The regulator of Australia’s higher education institutions, the Tertiary Education Quality and Standards Agency (TEQSA), is holding workshops around the nation in a bid to stamp-out so-called “contract cheating”, which has proliferated across Australia’s universities:
The aim of the workshops is to provide strategies for institutions to promote academic integrity, address integrity breaches, mitigate risk and build a culture of academic integrity…
[A] national study found 6 per cent of students in Australian universities reported engaging in contract cheating…
“This is not going to be something that suddenly magically fixes every issue we have with academic integrity breaches or contract cheating, but I think there is real momentum,” [University of South Australia associate professor of higher education Tracey Bretag] said.
“What we’re seeing and hearing anecdotally is that instead of outsourcing a paper to somebody else they will, for example, find an article written on a subject in a language that they understand and they’ll put it through a translation tool into English, then they’ll put that through a paraphrasing tool,” she said.
Let’s be honest here: the rise in contract cheating across Australia’s universities relates directly to the boom in international students from non-English speaking nations:
Multiple reports of such “contract cheating” have aired over the years.
In 2014.“functionally illiterate“ Chinese students were embroiled in an elaborate “ghost writing” scandal.
In 2015, ABC’s Four Corners’ “Degrees of deception” report documented widespread cheating by international students, with one university lecturer claiming half of their students had engaged in plagiarism.
Around the same time, dozens of international students across New South Wales were caught in an elaborate cheating racket, prompting a strong rebuke from the Independent Commission Against Corruption.
At the beginning of this year, international student associations demanded regulation of overseas agents amid systemic cheating on English language tests.
Whereas Four Corners’ recent “Cash Cows” report on Australia’s international student trade again highlighted systemic plagiarism and misconduct by international students.
Finally in July, The AFR reported that “cheating has spread like wildfire” across Australia’s universities, driven by international students, whereas The ABC reported a “proliferation of ghostwriting” services targeted at international students.
The underlying problem is that Australia’s higher education system has been turned into a commodity, with universities selling places to international students to maximise profits.
Basically, Australia’s universities have gutted entry standards in order to boost enrolments, which has meant that almost any international student now qualifies to study so long as they can pay the fees. And because these international students have paid so much money upfront, and lack the necessary English language skills to succeed, they inevitably turn to contract cheating services to ensure they pass.
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 the number of students to teaching staff:
It is a deplorable situation that necessitates a strong rebuke from TEQSA, not wishy washy workshops that give the perception of taking action but will ultimately achieve little.
