(360) More Than 2,000 Tried to Cheat on UK Driving Tests

Plus, a look at cheating at the University of Southern Mississippi. Plus, a good book you should read.

Issue 360

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Class Note:

I’m not sure what happened with this Tuesday’s Issue of “The Cheat Sheet.” Something went haywire at Substack and I have no idea who got the Issue. I never got it. Some may have received it twice.

Right now, my newsletter dashboard is showing that 17 people read it. That number is usually around 3,500. Substack posted a notice about system issues, including stats. But that does not help. I also probably compounded the problem by unpublishing the Issue and trying to resend it after I noticed the data was problematic. Further, I think it’s possible that one version of the newsletter that did publish was a draft.

I remain confused.

In any case, and if it’s working now, Issue 359 can be found here. In it is a review of K12 Dive’s bad reporting on cheating, a PhD research position on essay mills, and a look at an AI text humanizer.

I apologize if you did not get it, if you got it twice, or if your version had errors — I 90% blame Substack.

More than 2,000 Tried to Cheat Driving Tests in the UK

The BBC has the story of test fraud attempts for driving licenses in the UK. Yes, driving. And not just the written test. The story says applicants are hiring impersonators to stand in for them during the on-road, behind-the-wheel driving tests as well.

But overall:

National figures provided to the BBC showed 2,059 incidents of cheating were recorded by the DVSA in the 2023-24 financial year.

This includes that:

There were 21 cases across Kent, Surrey and Sussex last year, where somebody else tried to sit the practical test for a learner driver.

New figures obtained by the BBC revealed that 71 incidents of cheating were discovered at theory test centres, with more than half of the cases involving someone impersonating a candidate.

I’m glad that 2,059, and 21, and 71 people were caught. But also feel compelled to mention that these are just those who were caught, and there is zero chance that every single fraud attempt was discovered and blocked.

There is also zero chance this is not happening in the United States, and everywhere.

An official with the driving certification system told the BBC:

They carry out ID checks but in some instances the impersonator is able to try and emulate the look of the person they are representing, so obviously there is a view that more robust measures will have to be implemented in the future.

More robust measures will have to be implemented. Imagine that.

If anyone would like to write a few hundred words on how this increase in fraud attempts shows that we need to rethink assessment, The Cheat Sheet is open.

I’m also sharing this, from the BBC piece:

In 2023, a BBC investigation found fraudsters, who offered to help people illegally pass their UK driving tests, were advertising their services widely across social media.

Yup. To make any real progress in test and credential fraud, it’s essential to target the providers, which includes targeting their advertising platforms. The pipeline of people who will pay to avoid work is endless. The cost of providing dangerous shortcuts has to go way, way up.

On Cheating at Southern Miss

Southern Miss Student Media has a story about cheating at their university.

It’s not especially detailed, but it is worth touching on nonetheless.

The Southern Miss paper shares:

One example is the Snapchat account “Tutor Grace,” which circulates in the USM community, offering to complete a wide range of assignments, including essays, discussions, exams, quizzes, and even dissertations. Though Tutor Grace is publicly advertised, other options for paid assignment completion may exist but remain less visible.

It’s publicly advertised. And it’s not nearly the only one.

This matters not just for the obvious reason that advertising works, but also because when students see ads, they rightly rationalize that if the advertised service was really so terrible, it would not be allowed to advertise. They assume, or allow themselves to believe, that someone is watching these ads and that by not blocking a particular cheating ad, it must be OK. That these companies simply exist visibly enough to buy ads, is inferred permission to use them, in other words.

I say again — advertising matters.

But there’s more to this story than just a cheating provider. I give you two quotes from the story in answer to the question why students are cheating. One:

“Well, some people are just innately going to cheat,” said Nolan Perry, a first-year biology science student. “Some people are just like that, and, you know, deep down inside of them, they’ll cheat in any opportunity that’s given to them to give themselves an advantage or to make their lives easier. Then there are people that will—and I’ve found this especially in my biology degree—a lot of people will consider certain classes like fallback classes, so they’ll cheat really hard in those classes to give themselves, like, grace. There’s some people that would cheat out of, like, necessity.”

Two:

Jason McCormick, interim director of The Writing Center and visiting faculty member in the English department, highlighted the pressures that may lead students to cheat.

