Cheating at Cal State LA, NC State and Purdue
Plus, a French magazine interviews people making money as paid cheaters.
Issue 8, February 22, 2021
Cheating at California State University, LA
An article in the California State University LA student paper (February 11) outlines how the school was “trending” on Twitter as a result of cheating allegations. The notoriety, the article says, was sparked when a
student claimed those in the class who are part of GroupMe, a group messaging app, allegedly participated in sharing answers and taking credit for the work of others.
What’s noteworthy is that the alleged cheating was by group chat, a tool that’s exceptionally difficult to track and likely used to violate integrity rules far more often than schools realize. Since it requires mutual trust by collaborators, it’s rare that cheating by group communications breaks into public view.
It’s also interesting that in the dust up over the allegations, at least one student suggested investigating teachers as well as students. The article quotes the student saying,
Many professors don’t even care. They just assign busy work and they leave you on your own to basically teach yourself and that’s not how it’s supposed to be. Then you guys want to hand out an exam and expect everybody to pass it when you barely teach.
A different student was also quoted as saying
A lot of kids are cheating but it’s because we’re being cheated out of our education. We’re paying $8,000 on tuition every year and we’re worried we’re not going to pass. Students aren’t going to pay $8,000 a year to fail, especially during a pandemic.
Blaming teachers and citing tuition transactions - we are not going to pay to fail - are common cheating rationalizations.
Just as common is the “concern” over “student privacy” that comes up when schools take steps to limit cheating.
Cal State LA did not reply to inquires related to this incident. One of the few things even more common than cheating is the reluctance of schools to talk about cheating.
More “Staggering” Chegg Cheating - Purdue and NC State
Chegg is a well-known cheating site. This week, even more examples of Chegg cheating emerged.
Bradley Davis, Associate Director, Office of Student Conduct, at North Carolina State University told an industry podcast
to be frank, we simply saw a significant increase in the number of [cheating] reports we received
Previously, according to Davis, NC State averaged fewer than 300 cases of alleged academic misconduct. But since March 2020, when Covid-19 forced many programs and classes online, the number of reports of misconduct was closer to 900. Davis said
those numbers were staggering
Many of those incidents of cheating happened with and on Chegg. On the same podcast, Dave Rettinger, former President of the International Center for Academic Integrity (ICAI), said there have been, “At least three cases that have same structure using the very same platform.”
Meanwhile, at Purdue University, mathematics professor Joseph Chen confirmed the details of this post on reddit which is a copy of his e-mail saying students used Chegg to post questions and get answers on his final exam. His e-mail also says the math department has set a policy to include that
Those who posted the exam problems will get an F for the course. Those who reviewed the postings on Chegg will receive a zero on the final exam.
Chen confirms that 64 students were involved in this Chegg incident in his class and that he did refer them to the school for further investigation and consequences. That’s “After some extensive (I am not kidding) investigation,” he wrote in an e-mail.
Chen also noted that some students “did challenge the allegations” and that while 64 students sounds like a high number, his class had around 2,500 students last fall.
A class with 2,500 students sounds like it should be its own story. And, yes, 64 does still sounds like a big number.
High Profit, Low Risk: Ghostwriting in China
French Magazine WorldCrunch has a long investigative piece (February 16) looking at people who are making money writing essays and taking online tests for students.
The paper reported:
With constant contacts between the agency, the ghostwriter and the student, as long as the student can appear on time when requested for a visual online class or for face to face online tests, it's incredibly easy to cheat for the rest of the course.
It continued about one paid cheater (Lei):
Lei's first mission was to attend a class called "Intercultural communication" for a student studying in a community college. He was also the one to prepare the texts when his client was required to make a video answering his professor's questions. As a "lowest rank part-time service provider", he made [about $175] for three months of work.
Another paid cheater (Fei):
Fei's order was to take an online physics exam for a Chinese student studying in a British high school. Before the exam, the intermediary agent first confirmed the presence in real time of Fei, through WeChat. Then, through a real time back and forth of screen shots of questions and photos of answers, the agent, the client and Fei completed the exam together.
You get the idea. The article details how cheating “is a profitable business with low risk” and how one intermediary was “cashing in over $10,000 per month just by doing this part-time work.”
In the next “The Cheat Sheet” - a breathtaking report about how essay mills, paid contract cheating writing services, have hijacked the websites of more than 100 American universities to sell their illicit services. Don’t miss it. Be sure to sign-up.