Over the past six years, Australia experienced a monumental boom in international students, whose numbers have nearly doubled to more than 600,000:
This surge in international students has driven an alarming increase in cheating at Australia’s universities, as revealed by a wide range of reports.
For example, in 2014 Fairfax implicated “functionally illiterate“ Chinese students in a ghost-writing scandal.
A 2015 investigation by Four Corners also accused international students of widespread cheating and plagiarism:
With thousands of students often struggling with English, the pressure to pass is helping to fuel a black market…
ZENA O’CONNOR: I’m, I’m staggered by the increase in plagiarism. Ah, to start with: in my experience, it was a very small proportion – you know, maybe two, three, four per cent. I would peg it now at being much, much higher: well over 50 per cent.
LINTON BESSER: The academics who have spoken out tonight are not alone in their concerns. In our research for this program, we spoke with scores of academics around Australia. The vast majority had witnessed or personally experienced the pressure to ignore plagiarism and to pass weak students.
In the same year, dozens of international students across NSW were implicated a cheating racket, prompting a strong rebuke from the Independent Commission Against Corruption.
In 2018, an ABC investigation accused Australia’s universities of lowering English-language standards to lure international students, which meant “some students are unable to learn or communicate effectively… [and] that can lead to cheating”.
Earlier this year, concerns over widespread cheating on English language tests led international student associations to demand stronger regulation of overseas agents.
And in May, Four Corners broadcast another alarming report, which again documented widespread plagiarism and misconduct from international students.
In the wake of this Four Corners expose, domestic students from Murdoch University warned “some international students were trying to circumvent the language gap by plagiarising their assignments or contracting outside sources for help”.
Finally, The AFR earlier this month reported that “cheating has spread like wildfire” across Australia’s universities, driven by international students.
Curiously, despite the overwhelming evidence of cheating and plagiarism Australia’s universities, the latest response from The ABC has been to paint international students as innocent victims of cheating rather than the perpetrators:
International students and academics the ABC spoke to described the proliferation of ghostwriting advertisements on social media platforms including WeChat and Facebook, university notice boards and even on the back of restroom doors at universities…
Tracey Bretag, an associate professor at the University of South Australia, said the services were also infiltrating university email inboxes, adding that Chinese international students were particularly vulnerable…
“Our Chinese students told me that sometimes three times a day they get advertising about [these] commercial sites,” she told the ABC.
“[It’s] really overwhelming. You can see how tempting they are, even to good students”…
While some cashed-up international students pay others to write their essays because they can, experts say others do it because they feel pressured to pass their courses.
“We often realise their family made a big sacrifice to pay, they kind of can’t afford the course to be [done] twice, they need to pass, so they are under a lot of pressure,” the University of Queensland’s Susan Rowland told the ABC.
There are no innocents here. Cheating is a choice.
The supply of contract cheating services is merely responding to demand, not the other way around. Otherwise, why aren’t domestic students also engaging in widespread cheating?
The real victims here are Australian students who are having the quality of their education badly eroded as universities dumb down courses to cater to those with poor English skills, alongside the rise in students to teaching staff:
Australia’s universities have slashed entry standards so low, in order to boost enrolments, that virtually any international student now qualifies to study so long as they can pay. And because these students have paid so much in fees, and lack the basic English skills to succeed, they inevitably resort to cheating.
It’s a deplorable state of affairs and The ABC should stop making excuses, hold the perpetrators to account, and stop painting them as the victims.
