From the National Poet Of Slovenia In A Language People Understand, a long enough article in the Slovenian academic style

1 Apr 2015

To ensure the future of democracy in Slovenia, the first thing any opposition party does immediately upon the appointment of a new minister is to check to see if they cut-and-pasted their degree thesis.

Rather too often, they did. So much so, that you might think the first thing any government party would do before appointing a new minister is check to see if they cut-and-pasted their degree thesis.

Both former Maribor Mayor Franc Kangler and MP Borut Ambrožič cut-and-pasted their degree thesis and were caught. SDS leader Janša plagiarised Tony Blair in a speech.

Locally the Director of the Ptuj Hospital was accused. However our previous SDS MP Branko Marinič did not plagiarise anything...as someone else took his German exam for him.

He had not been there and done that. Instead he was done. There. Er beendet.

Leaders such as former PM Alenka The Legs immediately upon appointment looked like they cut-and-pasted their degree thesis, but the government's credibility was so low it was decided immediately upon appointment that any suggestion about a Prime Minister, that they cut-and-pasted their degree thesis, in her case about sweaty clothing, would be incompatible with the future of democracy in Slovenia and it was quickly proved she hadn't.

A common problem with a degree thesis is filling the required amount of space as if the space required to be filled is not filled in the required manner it may appear that you have not studied hard enough or done enough studying, as shown by the amount of space filled or, in the case of space left empty, not.

I remember at school it was important to fill two sides of paper with your essay even if there wasn't really that much to say, and that was a special burden on me as I had really small thin handwriting. That is, by using really big fat handwriting, and bigger fatter spaces between the words, some others could write longer essays even though they wrote less.

Nowadays, those whose ministerial career may only last a few hours before their opponents claim they cut-and-pasted their degree thesis will have typed it, and so it is typed, and the words can be counted by word-counting software which enumerates the number of words typed, by the student typing the thesis, so it is harder than ever, in terms of difficulty, to produce enough bloat, which leads to a lot of argumentum ad verbosum, especially in asswipe subjects like economics, whose foggy notions will be ever welcomed by a bloated education sector, and those who have somehow made it in Slovenia who cut-and-pasted their degree thesis but say things in their degree thesis cut-and-pasted in different orders often nowadays find themselves arguing with the findings of plagiarism software, designed to detect plagiarism on computers, that although the result may give the impression they cut-and-pasted great swathes of text down to the last punctuation mark, and 95% of their references, it is all just an astronomical coincidence.

Our new Education Minister's first task should be to rewrite the law on plagiarism-detecting software to make it clear that 37% plagiarism is not plagiarism when done in such a fashion that it merely repeats known facts which have already been explained perfectly well by whoever's thesis you are copying.

It's good that software exists to read these things though as the contents are mostly too boring for humans to do it. Our new Education Minister's 2005 plagiarism of Jernej Ladinik's 2002 thesis concerns "the impact of European Union Structural Funds in the development of the region of the Drava region".

It is a subject on which unique thinking is hard to conceive. I've lived in the region of that region since 2005. What has been the impact of these Structural Funds? How do these academics differ on that?

Faced with a problem of there not being enough to say, how about finding something more complicated to write about?

No. Educapitalism can only get richer by dividing the mysteries of life into smaller portions, and charging more and more to divulge the secrets of less and less. Big, oldfashioned subjects with real facts in them tend to spoil the teachers' game: on some confined topic, you must write more than is necessary, and of course in a different way, but without changing the meaning of what you've been advised to say. Too similar, and you're a plagiarist. But to express yourself in too original a way means you have got it wrong ...teacher will be displeased and you will have to buy some more education.

Bloating text in Slovene meets a mixture of natural accident and physical challenge, with its economical inflective acrobatics, rude, abrupt manner, and panoply of wordlets making for high word counts but low page counts on the one hand, and its quaint Victorian syntax and endless rambling sub-clauses spawning impossible-to-follow bloat on the other.

For those approaching middle-age who have finally cut-and-pasted their degree thesis and passed, it is time to visit prospective employers who cut-and-pasted their degree thesis, who will want to know if you are good enough to make money for them. When you go for your interview, remember that your interviewer is in a better position to hide the fact that they cut-and-pasted their degree thesis than you. Remember that they have worked hard to acquire the special assessment skills needed, such as glaring at you over their spectacles, and sitting behind a big desk in a better chair than yours. Just relax. As long as you are related or can do the sexual favours (or both) your paper qualifications will suffice even though you're both fairly average morons.

Having spent so long in education you are completely obedient to authority and just as wary of original thinking as you are of the copying. Your behavioural processing - into a conflicted rat lured through a maze of mixed administrative punishments and dubious future rewards - is complete. Just don't get cheeky and threaten to challenge the interviewer's own actual knowledge, or you could be out of the door.

Consequently in Slovenia, experts in mediocrity are in charge of just about everything. In employment, as in education, what they do not want is people WHO THINK WITH THEIR EYES - only with their EARS.

To excel at mediocrity grow an extra one. While you interact normally with your main ear, your auxiliary ear listens out for backstabbers.