There has been a long history of international students cheating at Australia’s universities, often to get around having poor English-language proficiency.
For example, in 2014 “functionally illiterate“ Chinese students were involved in an elaborate “ghost writing” scandal.
The following year, ABC’s Four Corners’ “Degrees of deception” reported systemic cheating by international students, with one university lecturer claiming half of their students had plagiarised their work.
Dozens of international students across New South Wales were then busted engaging in an elaborate cheating racket, prompting a strong rebuke from the Independent Commission Against Corruption.
In 2019, international student associations demanded regulation of overseas agents amid systemic cheating on English language tests.
Then Four Corners’ “Cash Cows” report highlighted widespread plagiarism and misconduct by international students.
In July 2019, 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.
In 2020, the CEO of Australia’s higher education regulator – the Tertiary Education Quality and Standards Agency (TEQSA) – vowed to tackle industrial-scale contract cheating, which is most prevalent among international students struggling with poor English language skills.
TEQSA held workshops around the nation in a bid to stamp-out such “contract cheating”.
Last month TEQSA sent universities a list of more than 2,000 commercial contract cheating websites, where students pay for others to complete their work, of which almost 600 are specifically targeting Australian students.
The farce continues with The Australian on Sunday reporting a further proliferation of contract cheating across Australia’s universities, proving again “the education system is just a sham”:
A ghostwriter who has completed thousands of assignments for cashed-up students across Australia’s major universities has blown the whistle on the Chinese company at the centre of a vast academic cheating scheme.
The Kenyan, who has asked to remain anonymous out of fear of reprisals, has revealed how he worked as a ghostwriter for Chinese company Assignment Joy, which for as little as $US100 ($149) per 1000 words will arrange for struggling international students to have their assignments fraudulently written for them.
Over more than half a decade, the “academic writer” has penned assignments for bachelor degree and masters students in fields including nursing, health science, education, psychology and business administration for almost every major Australian university.
Dozens of orders and completed university assignments for Australian universities… as well as several TAFEs, have been obtained by The Australian.
The ghostwriter said he knew about 50 other writers in the field personally, including several who he subcontracted to do assignments for him.
The multimillion-dollar shadow industry employs thousands of people across Kenya and South Africa because of their proficiency in English and low labour costs.
“It’s all kinds of students but the major market is Chinese foreign students; they’re 60 per cent of the entire market,” he said.
“There are also a lot of foreign students from Malaysia, those countries that don’t have good English”…
“If you’ve seen all the things I’ve seen your mind would be blown,” the ghostwriter said.
“You would come to the conclusion that I have come to realise that the education system is just a sham.
“I have some students who I have worked for since their first year and I’ve done all the assignments until they graduate, just pass and get all the grades.
“The thing that makes me worried is the medical students who have never done even one assignment since their first day.”
The fundamental problem is that Australia’s higher education system has turned into a commodity ‘volume-based’ business, with providers dumbing-down standards to sell as many places as possible to international students to maximise their revenues.
The trashing of entry standards has meant that virtually any international student qualifies to study so long as they can pay the fees. Hence, we witnessed the absurd rise in students from non-English speaking backgrounds – particularly China, India and Nepal.
Because these international students 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’ve had the quality of their education eroded as universities dumbed down courses to cater to those with poor English skills.
Australians also can no longer trust that a university graduate is who they claim to be. Did they pass their studies fair and square, or did they cheat their way through university?
The ultimate solution is to treat the problem at its source by targeting a smaller intake of higher quality students, including by:
- Raising entry standards (particularly English-language proficiency);
- Raising financial requirements needed to enter Australia; and
- Removing the link between studying, work rights and permanent residency.
Basically, international education needs to become a genuine education industry rather than a people importing immigration industry.
Students must come here to study, not as a means of getting a backdoor work visa and permanent residency.
Sadly, the Albanese Government has taken the opposite approach by uncapping the amount of hours an international student can work while studying for another year, while also extending post-study graduate work visas by two years.
These reforms will inevitably lead to a surge in low quality ‘students’ coming to Australia for work rights and permanent residency.
