Search Page

Several universities are being threatened with tough penalties for allegedly providing data that would artificially boost their performance on prestigious research rankings used to allocate government funding. The Australian Research Council has written stern letters to several universities warning them they face punishments for providing misleading data for their research excellence assessments, including prosecution under Commonwealth law.

Macquarie University has revoked the degrees of two students and prevented a further 10 from graduating after an independent investigation revealed the students used an online ghost-writing service to complete their assignments. The Northern Sydney University is the latest institution to finalise its internal investigations into the MyMaster cheating racket, in which up to 1,000 students from 16 universities hired the online company MyMaster to write their assignments and sit for online tests.

The boss of the Education Institute at the Royal Children’s Hospital has quit in the wake of evidence given during an anti-corruption inquiry. The RCH told the Herald Sun that it appeared to have been caught up in what is alleged to have been misuse of public funds distributed to various organisations via a network of “banker schools”.

A high-ranking Victorian education department official accused of running a corrupt scheme to siphon off money from school funding has been sacked. Former education department financial management general manager is the first scalp to be claimed by the Independent Broad-based Anti-Corruption (IBAC) hearings.

Several Sydney universities caught up in a cheating scandal that includes students using essay writing services say they are responding and cracking down on the new cheating method. The vice-chancellor of the University of Sydney said he would personally head a taskforce to investigate academic misconduct in the wake of new methods of cheating.

The NSW Independent Commission Against Corruption (ICAC) says that universities in NSW should consider a range of key initiatives including separating the academic compliance and incentive functions of their international student offices to reduce the risk of corruption.