I don't know how it works at your university, but at Columbia any work submitted becomes *property* of the university. The logic behind this is that you wouldn't have had the thought or motive to write the paper if it wasn't for the course. Thus, the professor is free to do whatever s/he pleases with the paper, including running it through plaigarism tests (which they do for humanities essays).
Columbia's policy on self-plaigarism is even stiffer: immediate failure of the course(s) for submitting two works with significant overlap (even if it is a different class with a different professor) if you 'self-plaigarize'. That is, of course, unless you get the _permission_ of the _instructors_ teaching the courses involved!
If you ask me, that's a pretty screwed up intellectual property policy, even for one of the most prestigous universities in the nation. It seems that the universities have a built in "backdoor" for allowing your work to become an asset of someone else's business (although questionably).
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I don't know how it works at your university, but at Columbia any work submitted becomes *property* of the university. The logic behind this is that you wouldn't have had the thought or motive to write the paper if it wasn't for the course. Thus, the professor is free to do whatever s/he pleases with the paper, including running it through plaigarism tests (which they do for humanities essays).
Columbia's policy on self-plaigarism is even stiffer: immediate failure of the course(s) for submitting two works with significant overlap (even if it is a different class with a different professor) if you 'self-plaigarize'. That is, of course, unless you get the _permission_ of the _instructors_ teaching the courses involved!
If you ask me, that's a pretty screwed up intellectual property policy, even for one of the most prestigous universities in the nation. It seems that the universities have a built in "backdoor" for allowing your work to become an asset of someone else's business (although questionably).