“I think that students often cheat because there is a huge amount of pressure on students,” McCormick said. “I think that most students don’t go into classes planning on cheating. I think that the majority of students that I’ve had who do some sort of academic dishonesty do so because they find themselves in a position of being overworked, overtaxed, and not knowing how to deal with that pressure and feeling like they have no other options.”

Student: Some people are just going to cheat. They will cheat in any opportunity. To make their lives easier.

School leader: It’s huge pressure. Overworked, overtaxed, pressure.

This is not an anomaly. It’s struck me for some time how so many educators and other school leaders default to a position that cheating is driven by external conditions, how misconduct is a glitchy byproduct of a bad system. How cheating is nearly inevitable when we create pressure on students and, accordingly, not really their fault. The darn pressure. The overwork. If only we would fix that …

Meanwhile, students tell us over and over — cheating is just easy. It’s a choice to do the easy thing.

For some reason, teachers and other educators don’t believe them. I mean, it’s not “for some reason.” I think I understand the reasons why teachers don’t want to believe that students are cheating because they can, because it’s easy, because they don’t see that anyone cares enough to try to stop them. I get it. But as long as schools, and those who run them, insist that cheating is driven by unreasonable pressure, they won’t be in any position to meaningfully address it.

Back to the article, McCormick, the writing center administrator, also said:

“I think [cheating is] a disservice to the students themselves,” McCormick said. “The type of English that I teach is about developing skills and developing the ability to express yourself in your own ideas in different sorts of environments. And so, if you can get an easy A and fool the teachers, you lose out on the knowledge that you’re building and the reason you’re going to college.”

Ah, cheaters cheat themselves. They lose out on the reason they’re going to college. Please, be more disconnected from the conversation, I dare you. He may as well say this in Aramaic.

Finally, I’ll share two data points I’d not seen before that I think provide good summaries of where we are. From the article:

A study by ProctorEdu from 2002 to 2015 found that 75-98% of surveyed students admitted to some form of cheating or academic dishonesty. Research by the ETS and the Ad Council found that 90% of students are confident they will not be caught cheating, suggesting a widespread issue of academic dishonesty among current and future generations.

Cheating rates are unbelievably high. No one really thinks they’ll get caught. Connect dots if you’d like.

Also, thank you Southern Miss Student Media for covering this topic and citing data about misconduct. Far too many — applying full air quotes — professional news outlets can’t seem to do either one.

The Good Book — The Opposite of Cheating

It’s rare that academic misconduct gets any attention at all. So, when an actual book comes out on the topic, it’s worth taking a second to note, and time to read.

You may know Tricia Bertram Gallant and David Rettinger, the authors of The Opposite of Cheating. The Amazon link is here.

Here is an overview:

In these days of an ever-expanding internet, generative AI, and term paper mills, students may find it too easy and tempting to cheat, and teachers may think they can’t keep up. What’s needed, and what Tricia Bertram Gallant and David A. Rettinger offer in this timely book, is a new approach—one that works with the realities of the twenty-first century, not just to protect academic integrity but also to maximize opportunities for students to learn.

The Opposite of Cheating presents a positive, forward-looking, research-backed vision for what classroom integrity can look like in the GenAI era, both in cyberspace and on campus. Accordingly, the book outlines workable measures teachers can use to better understand why students cheat and to prevent cheating while aiming to enhance learning and integrity.

Bertram Gallant and Rettinger provide practical suggestions to help faculty revise the conversation around integrity, refocus classes and students on learning, reconsider the structure and goals of assessment, and generally reframe our response to cheating. At the core of this strategy is a call for teachers, academic staff, institutional leaders, and administrators to rethink how we “show up” for students, and to reinforce and fully support quality teaching, learning, and assessment. With its evidentiary basis and its useful tips for instructors across disciplines, levels of experience, and modes of instruction, this book offers a much-needed chance to pause, rethink our purpose, and refocus on what matters—creating classes that center human interactions that foster the personal and professional growth of our students.

I confess, I have not read it yet. But I will. It’s on my list, in the priority mix with a great collection of Tom Wolfe stories and a promising review of late Republic Roman history. When I do read it, I’ll share my thoughts. Until then, I know the authors well enough to suggest adding it to your reading list as well.