How international students cheat their way through university

The evidence of systemic cheating by international students at Australia’s higher education institutions has become too big to ignore.

Over the past five years, multiple reports have emerged surrounding the proliferation of so-called “contract cheating” by students from non-English speaking backgrounds, who pay others to complete their assignments in English on their behalf.

Concerns have also arisen over Australian universities restructuring their teaching and assessment toward group assessments. These group assignments pair local students with international students, often resulting in domestic students doing most of the work, effectively becoming unpaid tutors, and cross-subsidising the marks of international students.

Earlier this week, a lecturer at an Australian university left the following comment with MB explaining their first hand experience with group assignments and cheating, and how it has become almost impossible to fail international students:

Here’s a little tale from the front-line of university education to show you just how much of a joke the current system has become.

Student X (a foreign student) never bothered to show up to the lectures or any of the practical sessions. The first time I realised Student X even existed was when they showed up for their final group presentation, contributed the grand total of one useless sentence, then stood there awkwardly for the rest of it while other group members delivered the goods.

“Strange”, I think to myself, Student X seems to have no idea what’s going on, so I consult Student X’s online test results and find that they’ve scored very well indeed. “Double strange” I think to myself and quickly check for similar score profiles amongst other students (they’re rarely the same). What’s this? Another student has an identical set of scores, what a coincidence! So I dig in for a closer look and, surprise surprise, the two students have made the exact same mistakes in the exact same places on the tests. Surely just a coincidence that Student X, (who clearly has no idea what’s going on), has identical results to Student Y, who clearly does know what’s going on (as demonstrated in the group presentations).

Now the group projects for these students required extensive time logged in to our servers and the online tests are based on practical sessions that also used those servers. Unless the student is an IT wizard who can clone our setups locally, they’ll have put in some hours for sure. Good thing we can see the server logs, so we go looking for Student X’s activity and find that Student X hasn’t been doing much on the servers. Geewillikers, Student X only logged in once the entire semester!

“OK, FAIL”, easy one, great, that frees up some time to get other work done, but wait, what’s this? Student X has applied for, and been granted, “Special Consideration” from Academic Services and I’m not allowed to know the reason why because of “confidentiality”.

Happens every damn time. If you’re a foreign student and you’re having trouble passing, all you have to do is drop a few crocodile tears on the SJW idiots in admin and you can breeze your way straight past the evil patriarchs like me who try to enforce such antiquated concepts as “academic standards”. “What a meanie”, you cry, “what if Student X has serious personal issues?” Well, here’s what you do, you withdraw from the unit without penalty and come back again when you’re ready. What you don’t do is slack off then cry your way through to a pass.

There’s little I can do about it because the rot starts at the very top of the administrative hierarchy and works its way down. The same people who sell us out for $$$s are the same people getting the big pay rises. Funny that. Those of us with any academic integrity either resign or get replaced.

The “rot” exists because higher education has been turned into a commodity to be sold for profit. Accordingly, universities have slashed entry and teaching standards to boost enrolments, such that almost any international student qualifies to study so long as they can pay.

Forgotten in the cash grab is the reality that universities should exist first and foremost to educate Australians. And domestic students and teaching staff should not be forced to bend over backwards to ensure international students pass, in the process eroding the integrity of their degrees.

If Australia’s universities wish to run international student businesses, they should have separate schools catering to these students and their special needs. What they most certainly should not do is fundamentally change teaching and assessment processes to cater for students who are not fluent in English and do not make the grade.