policy & reform
campusreview.com.au
White lies
What can we do about
cheating at uni?
By Jack Goodman
A
t a recent TEQSA-sponsored seminar on academic
integrity in Australian higher education, UniSA expert
Professor Tracey Bretag made the point that, under the
right (or rather wrong) circumstances, just about everyone can
become a cheat. To help gain insights into the exact question,
we recently commissioned a research project that surveyed over
1000 Australian university and TAFE students. The study found that
7.5 per cent of students admit that they have cheated.
At one level, that number doesn’t sound alarming. After all,
upwards of 92 per cent of students aren’t cheating. So why is
the federal government preparing legislation to tackle contract
cheating by banning the websites that offer to write student essays
for a fee?
Two reasons. First, even small instances of cheating can
undermine the integrity of entire segments of society. The recent
royal commission into the banking sector revealed serious ethical
and legal lapses at all of the big banks. The outcome is that public
trust in the big banks is plunging to new depths.
Second, over the last two decades, higher education has
become one of Australia’s most valuable exports. We have
discovered that huge numbers of students from countries such as
China, India, Nepal, Malaysia and Vietnam are eager to spend large
sums of money to obtain Australian higher education degrees. In
2018, the total value of foreign currency brought into the Australian
economy through the presence of close to 500,000 international
students was $38 billion. Simply put, the international education
market is “too big to fail”.
Various warning signs have popped up over the years that
the academic integrity of the sector may be at risk. In 2015, the
Independent Commission Against Corruption published Learning
the Hard Way: Managing Corruption Risks Associated with
International Students. The ABC’s Four Corners has tackled the
issue twice: in 2015 with ‘Degrees of Deception’, and in 2019 with
‘Cash Cows’. And SBS recently investigated the contract cheating
issue with ‘Pens for Hire: How Students Cheat, and How They Get
Away with It’.
The problem is serious enough that TEQSA has funded 20
half-day workshops across the country. Professor Bretag and
12
others share a comprehensive review of the research into contract
cheating and other forms of misconduct, and lead participants
through a series of activities to make academic integrity a strong
part of their institutional culture.
Of all the higher ed learners in Australia, those who are
substantially more likely to cheat include males, younger students,
business and engineering students, and international English as an
Additional Language (EAL) students.
Bretag’s research has identified three factors that influence
contract cheating:
1. Students whose first language is not English.
2. The perception that there are “lots of opportunities to cheat”.
3. Dissatisfaction with the teaching and learning environment.
These factors are amplified where students perceive there is
a lack of institutional support for academic integrity, where
there is little fear of detection and/or consequences for getting
caught, and where the pressures and complexity of life combine
with poor time management skills, procrastination, and other
behavioural factors. Tellingly, in our student survey findings, the
leading reason for cheating included pressure to perform well
(35 per cent).
Increasingly, academic integrity is also being considered within
the context of the student experience, so it is encouraging to
see student journalists at the University of Sydney investigating
the issue. Nell O’Grady and Annie Zhang write about “the plight
of vulnerable students” and identify research that suggests many
students do “not set out to cheat – instead, they slide into cheating
because they can be persuaded that it is appropriate assessment
behaviour for their particular circumstances”.
O’Grady and Zhang confirmed this in their own survey, and
they quote one respondent, a computer science student who
outsourced their entire assignment “due to an unbearable
university workload”. They also “pointed out that the university
does not do enough to support students who need writing help”.
It’s therefore promising that our national student survey found
that an overwhelming majority (71 per cent) of students said that
additional study support lessens the chance of cheating.
Finally, our data also reflected that international students were
more likely to have cheated compared to local students (12 per
cent vs 7.5 per cent) and that the 42–49 age group admitted to
cheating the most (20 per cent) compared to the 18–25 age
group (8 per cent). O’Grady and Zhang note that, for international
students studying at Sydney University, a single unit can cost up
to $5500. “Combined with other pressures, one can see how
vulnerable international students might resort to cheating when
the consequences of failure are so severe.”
What starts as a hazy picture starts to gain greater clarity.
Addressing the issue of academic integrity and contract cheating
requires us to simultaneously view it through two perspectives. The
economic relationship between university and student underpins
mutual dependencies that may encourage lax oversight by the
former and cheating behaviours by the latter.
And the moral imperative to protect the sector’s reputation
requires every university to make a deeper cultural commitment to
academic integrity. In practice, this means ensuring every student
they enrol has access to readily accessible, high-quality support to
give them the best possible chance to succeed. ■
Jack Goodman is the founder and executive chair of Studiosity.