I'm Buying these Two Cheating Stories

Plus, U.S. regulators bar an exam cheater. Plus, Virginia Tech adds integrity staff. Plus, International Quick Bites.

Dec 01, 2022

Issue 168

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Australian Regulators Have a Conference on Cheating. And an Education News Outlet Actually Covers It.

There’s so much news to get to out of Australia and I will get there. I promise.

In the meantime, it seems there was recently a conference held by Australia’s Tertiary Education Quality and Standards Agency (TEQSA). Not only am I shocked - pleasantly so - that TEQSA exists, I am shocked they actually held an event and shocked further that an education outlet reported on it.

That it was covered is a nice surprise. That it was covered by Times Higher Ed is no surprise. Nearly alone in the higher education information cosmos, THE not only acknowledges that academic misconduct happens, they often treat it as the threat that it is. Stunning, right?

Especially when compared with a few of its see-no-evil peers (see Issue 167), THE gets it - most of the time.

How good are they?

Just two days before covering the TEQSA conference, they also wrote a full article to new integrity research. Goodness.

The article on the research says “simply reinstating on-campus tests may not have much effect,” to which I say, “no kidding.”

The article continues:

Some students flout the rules governing online examinations despite having the same reservations about cheating as their honest peers, and even after friends have been punished for misbehaviour.

The research, linked here, was an online survey of 8,000 online exam takers from a single university. And though I have not reviewed it, there’s reason to raise an eyebrow over the finding that “2.8 per cent of respondents admitted having cheated.” I suspect that asking students about cheating, online, and immediately after they’ve taken an online test, is not an environment conductive to self-reporting. Even so, the study authors told THE that they were aiming to uncover motivations instead of rates.

On motivation, the key reported finding from the survey was that:

Students who cheat do not do so without conflict

I buy that. From what I know, academic cheating is very often a reasoned, calculated decision. That there’s conflict means there’s consideration.

The paper also reportedly says:

This supports the notion that institutions and educators need to help strengthen students’ range of motivations to not cheat, rather than assuming one particular factor is at the heart of the problem.

I buy that too.

Days later, THE covered the TEQSA conference, informing readers that a conference speaker said that education’s:

“transactional monetary relationship with their students” has made [cheating] worse.

I absolutely buy that.

THE also reported that another speaker, a TEQSA official, said:

universities needed to work harder to stem demand for contract cheating services. “Institutions aren’t consistently…doing the hard conversations with the students – catching them close to when they’ve committed the offence, and having what should initially be an educative conversation,” she said.

I am still buying. My credit card is out.

THE also reported that another speaker, Mairéad Boland, head of academic integrity regulation at Quality and Qualifications Ireland, said:

contract cheating companies were targeting students on social media. “That’s right across the breadth of platforms – Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, TikTok. Awareness-raising and education is really important so that students are aware of the dangers of engaging with these bad actors.”

I’m going to run out of money.

Anyway, good for THE for covering academic integrity. Both articles are worth a read.

U.S. Financial Regulators Dismiss and Bar Broker after “Exam Misconduct”

American financial regulators issued a ban for a former investment broker after he refused to cooperate with an inquiry into “exam misconduct” for a required licensing exam for Certified Financial Planners.

Technically, he was barred for not cooperating, not for cheating. Still, the barred broker was said to have:

engaged in exam misconduct by participating in a GroupMe chat group titled “March 2021 CFP Exam” through which, “on five separate occasions [he] solicited assistance from chat group participants who had already taken” the March 2021 CFP Exam

It’s not every day we see people actually sanctioned for exam cheating. So, good. We can probably all agree that a financial planner who seeks test information in a GroupMe chat is - I don’t know - not great.

An Interview in Auckland

The student newspaper at University of Auckland published an interview with the school’s Senior Academic Quality Analyst, regarding contract cheating.

After inexplicably saying, ‘when contract cheating takes place, it isn’t always intentional,’ the interviewee continued with a warning about blackmail from people who sell answers:

This happens all the time. You need to remember that when you engage someone to complete a piece of work for you, one thing you know about them is that they are already comfortable with a certain level of dishonesty. So, we often get contacted by people who have been ‘hired’ to complete a piece of work for a student, giving us evidence of the agreement. Usually they claim they were never paid so they are reporting the student, but it is equally likely they were indeed paid and are now just blackmailing the student. And remember, your details will stay with these people forever.

At least that part is true. And important. And yet another reason schools should be doing more to disrupt and block the sites of cheating providers. Saying it “happens all the time” just doesn’t feel like enough.

Virginia Tech Hires Two Academic Integrity Staff

Virginia Tech has announced the addition of two staff members to its Office of Undergraduate Academic Integrity.

The two new staff will, according to the announcement:

help facilitate honor code panels and support a new initiative called the Faculty Liaison Program.

The Faculty Liaison Program looks interesting. It cannot possibly hurt.

Neither can adding more hands and brains and eyes to the academic integrity outfit. In addition to some details on the Liaison Program, the article also touches on VT’s integrity policies.

An outlet in Brazil ran an essay-mill ad disguised as an article recently - the type that’s very, very common everywhere and we’ve shared many times. Given the links in the piece, it’s probably from https://us.payforessay.net/report-writing. But this line, I just love - “The professor will not be able to tell you whether you purchased a piece of writing from an essay mill, or another student.”
In India, the government has ordered a review of 850 nursing schools after some 40,000 students in “first and second year general nursing and midwifery (GNM) courses” were to be re-tested because of - wait for it - “mass cheating.” A government minister said the cheating allegations “during the GNM examination were prima facie found to be true.” 40,000 students. Nursing.
Also in India is this very brief little news item about “Law students caught cheating in semester exam, mobile phones recovered.” That’s kind of all it says. Anyway, law students.
In Wales, authorities have suspended a course in fire-fighting “after recruits were suspected of cheating in an exam.” Fire-fighters.