Things are heating up for uni cheats. Education Minister Dan Tehan has brought in hard-hitting new legislation targeting “contract cheating” providers who write assignments for university students, saying they will face up to two years in jail and a fine up to a $210,000.
Why so harsh? Like so many other law and order issues, the punishment is supposed to “provide a visible and meaningful deterrence” to those seeking to make money this way, as the legislation overview states.
What’s actually going on?
The term “contract cheating” was coined in 2006, in a University of Central England paper identifying it as a possible “successor” to plagiarism, hitherto the primary concern in academic honesty among students.
In mid November 2014, the issue of contract cheating exploded, with revelations that an online business called MyMaster was netting hundreds of thousands of dollars producing thousands of assignments and online tests for students at Australian universities.
This was the first in a series of academic honesty scandals, most recently the “Airtasker scandal” wherein students used the gig economy platform to pay for essays. Indeed, Airtasker, Fiverr and Upwork still offer essay writing services, with dozens of Facebook groups dedicated to essay and dissertation writing services.
Does the legislation make sense?
The draft bill would make providing any part of a piece of work or assignment, sitting an exam or providing answers for an exam an offence. But this vague wording could see helpful colleagues targeted, says National Union of Students national president Desiree Cai.
“Students, tutors, family or friends or who have helped too much could be affected. The legislation needs to be made more specific to commercial contractors,” she says.
Determining the line between legitimate study support services and cheating activity have been highlighted as an issue by stakeholders for universities.
Who gets the blame?
Students who cheat will not be targeted under the draft legislation, with laws relying on universities’ own sanctions and integrity policies. But universities have been historically soft-handed when dealing with fee-paying students who cheat. When 36 students at Macquarie University were found to use ghostwriting services in 2015, the only punishment implemented was a dreary “ethics assessment”.
University of Melbourne’s deputy Vice-Chancellor Professor Richard James says cheating and plagiarism was “unacceptable”, saying the university worked to make sure “students understand the importance of academic integrity”.
“We are particularly supportive of the government focusing on the interventions that universities are not able to undertake themselves, such as targeting commercial contract cheating providers,” he tells Crikey. Websites which publish cheating ads, both nationally and internationally, could be blocked under the new laws and subject to punishment.
Cai says students who deliberately and actively searched out ghostwriters and others to take their exams for them should not be held legally accountable.
“Universities are the ones who manage all breaches of academic integrity and are the best to deal with breaches,” she says, adding all penalties and sanctions should be proportionate and on a case-by-case basis.
Why are things getting so bad?
TEQSA, the university and TAFE regulator, recently put out a practice note on how to protect integrity. It situates academic misconduct in the context of “an increasingly commercialised, internationalised and highly competitive higher education sector”.
Indeed, a two-year, government funded project on academic integrity concluded that “the commercialisation of higher education”, and constant uncertainty about funding, had created “a perfect storm” for the proliferation of contract cheating.
Intense competition at all levels, a dependence on international student revenue, and a focus on retention and graduate employability have contributed to compromised teaching and learning environments. Facing precarious job markets after graduation, and positioned as fee-paying “customers”, many students are taking “transactional” approaches to learning, with some outsourcing their work altogether. The findings from this project provide clear evidence that contract cheating is a systemic problem that requires a sector-wide response.
The study interviewed 1147 staff members and just over 14 thousand students across eight universities — the transactional nature of higher education was a recurring theme. One staff member argued that “the upsurge in third-party cheating is due to students’ perception of university degrees as a commercial transaction due to university management’s focus on the business of education, such that marketing of university ‘products’ becomes more important than the education process itself”.
One student agreed that university was seen less about acquiring knowledge, and more “as a user-pays system to get the degree. The degree will get the job, or the extended visa for the masters, the job, etc … It’s about getting passes, getting through the process — hence, little attachment to the ethics of cheating …”
Cai agrees that the rise in contract cheating is thanks to the commercialisation of academia. To combat cheats, she says, universities must change their approach to education.
“Increasingly, universities are being seen as degree factories and service providers. Students are seen as consumers over learners.”
Is there a breakdown in the stats on the percentages of domestic versus international students caught cheating? I hear anecdotally of international students who are barely English-literate being under pressure from their high fee-paying parents for a return on their investment, and to avoid family shame.
Decreasing contact hours and increasing on-line “attendance” at lectures also contribute to students’ (domestic and international) inclination to cheat.
I know of fellow lecturers who have quit rather than pass full fee paying students who can barely speak English. I refused to pass any assignment that was not up to scratch despite the admin expectations.
Not sure that TEQSA regulates TAFE, try ASQA.
Over the last couple of decades university management structures have been successful in unleashing and imposing a culture of reductionist-transactional exchange and corporate discourse on the diverse ecologies of knowledge. It’s cutting down the rainforest of ideas, filling in the wetlands of thought and the geography of diversity, and constructing pine plantations of conformities. In this wider sense, where is the greater threat to academic integrity coming from ? Don’t blame the symptom of students for engaging in similar transactional behaviour – blame the disease on the system, and the neo-liberal management ideology that drives it.
Universities need to take ownership of this problem that they have created before it completely ruins the ecology of knowledge and the intellectual inheritance of future generations. But unfortunately I cant’ see that this isn’t going to happen in the current political environment, without something getting broken.
As with many of the problems of modern universities, the rise of cheating is easily linked to the culture of managerialism. Small tutorials of 12 students (or less) have been replaced with tutorials of 35 or more. Most teaching staff are now casuals on short-term contracts, sometimes working between two universities because they don’t get paid in non-teaching times – nor are they paid to closely and rigorously mark essays.
This has arisen at the same time as new technology makes cheating so much easier. I caught my first online cheats when Google was new and students tried scissors & paste plagiarism. After universities responded with Turnitin the rise of the contracted “original” essay was almost inevitable.
The solution is one the bureaucrats won’t like. Shrink class sizes so that lecturers can easily see the difference between the student they know and the work submitted (this also helps when checking ID in exams). Have graduated assessment tasks so that the first two (with feedback) are effectively working drafts for the final big one. It goes without saying that this also needs more time allocated for staff to mark.
None of this is cheap, which is why it won’t happen . Instead we’ll have more ritual complaints about the decline of the system….
How about a simpler explanation: Universities are too prepared to take dumb students who are not authentically qualified for ‘higher’ education?