Australia Paper Exposes Ease of Contract Cheating

Plus, 1,500+ face cheating charges at South Africa University. Plus, a high school student shares his views on the Grammarly issue. Plus, class notes.

Issue 289

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Sydney Paper Digs Into Contract Cheating

As a general rule, Australia is way ahead of the US on its understanding, concern, and corrective action regarding academic misconduct.

Don’t get too excited.

Everyone in the world is way ahead of the US on this.

But that’s no disservice to Australia. As example, the biggest paper in the country’s biggest city pulled together a very solid, lengthy piece on contract cheating recently (subscription required).

Just imagine the New York Times doing that. Let me know when you’re done laughing.

The Sydney headline is:

Exposed: How simple it is for cheats to buy a university essay

Spoiler alert — it’s pretty freaking simple.

The paper walks through the easy and user-friendly process of contracting out university level work, even in Australia where the practice is illegal and somewhat enforced. Spoiler alert number two — in the United States, contract cheating is not illegal and, where there are laws, they are not enforced.

The images in the article alone are worth a review. If you can access them, they illustrate the problem quite well. Of the writing services, the paper reports:

No special skills are required to find them: a Google search will provide students with a buffet of illegal cheating services for just about any subject.

True. All you need is a reason to cheat and a debit card.

The ease and uniquity of cheating services, the paper says, has:

prompted concern that the Tertiary Education Quality and Standards Agency (TEQSA) – the university watchdog – is not doing enough to enforce the anti-cheating laws it is funded to implement.

At least Australia has a watchdog on this case. And it’s not as though they have done nothing (see Issue 142 and Issue 157). Though I have also chided TEQSA for taking a nickel and dime approach to the issue — cracking down on corner pot dealers while ignoring the major drug cartels that operate in plain sight. But again, I’ll take nickel and dime over strident ignorance and apathy.

Back on track, the paper also reports:

TEQSA says Australian web traffic to academic cheating websites has fallen more than 75 per cent since it commenced blocking sites in 2021.

“Blocking these websites and accounts seriously disrupts the operations of these sites and makes Australia a less attractive place for these operators to target,” a spokesman said.

The Sydney story sources Mohan Dhall, a lecturer at University of Technology Sydney and that, of the cheating companies:

One of those websites, Unemployed Professors, allows students to upload their assignment and receive bids to complete the assignment from potential essay writers.

Dhall paid that website $150 for a 1100-word essay for an Australian National University assignment titled “Inferential Statistics and Hypothesis Testing”.

He was able to talk to the essay writer and the finished product, which he said was of a credit standard, arrived within eight days.

The paper also makes passing reference to companies that hide behind offering “tutoring” services, though they are quick to just provide the complete work — for a fee.

Quoting Dhall:

“It stuns me how accessible these websites are and why there wouldn’t be a precautionary response,” he said.

“In other words, you’d err on the side of blocking a business and having it show why it should be unblocked, rather than err on the side of allowing it.

“Who cares, they are largely offshore businesses. What they offer only seems to be varying levels of unethical services. It seems to give a message that we seem tough, but we don’t act.”

Fair. In fact, I agree.

The article also quotes Australian Education Minister Jason Clare as saying that:

almost 290 cheating websites had been blocked by the watchdog since 2021.

“When students cheat, they risk graduating without the skills and knowledge needed to safely and ethically do their jobs. They also expose themselves to criminals and potential blackmail,” he said.

Almost 290? Odd. But OK.

Two, I hate this argument. Hate. The blackmail thing is true, but the idea that cheating is bad because you’ll fail at your job irks me.

I have no idea why education leaders are letting businesses and the general public pay the price for their lack of ethical quality control. Would it not be best for everyone if schools made sure that the people who earned their credentials and degrees actually did have the “skills and knowledge to safely and ethically do their jobs?” I mean, if schools are just passing that buck along, leaving it to the probabilities of incompetency to address fraud, why have schools? Employer beware is bad salesmanship.

Let me try this another way — student cheaters don’t care about their ability to do their jobs years from now. They care about passing today, getting their degree tomorrow. If they need to, they figure they can just cheat their way to, and through, the job too.

Educators who use this talking point lose me.

Meanwhile, good also for the Sydney paper for sourcing good research from a credible source on cheating:

Contract cheating is an ongoing concern for universities, with research in 2021 co-authored by University of Western Australia cheating expert Guy Curtis showing about one in 10 students submitted assignments were written by someone else. But more than 95 per cent of students who cheat in this way are not caught.

It really is not that hard to do.

Anyway, great story and great visibility. And good that there’s pressure on the national enforcement body to do more. I’m slightly sick with depressed jealousy.

University of South Africa Moves Ahead with 1,400 Cheating Cases

According to news from South Africa:

The University of South Africa (Unisa) says it is investigating over 1 400 student disciplinary cases of academic dishonesty.

It’s not clear to me whether these cases are related to the thousands reported previously (see Issue 283), though that does seem likely.

Also from the coverage, the compromised exams were online and accused students blamed the proctoring software. Naturally.

The coverage also says that the 1,456 cases are those that remain after students with “minor contraventions” received warning letters. So, that’s a big number of, we presume, non-minor infractions.

The coverage also says that most of the likely offenders were post-graduate students.

High School Student Writes on Grammarly Case

A high school student in Massachusetts wrote an article in USAToday on the Grammarly case out of Georgia (see Issue 263 or Issue 284).

The article has several errors and uses the misguided analogy of AI to the calculator. But beyond that sentence, I’m not going to pick it apart because the author is in high school.

Nonetheless, because it’s on the topic of AI and cheating, and in a high readership outlet, you should be aware of it.

Additionally, two things from it are worth sharing. One, our student writes:

Grammarly, the company that provides the eponymous grammar and syntax program, recently announced that it’s getting smarter and now offers “strategic suggestions” for its 30 million users. It might not be an innovation that helps the company.

As Grammarly gains more generative capabilities, its usefulness for students declines because it will place them at risk for unnecessary academic discipline. 

I mean, true. And, to be honest, Grammarly offers more than suggestions. It features a full-on AI writing tool now.

And:

Ultimately – in all areas, not just education – AI is a case of making sure our technology does not outpace our integrity or call into question honest work. Otherwise, we all may be cheating. Or worse, not learning as much as we can.

I can’t argue that either.

Class Notes

Don’t check your calendar. It’s Friday, not Thursday. I did not send an Issue yesterday because, honestly, I did not have time to get it done. As some of you know, I have a startup in the media/advertising space and I’m investing considerable time in it.

Also, more than likely, there won’t be an Issue of The Cheat Sheet this coming Tuesday, April 23. I will be in Arizona, speaking at ProctorioX, a meeting of education and integrity leaders, hosted by Proctorio. My topic will be new research on interventions that have shown to reduce misconduct rates.

They were kind enough to make this graphic for me:

Pretty cool.

Also, substack newsletters such as this one have a comment feature. I’ve always had it off. But starting today, as a kind of trial, I am turning comments on in case anyone wants to add anything. Be kind to one another, please.

Finally, I’m slightly embarrassed to report that higher education consultancy The Tambellini Group has named me one of ten higher education influencers to follow for 2024. Despite their obvious lack of judgement in this particular area, I think the folks at Tambellini are otherwise good eggs.