BY BRANDON LIN
Contract cheating, where students pay for assessment to be completed by a third-party, continues unchecked at Australian universities.
Students are paying less than $200 for an assignment to be completed by academics who claim to be based at prestigious Chinese universities.
An investigation by MOJO News found that contract cheating is flourishing despite a crackdown by the Tertiary Educational Quality and Standards Association (TEQSA) using special protocols to block access to 40 illegal academic cheating websites in August this year.
Students are avoiding the blocked sites by approaching providers directly via messaging apps, such as WeChat, who tailor assessment to each individual student’s needs. The providers post their services on WeChat student groups.
In messages seen by MOJO News, one provider said they were processing more than 30 orders per day for students based in Australia, USA and UK, and one claimed to have a teacher from the Communication University of China producing assignments for paying students.
Assignments are being produced for students in the disciplines of business, media, law, engineering, physics, biology, architecture, and languages, among others.
When approached by MOJO News, one provider quoted 900 yuan ($193) for a 1000-word article, increasing to 2400 yuan ($537) for a 2500-word media assignment with increased complexity.
Students must pay a 50 per cent deposit upfront to the provider, after which a draft is sent with a watermark for the student to submit for checking via popular university plagiarism detection software, such as Turnitin.
If the software detects too much plagiarised content, the student can request for the assignment to be re-worked, until they are satisfied it will get through the detector.
The providers also claim to be able to circumvent cameras required for at-home online testing, with one provider stating “dead corners” can be used by accessing the computer camera lock interface.
One provider showed MOJO News an example of how this was done by an Australian National University student, allowing them to successfully complete an online exam.
When asked why students were using their service, one provider said students were seeking stable scores, had too much homework, or felt they had to use contract cheating services because they would be the only one who was not.
The provider showed a comment from a student client who wrote, "I used to be a very serious student until [once] I took the exam in Cardiff, and figured out that others all cheated in the exam. I didn't, [so] I failed. I suddenly doubted about life. I think study is very important, but passing is more important.”
The provider said the client had now been using the service for two semesters, including four final exams last semester, and online exams this semester resulting in all the student’s assignments and tests being written by the contract cheating provider, and not being detected.
Universities Australia, the peak body for the university sector, pointed MOJO News to its 2017 Academic Integrity Best Practice Principles guide for reference. It makes no specific mention of contracting cheating, other than to suggest universities “may wish to share best practice and collaborate on benchmarking or other inter-institutional processes, especially regarding areas of joint concern (for instance, where it relates to third party commercial cheating enterprises targeting their students). This information can be found on the final paragraph of the nine-page document.
TEQSA was approached for comment, but had not replied prior to publication.