campusreview. com. au
ON CAMPUS
Everyone feels cheated
Recent controversy over academic fraud is drawing a response from all over the sector.
By Andrew Bracey
International students say recent reports of academic fraud involving companies charging fees to complete assignments have unfairly tarnished them. The defence from Council of International Students Australia( CISA) president Thomson Ch’ ng follows recent media reports suggesting that students at a number of predominantly NSWbased universities paid thousands of dollars to the Sydney-based company MyMaster for such services.
According to a Fairfax Media exposé of the company’ s operations, amongst the key universities using the service were the University of Newcastle, Macquarie University, the University of NSW, UTS and the University of Sydney. Students at the Perthbased Curtin University’ s Sydney campus were also found to have solicited the company’ s services.
The matter has been referred to Tertiary Education Quality and Standards Agency. Campus Review has attempted to contact MyMaster for comment however its website has been taken down and at the time of press the Australian Securities and Investments Commission( ASIC) listed the company’ s status as having a strikeoff action in progress.
But Ch’ ng said reporting of the scandal gave the unfair impression that international students were driving demand for such services, when in reality the problem was spread across a small percentage of the whole student population.
Ch’ ng said international students already struggled against negative public perceptions and that recent media attention had fuelled misconceptions about the validity of their study in Australia whilst undermining future employment prospects.
“ This is not an international student specific issue; this is an issue that is very concerning and pressing within the whole academic community,” he said.“ It is a wake-up call for the whole industry – we have to look into this and take serious action to make sure that these things can be addressed.
“ It can also ruin perceptions and put international students at a very disadvantaged position when it comes to job applications.”
Whilst he conceded that the additional pressures many international students faced – including distance from home and cultural challenges – made them potentially more vulnerable to making poor or desperate decisions to use assignment-writing companies, he said few took such steps.
Ch’ ng added that the majority of students understood that by outsourcing their assignments they were compromising an education for which they, and often their families, were paying a premium. He added that a review and potential bolstering of existing support services for all students, including internationals, would probably aid future action to combat the use of assignment-writing firms.
National Union of Students president Deanna Taylor agreed discussion of the MyMaster case had unfairly slandered international students, saying that although the group may be at higher risk, such services clearly sought to exploit all vulnerable students.
“ The main underlying issue here is that students are resorting to such desperate measures and we ask the question why?” she says.“ The fact that they feel they need to turn to these kinds of [ measures ] just so they can successfully pass begs the questions: are they not feeling like they are getting the support they need and is the support not available or is it just that they are not accessing the support?
“ So rather than turning to questions around punitive measures or how to detect this kind of academic dishonesty we are rather focused more on student welfare.”
Curtin University deputy vice-chancellor education professor Jill Downie said that whilst she had been surprised at the number of reported incidents relating to MyMaster, her university remained vigilant in its efforts to both identify and discourage student fraud via such means.
Downie says Curtin’ s academic integrity policy takes plagiarism and cheating very seriously and that it has mechanisms in place to help educate academic staff about how to identify fraud.
“[ Some of the ways ] academics would assess this sort of cheating would be if there was a sudden change in the quality of a student’ s work, if there was something different in this unit compared with the other units that they were studying in terms of the quality of the work – so it is something that our academics are vigilant about and from time to time they do pick up.”
She says all students are made well aware of the ramifications of academic misconduct and that assignment writing services are not a problem restricted to international students.
Downie says Curtin is not presently aware of any other operations similar to MyMaster but that it took actions to block such sites from students as they were identified through ongoing monitoring efforts.
“ As these things become evident, as the MyMaster did, you do need to take it seriously and follow up and just make sure you have got everything in place that is possible to ensure very high standards,” she says. ■
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