highereducation.com bestcolleges.com Libeled me as a plagiarizer and denied payment for work Houston Texas
They accused me of plagiarism and denied $300 payment for a 3,000-word project I completed comparing 12 school's online programs. They said they used online software to detect plagiarism and after I challenged this assertion, they sent me a Google doc with areas of concern highlighted in yellow. The sentences highlighted were primarily names of accrediting organizations and the titles of classes in the schools' course catalogs, which yes, I repeated verbatim and but do not consider that plagiarism -- I was simply stating proper names as were provided. I graduated with honors from journalism school and have been writing for more than 20 years professionally. I believe they just wanted all my research and efforts (12 hours of time) without compensating me accordingly. They didn't even give me the opportunity to discuss it first- - just sent a terse email stating a zero tolerance policy and that I would not be paid. When I tried to print out the Google doc they supplied a few minutes later I had been locked out by the editor.