Campus Review Vol 30. Issue 05 | May 2020 | Seite 7

news
campusreview.com.au
UNSW vice-chancellor Ian Jacobs (left) and chancellor David Gonski. Photo: John Feder/The Australian
Cheating on the rise
Leaked report shows academic
misconduct is an increasing threat
to educational institutions.
By Wade Zaglas
A
leaked report from the University
of New South Wales shows that
academic misconduct continues to
threaten academic integrity in Australia.
The 2019 student conduct and
complaints report, marked confidential, was
recently obtained by the Sydney Morning
Herald. It was published in March and,
according to SMH, found that complaints
at UNSW had doubled since 2019. It also
highlighted a steady upward trend in
student misconduct allegations since 2014.
One the most disturbing findings
to come out of the report is that 139
science students hired ghostwriters from
the Chinese messaging site WeChat to
complete their studies.
Falsified medical reports were also used
to gain students special consideration
in assessment deadlines; indeed, dodgy
medical reports requesting extensions were
up 67 per cent in 2019 compared to the
previous year.
The most concerning form of academic
misconduct by far was a 400 per cent surge
in contract cheating. A relatively new term
in academic parlance, it is synonymous
with ghostwriting and usually involves a
student paying a fee for another individual
to complete their assessment.
The report totalled 168 cases of
ghostwriting last year, compared to 34 in
2018 and five in 2017.
“Most of the students reported that they
had been directly targeted by contract
cheating services via Chinese social media
platform WeChat, online searches for study
assistance or referral by other students,” the
report noted.
Although the leaked report should send
chills down the spines of academic integrity
officers across the country, SMH reported
a UNSW spokesperson saying that, overall,
the proportion of students accused of
academic misconduct is quite low – 1.8 per
cent last year.
“While students globally are finding more
ways to cheat – UNSW is world leading in its
use of sophisticated tools and techniques
to prevent and detect cheating.”
The spokesperson also said the increased
cases of academic misconduct were
related to increased detection, and that
UNSW was working on a suite of strategies
to deter such behaviour in the future.
Other concerning trends highlighted in
the report include:
• Copying, collusion and inappropriate
phrasing – termed low-level plagiarism
– rose 110 per cent last year to become
the most common form of academic
misconduct over six years.
• Admissions fraud dropped since 2018,
with 90 per cent of the prospective
students hailing from India.
• A rise in academic misconduct was
evident in six of eight UNSW faculties,
with engineering recording the
most cases.
• The Faculty of Engineering experienced
a 173 per cent rise in student misconduct
last year, followed by the Faculty of
Arts and Social Sciences. Misconduct
was rarest in the Faculties of Law and
Medicine.
• Of 575 student complaints at UNSW, only
two were deemed invalid. Most were tied
to assessment marking, followed by staff
conduct and student behaviour.
“Academic misconduct continues to be one
of the most significant challenges facing
universities,” said Anna Borek from anti-
plagiarism software provider Turnitin.
“While the situation is difficult and
deeply complex, as a sector it is critical
that we continue to build a strong culture
around academic integrity to ensure we
maintain our high academic standards
and protect the reputation of Australia’s
education system.”
Borek went on to say that educators
find contract cheating a difficult issue to
address as “it is hard to detect”. She said that
increasing the awareness of the problem
would help, as would training markers to
“identify red flags”.
Another part of the arsenal against
contract cheating would be increasingly
sophisticated technology that compares
students’ previous work. This technology,
Borek says, has led to “increased detection
rates of contract cheating and support
[for] academic misconduct investigations”.
Borek said that an “upward trend”
in the detection of students and
academic misconduct at UNSW is
actually encouraging, as it shows that
increased training, red flag detection and
technological advances are doing their
job in rooting out cheats. ■
5