was October 2016 when Faiza Khan, who was then pursuing her master’s degree in business administration at the Iqra University (IU) Gulshan-e-Iqbal Campus 1 in Abid Town, submitted her thesis to the varsity for the completion of her degree. The thesis was eventually approved and she got her degree.

After having earned an MBA degree from a Pakistani varsity, she first wanted to pursue further education aboard but was unable to do so. She then began her career as a banker. This year, she thought of improving her MBA thesis and get it published in a reputed journal. On March 16, she was searching for something related to her study on the internet when she encountered something shocking. She found her own MBA thesis on Google. However, it carried someone else’s names.

“I was shocked to see that my paper had been published but I had no information about it,” she exclaimed. And the three authors who had plagiarised her work included one of her teachers.

As she compared her original thesis with the online version, she found that her teacher and her two co-authors had not only copied 100 per cent statistics but also variables, hypotheses, research methodology, models and graphs from her thesis.

The published paper was titled ‘Consumer Behavioral Intentions Towards Mobile Payment Services: An Empirical Analysis in Pakistan’. It was authored by Wajeeha Aslam, an IU academic, along with two corresponding authors — Prof Dr Imtiaz Arif, who is an associate dean and the director of academics at the varsity, and Marija Ham, faculty member of the economics department of the University of Osijek, Croatia.

The paper was published in a journal, MARKET-TRŽIŠTE, in its Issue 2 Volume 29 in 2017. The said journal is the official journal of the faculty of economics and business, University of Zagreb.

The original title of the student’s thesis was ‘Adoption of Mobile Payment Services’ that had been approved and supervised by Wajeeha. When The News compared the student’s thesis with the published paper, it found that the three authors had used the same questionnaire, data tables and survey conducted and developed by the student. The only change was the paraphrasing of sentences. “They reworded my thesis but without changing its basic idea. This is why the conclusion and results of my thesis and their so-called research paper are the same because they copied and pasted 100 per cent data, tabulation and survey from my work.”

Naturally, Faiza was shocked. She tried to contact her teacher to complain about the stolen thesis but got no satisfactory response. “I was told that the theses of students are considered the property of university. Therefore, the teachers have the right to either publish them or use them for research purpose.”

Disappointed by the teacher’s response, she contacted the Higher Education Commission of Pakistan (HEC) via email and demanded disciplinary action against the faculty members involved in the fraud.

“I was a student of Iqra University during the duration of September 2013 to December 2016. I was enrolled in [MBA] thesis program in January 2016 and wrote a thesis on a topic ‘Adoption of Mobile Payments Services’. My thesis supervisor was Wajeeha Aslam and she is currently a lecturer of Iqra University,” read the email.

She maintained that her teacher had published her thesis without informing her and taking her consent. “I did research in 2016 and she published my thesis in 2017. She published the thesis with Prof Dr Imtiaz Arif who is currently director academics of Iqra University,” the email read.

The complainant told the HEC that she had all the evidence to prove that her thesis was stolen. However, the commission suggested to her to lodge a complaint with the university. She then emailed all the evidence to Iqra University Registrar Dr Mirza Amin ul Haq.

On March 26, the registrar contacted her asking her to submit the relevant documents. The varsity still did not take any action on her complaint. Rather she was told that if she wanted to get her paper published in a journal, she should carry out another study afresh.

When The News approached the varsity to get the version of its administration and faculty members allegedly involved in stealing Faiza’s thesis, IU Executive Director Ibrahim Sajid Malick said the varsity would check plagiarism and inform The News about its inquiry.

Later, the IU communication head, George Fulton, sent an email that stated that the varsity took the allegations of plagiarism very seriously and it was committed to academic integrity and honesty.

“We're still assessing the situation and the details of these accusations. We have constituted a committee to investigate and put up their recommendations before the competent statutory body. We want to understand what happened, and our next step will be to work with our human resources and legal teams to determine the best course of action,” read the email that was received on April 1. However, the varsity has not informed The News about the status of its inquiry.