New Survey: 60% of US College Students Say They Cheated This Year

Plus, cheating at Teesside University. Plus, realtors engaged in "deliberate and organized misconduct."

Issue 72

Survey: 60% of American Students Admit to Cheating, 31% Cheated More than Once

A new survey from a company called OnlinePlagiarismChecker shows high levels of admitted academic misconduct among English-speaking college students.

The company is new to me; their website shows a UK registration. And I have not seen details of who conducted the survey and how, though I just recently asked. The company says the data is from September 2021 and the sample size was significant - more than 2,500.

I’m sharing some of the results because they are consistent with other findings and informative. Moreover, Times Higher Ed, reported on the survey. So, it’s out there.

Keep in mind that self-reported rates of misconduct are assumed to be under-counted, meaning the actual numbers are likely to be somewhat higher. With those caveats, the survey shows that across the countries they checked (US, UK, AUS, IRE, Singapore and CAN):

almost half of the respondents (48.6%) in the regions studied answered that they cheated at least once during their studies. Of these, 28.2% claim to have cheated multiple times during the last academic year.

Yikes.

And, surprising no one, the highest reported rates of cheating were in the United States where 59.8% of students said they cheated at least one time in the last academic year and 31.1% reported doing so more than one time. A staggering 14.5% of American students said they cheated more than 30 times in the past year. On that score - 30+ instances - only Australia was higher with 18.9%.

You can check the results on your own, naturally. But I’ll quickly share three more I find noteworthy.

Asked if they “started cheating more” during online education, a robust 57.8% of students survey-wide said yes. Only 24% said no. That checks out (see Issue 36 or Issue 58).

Asked whether they’d “been caught” cheating, just 7.5% survey-wide said they had been.

And relatedly, the survey asked those who said they were caught if they:

suffered more serious consequences than a warning.

It’s the first time I’ve seen that question and, in the United States, just 36% said the penalty for being caught cheating was more than a warning - the lowest among surveyed nations. For comparison, 56% of Australian students said their consequences for being caught were more serious than a warning.

In other words, if you believe these numbers, cheating pays dividends with little risk.

In the United States at least, there’s only a 10% chance you’ll be caught at all and even if you are, there’s a 65% chance your punishment will be a warning. If my math is right, that works out to just a 3.5% chance you’ll face any potentially serious consequence for cheating.

Ireland Colleges “struggle against contract cheating”

The Irish Times has a long story (subscription required) about contract cheating.

It outlines familiar themes. College leaders and professors cannot match the technology, marketing and sophistication of companies that sell cheating. The reporting mentions:

services are now offering answers to questions within 30 minutes, raising doubts over the integrity of online exams.

But it highlights essay mills and quotes Megan O’Connor, vice-president for academic affairs with the Union of Students of Ireland,

It’s a huge problem

On campus, the posters advertising these services are going up faster than they can be taken down. Students are being targeted on social media... Anyone who thinks there isn’t an issue doesn’t realise that it’s right under their nose.

Yup.

And, as other news outlets have done, the Irish Times bought 1,200-word custom essays from three different providers and asked a professor to grade them (see Issue 70). Unlike the previous example though, the Irish professor was, I think, a bit more honest in his assessment. About one of the purchased papers, the professor said,

If it had been submitted to one of my classes I would have no way of knowing the student had cheated. It’s not so brilliant as to be noticeable.

The professor said all three examples would have passed. And since one paid essay included a clean report from plagiarism detection company Turnitin, the professor said,

It passes the Turnitin test, so there really are no red flags, which is a worry.

Cheating at Teesside University

Local reporting says that students are under investigation at Teesside University (UK) for plagiarism. The inquiries involve nine students, the paper says.

Nine is not a big deal. But here, it kind of is. First, the paper reports that:

The suspected cheating involved students studying in the following schools.

• Social Sciences

• Humanities

• Law

• Science

• Engineering

• Design

Ah, engineering and law. No problem.

But the real issue is the university itself. According to the report, since 2018, the school has had nine suspected cases of “essay fraud” - five of which were in this past term.

A Teesside University spokesperson said,

We take a robust approach to identifying and dealing with any form of academic misconduct; we proactively educate our students about best practice and use advanced software to detect plagiarism.

As a result of this work, we have a very low number of students who engage in misconduct.

Zero chance.

The school doesn’t have a low number of students cheating. With 20,000 students, it has a low number of students it’s caught cheating. Big difference.

Humber College, Accreditor Sanction Cheats in Licensure Exams

Local news says 34 realtors in Toronto have lost their licenses:

after Humber College found “deliberate and organized misconduct” relating to exams in its Real Estate Education Program

Humber College issued a statement saying:

it takes academic integrity seriously and that the real estate program “has robust measures” to monitor exams, along with policies to discourage academic misconduct.

Sounds familiar.

In any case, the paper says all Humber exams are proctored by Proctortrack. It’s not clear whether that played a role in the discovery of the misconduct.

The news was reported in the Real Estate section.

In the next “The Cheat Sheet” - We will get to some “research” on exam proctoring that isn’t. Plus, a look at exam proctoring in South Africa. Plus, more cheating.

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