Use of Cheating Site Chegg Surges 196%

Plus, two Houston TV stations cover big cheating scandals in K-12 and higher ed.

Study: STEM Students’ Use of Chegg Soared 196%

Researchers Thomas Lancaster and Codrin Cotarlan at Imperial College London recently published a paper titled, “Contract cheating by STEM students through a file sharing website: a Covid-19 pandemic perspective.” It’s really about the notorious cheating website Chegg.

The study looked at the number of exam questions submitted and answered on Chegg between April to August 2019 and then over the same period in 2020.

The results

demonstrate that contract cheating requests can be put live and answered within the short duration of an examination. The number of student requests posted for these five subjects increased by 196.25% comparing the time period April 2019 to August 2019 with the period April 2020 to August 2020.

And

The growing number of requests indicates that students are using Chegg for assessment and exam help frequently and in a way that is not considered permissible by universities.

In other words, students are increasingly using Chegg to cheat on exams, during exams. This should not be surprising; Chegg is one of the best known cheating providers.

Here also are a few more selected quotes from the research.

Research has shown that cheating is more likely to occur during online exams than on-site exams.

Given the number of exam style questions, it appears highly likely that students are using this site as an easy way to breach academic integrity by obtaining outside help.

Responding to the research, Candace Sue, Chegg’s director of academic relations, told a publication, that the research was flawed, saying, the researchers

mistakenly imply -- without any evidence -- that increased usage of Chegg has [sic] correlates to an increase in cheating.

And that

the overwhelming majority of Chegg users are hard-working and honest, and they use our platform to supplement their learning.

That’s a lovely idea, but it is unsupported by evidence, reporting or research.

Two Houston TV Stations Report on Cheating

The ABC station in Houston has a story (Feb 8) on a major increase in cheating at Texas area schools including what they say is a "large scale cheating" situation at Texas A&M.

A&M aside, according to their reporting,

University of Houston reports that they saw 204 reported cases of cheating in fall 2019, compared to 489 in fall 2020.

Texas State University reports that investigations that resulted in sanctions were 138 in fall 2019 and 162 in fall 2020.

Keeping in mind that most cheating incidents go unreported, more than 650 cases between these two schools alone is alarming, though not surprising.

Three days earlier (Feb 5), Houston’s NBC station also reported on cheating. But this story looked at public school districts. Their headline:

Hundreds of students caught cheating during remote learning

The station found records of hundreds of cheating incidents at local districts even though, shockingly, the Houston Independent District, the largest in Texas, did not have any cheating data whatsoever. They literally have no idea who is cheating or how. The station’s report says it’s,

Hard to know the scope of a problem when you don’t track it