Always on the lookout for plagiarism in students’ work, universities also must contend with a barrage of online cheating services.
The recent discovery that Australia’s High Commission in India had inadvertently directed prospective students to a company that could prepare essays, assignments and project reports on a fee-for-service basis has placed ‘contract cheating’ back in the spotlight.
Those visiting the High Commission’s website were directed to the online portal of a US company, Pro Essay Writer, to obtain more information on the differences between Australia and India’s education systems.
While the Pro Essay Writer site contained a wealth of information about differences in teaching methods, testing systems and grading systems, the company also offered fee-for-service dissertation, term paper and case study writing for high school and university students.
Long gone are the days when cheating was confined to copying from other students, using a secret stash of crib notes, or obtaining information about a test from someone who had already completed it.
Contract cheating has taken old-fashioned cheating to a whole new level.
Pro Essay Writer, for example, advises students visiting its website that “getting help from a professional service has never been easier” while clients could “receive assistance in five easy steps” from filling out an order form to downloading a completed paper.
Fees range from $12 a page for high school students to $24 for doctoral candidates if an order is placed two weeks before an assignment’s due date. Pro Essay Writer also offers a premium three-hour turnaround that will set customers back double the cost.
It is not just that the types of services offered have become more sophisticated, there has also been a boom in the number of online businesses offering paid cheating services to high school and university students.
The situation has become so acute that Education Minister Jason Clare last month said Australia’s higher education regulator, the Tertiary Education Quality Standards Authority (TEQSA), had invoked freshly minted special protocols to block access to 40 websites that were being visited nearly 500,000 times a month.
Once-thriving sites like ozpaperhelp.com, abcassignmenthelp.com, essaypro.com and essayassignmenthelp.com.au are all listed on the regulator’s website as having been blocked, reducing students’ opportunity to access ghost-written essays, project reports and dissertations.
Announcing TEQSA’s move to block the essay mills, Mr Clare said: “Illegal cheating services threaten academic integrity and expose students to criminals who often attempt to blackmail students into paying large sums of money. Blocking these websites will seriously disrupt the operations of the criminals behind them.”
The protocols make the process for blocking illegal sites much easier and allowed TEQSA to enforce Australia’s anti-commercial academic cheating laws, introduced in 2020.
Those caught breaking the law face penalties of up to two years’ imprisonment and a fine of up to $111,000.
Many of the contract-cheating sites now blocked were offering essay writing and assignment completion services. Some offered to undertake exams on behalf of students, particularly as examinations moved to an online environment due to the pandemic.
Also on TEQSA’s radar are large file-sharing websites used by university students. These websites allow the purchase of pre-written assignments on common assessment topics.
Disturbingly, experts estimate that one in 10 students has made use of contract-cheating services.
They most likely include time-poor students juggling work and study, those finding they have been academically challenged by a particular course of study, and some international students who struggle with the English language.
While TEQSA’s action to block sites will severely curtail students’ access to contract-cheating services, new providers will most likely emerge fast.
Some universities have responded to what has been tagged a ‘cheating epidemic’ by introducing mandatory integrity training for students and offering development programs for academic staff to help them to identify the trademark signs of ghost-written work.
While these measures and new laws are likely to put a large dent in the activities of cheating-services providers, we should not dismiss the timely lesson provided by the exposé of the Australian High Commission in India.
Make sure you know exactly what you are recommending to customers when you refer them to another organisation’s website.
• Professor Gary Martin is chief executive officer of the Australian Institute of Management WA
