205,000+ Cheated Tests and Exams in 2021
Plus, schools should adapt to new stuff and use Chegg. Plus, I've found my next career opportunity.
Issue 112
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ProctorU: 205,000 Cheated on Online Exams in 2021
ProctorU, one of the big remote exam proctoring providers, released data today from its exam sessions in 2021. The data show that rates of exam misconduct were at an all-time high in 2021 and still trending upwards.
The company says that:
6.6% of their exam sessions - a shocking one in every 15 tests - had cheating. Together, that represented more than 205,000 cheating events.
Two hundred thousand.
A caveat is that ProctorU does not determine cheating. No proctoring service does. As such they define these as “confirmed breaches” in which they say their proctors believe there is enough evidence of misconduct to substantiate a finding of cheating.
Another caveat is that the 6.6% is the rate across both higher education and professional tests. ProctorU does both. Interestingly, the rate of breach was lower in professional tests than it was in higher education. Overall, ProctorU says, the breach rate at colleges and universities was 7.2%.
The report says that in the 15 months before the pandemic started, the company’s “confirmed breach” rate was just .48%. In 2020, it jumped to 3.94% and in 2021, the aforementioned 6.6%. That’s a 13-fold increase.
My goodness.
The report also says that the upward trendline is persistent:
in November 2021, ProctorU saw 3x more “confirmed breach” incidents – 26,543 – than in all of 2019 combined - 8,038. That’s despite overseeing 5x more test sessions in 2019 than this past November
You read that right - ProctorU found more than 26,000 cheating events last November alone.
ProctorU also stressed - and they are right about this - that their data covers exam behavior while using a proctoring service, when monitoring and detecting processes are in place.
If six or seven percent of proctored tests were cheated, I don’t even want to think about the unproctored online tests. Some recent research has estimated cheating in those settings to be in the 70% range, or worse (see Issue 108 or Issue 62).
The report covers other valuable data such as how many students start or would start their exams with books or notes or earphones - things prohibited by the professor or exam author. It’s not too long and definitely worth reading.
And finally, good for ProctorU.
The area of academic integrity really suffers from misinformation or no information whatsoever. Sharing what we know is vital and companies and schools and teachers and others who open their books are doing the right thing.
Chegg and Quizlet and Others “Can Help California Universities”
I missed this when it came out back in March but the publication Diverse Issues in Higher Education ran an opinion piece by Bryan Lopez on how “learning resources” such as Chegg and Quizlet can help California’s colleges and universities meet their graduation goals.
Lopez’s bio is listed as:
Bryan Lopez has a bachelor's degree in public policy from the University of California and a masters in public administration from California State Los Angeles.
That’s it.
So it seems that his expertise to determine what’s good for California’s colleges is that he went to two of them. I Googled Mr. Lopez; I can’t find him anywhere.
Anyway, this gem of pro-cheating propaganda has some great stuff such as:
Currently, many faculty members and administrators at universities turn up their noses and cast aside online learning resources like Chegg, Quizlet, or Brainly, as second-rate or even improper tools. There is often a negative stigma surrounding the use of these platforms, and many in the world of higher education wrongly assume they provide students with an avenue for academic dishonesty.
I should not have to say it. Providing avenues for academic dishonesty is exactly what Chegg and Quizlet and Brainly do. In fact, that’s too generous. These companies sell cheating outright. It’s no secret.
It continues:
To say that these companies exist solely to facilitate cheating is highly problematic. While a small share of students who use online resources may abuse them, these platforms have made it clear they do not tolerate cheating, and many work alongside academic institutions to address and dissuade academic dishonesty when it occurs on their sites.
Let me be highly problematic by saying that these companies exist solely to facilitate cheating.
And I’ve seen this “small share” talking point before. Chegg has used it several times. Yet, when I’ve asked Chegg how they know what percentage of their customers are cheating, they never answer. Odd.
It goes on to provide a nice menu of the services that Chegg and Quizlet and others provide and says that schools should be cool with students using them in order to boost graduation rates. Which, I mean, that’s true. If you let people cheat, more people will probably graduate.
The piece is more evidence that cheating providers are deeply invested in pretending to be legitimate learning resources and in convincing people that
higher education institutions across the country need to adapt to today’s changing academic landscape and increasingly diverse student population
- by using Chegg, I am guessing.
Because, again, it’s the schools’ fault for not adapting and for not supporting their students. If they would just get with the program and let students cheat, Chegg would make more money - err - I mean students would be better.
LinkedIn Thought I Was a Fit to Write Admissions Essays
True story.
The other day LinkedIn sent me a notice that it thought I would be a good fit for this job:
https://www.linkedin.com/jobs/view/3034553028/
If you don’t want to click, the title is:
Essay Writer and Editor
For a company named GYANONE UNIVERSAL located in Delhi, India. The company name was capitalized in the ad. It says:
We are looking for a study abroad essay writer, who has expertise in creating world class essays for candidates applying to Ivy-league institutions.
It also says that:
Experience in admissions for Ivy-league institutions is a big plus
I bet it would be.
To be fair, I probably would be pretty good at it.
But the point in sharing it is that academic misrepresentation is common and the people who do it are no longer hiding - they are advertising jobs on LinkedIn. And I worry that schools are not dealing well with this level of sustained dishonesty.