Shakrani once served as the co-director of the Education Policy Center. The same requests were put to Kent Cassella, MSU’s director of media communications, and he didn’t respond to attempts to reach him via phone and e-mail. Rick Shafe, associate director of student judicial affairs, didn’t respond to an e-mail asking about how the school handles cases of students accused of plagiarism. Other MSU officials have not responded to any questions regarding plagiarism policies at MSU.

Jim Pivarnik, MSU’s research integrity officer, wrote in an e-mail that he can’t comment on an active case. … With a professor, it’s much rarer and much more scandalous and embarrasses the school in a much grander way. “The reason we see this double standard, these schools are much more intimidated going up against their staff than their students. “There is a definite double standard,” said Jonathan Bailey, a plagiarism consultant who researches content theft for PlagiarismToday in New Orleans. That means if a student had been accused of plagiarism at about the same time as Shakrani, the determination of guilt could have been completed by the time the fall semester ended in mid-December. The MSU student policy states that a professor may give a student a failing grade for a course if the student is suspected of plagiarism. Cameron Meyers, who said that “plagiarism not only is legally wrong but also morally corrosive…” It quotes the late journalism professor W.

MSU’s policy on academic dishonesty involving students is posted online.

Within weeks of the claim, the school changed Shakrani’s report and added missing attribution to the portions alleged to have been plagiarized. MSU has announced that the investigation will take a year. The Syracuse University professor who is the original author of a paper that Shakrani says his study is based upon has said his work was “misapplied” by Shakrani. The Mackinac Center for Public Policy claimed that Sharif Shakrani, senior scholar at the Education Policy Center at MSU and a professor of measurement and quantitative methods, plagiarized more than 800 words in a study titled “School District Consolidation Study in 10 Michigan Counties.” Shakrani's report received widespread media attention last summer. One plagiarism expert believes this is because colleges have a double standard when it comes to investigating claims of plagiarism. However, students believed to have plagiarized have a much shorter timeline and could be given a failing grade before the semester ends. It can take a year for Michigan State University to complete an investigation when a professor is accused of plagiarism.

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