That’s the argument Prof. Thomas Bertonneau makes in this week’s Pope Center Clarion Call.

Research papers, he contends, merely encourage students to cobble together opinions by “research” that consists mostly of copying from several sources. Better to have students write essays, which call for their own thinking and don’t readily lend themselves to plagiarism — the topic of Bertonneau’s previous piece.

I think he is mostly correct, although in some upper-division courses with serious students, research papers are still appropriate. Whether the written assignments take the form of research papers, essays, or something else, it’s crucial that the faculty members pore of them line by line to help students learn to write well, a point made by Prof. Murray Sperber in this Clarion Call.