In the media

Universities are being urged to block websites that sell essays, identify cheating "hot spots" and consider publishing data on breaches of academic integrity. As universities grapple with a rise in contract cheating – which involves students outsourcing assessments – Australia's higher education watchdog has unveiled new guidelines to tackle the issue. A recent survey by a University of South Australia associate professor who helped create the guidelines, found that 6 per cent of Australian students engaged in cheating.

The independent quality body for higher education in the United Kingdom, the Quality Assurance Agency for Higher Education or QAA, has issued new guidance on how to combat 'contract cheating', where students pay a company or individual to produce work that they then pass off as their own. The companies involved – typically using a website to promote themselves and receive orders – are often dubbed ‘essay mills’, but services provided may include not just essays or other assignments, but conducting research and impersonation in exams. While there is a common perception that students studying in another language are more likely to cheat than domestic students, there is currently “no UK data to support this view”.

Contributors offer their thoughts on the universities watchdog calling for a crackdown on essay plagiarism sites. They offer various solutions to this increasingly common issue, including making the offer of such services illegal, reducing the number of assessment tasks students are required to complete, putting the focus on classroom exams rather than essays, and enabling teachers to have a more accurate knowledge of student’s capabilities so that they are able to spot work that is not of that student’s usual standard.

It is estimated that the ‘professional essay writing industry’ – services offering to quickly complete any assignment, to any standard, for a fee – is now worth over £100m, providing completed assignments to tens of thousands of students at UK universities every year. And where once it was mainly international students looking to produce work with a better standard of English, it’s a growing trend among stressed native speakers too. One of the largest companies, has seen the number of UK customers increase by a fifth over the last two years.

A recent investigation into plagiarism in higher education by the Quality Assurance Agency found hundreds of companies are regularly producing papers for students to pass off as their own. And only last year, an advertising campaign saw posters for an essay mill prominently placed around the London Underground – particularly at tube stops near university campuses. Often involving students paying hundreds of pounds for written-to-order papers, this behaviour became known as “contract cheating” after research published in 2006. It remains one of the major challenges in preserving academic integrity across higher education.

The number of students caught cheating at the UK’s top universities has shot up by a third in three years, with experts warning that institutions are ignoring the problem. A senior teaching fellow at Imperial College London and one of the UK’s leading experts on essay cheating, said: “A growing number of young people also feel more pressure than ever before, often turning to cheating to help them get through their degrees. It’s also easier to access websites that offer paid-to-order essays”.

YouTube stars are being paid to sell academic cheating, a BBC investigation has found. More than 250 channels are promoting EduBirdie, based in Ukraine, which allows students to buy essays, rather than doing the work themselves. YouTube said it would help creators understand they cannot promote dishonest behaviour. The BBC Trending investigation uncovered more than 1,400 videos with a total of more than 700 million views containing EduBirdie adverts selling cheating to students and school pupils.

The recent steps taken by the UK government to end the use of essay mills by its students is a blow to thousands of Kenyan students and university graduates who rely on academic contract writing as their main source of income. An integrity expert tells in his blog that the participants think of their jobs as providing a service of value, not as helping people to cheat. They see themselves as working as academic writers but this practice is considered unethical and there are concerns it will have damaging effects on the quality of higher education.

According to a computer scientist and expert in contract cheating, Kenya has established itself as the centre of the academic cheating universe. The vast majority of university students’ work for essay factories which are delivered to British students with a guarantee they contain no plagiarism and all anonymous. In an effort to clamp down on the cheats and after pressure from the British Government, PayPal announced it would block payments to essay factories.

Universities in the USA use a variety of approaches to combat cheating, from advanced plagiarism detection software, legal action against companies offering paper-writing services to interviews with students suspected of contract cheating. In Canada, the Academic Integrity Council of Ontario brings together college officials twice a year to share best practices. Australia and New Zealand have similar legislation in place: prison sentences up to two years and heavy fines.