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According to the report of the general inspection of the administration of the national education and the research (IGAENR), the evaluation of the students at the university is not good. Actually, the fragmentation of the evaluations (due to the transition to the half yearly of the studies connected to the passage in the LMD) and the complexity of rules, return the illegible system for the students. It also entails disparities of treatment; thus universities develop their own rules of evaluation: the faculties with big workforce opt for the multiple choice question paper, faster and easy to organize. Besides, the cheating is another factor that undermine the credibility of the diplomas: according to the questioned students, between 25 and 50 % of the students resort to it.

According to teacher estimates, 20% of assignments are copied and pasted from other sources. Anti-plagiarism charters should be systematically signed by both universities and students, but nothing can beat the eagle eye of the lecturer.

Students, lecturers: who are the plagiarists? Has the Internet revolutionized cheating? How can we combat this phenomenon, which over the last five years has taken on exponential dimensions.

Some 70.5% of French pupils admit to having cheated in school, according to a study on exam fraud conducted among 1,815 students in French multidisciplinary universities.

A university of Bordeaux student was condemned to three months imprisonment for having cheated several times, assisted by accomplices, during law exams. He appeared in the dock of the fifth chamber of the magistrate's court escorted by two policemen.

At the end of November, for the first time, 500 of INSA Toulouse most recent graduates received a secure card which attested to the authenticity of their engineering degree at their graduation ceremony. The aim of the operation is to fight against cheating and forgery. The cards given to the students are protected against forgery by a nanoparticle marker which is invisible to the naked eye.

Over the last few weeks, the various faculties of the University of Lyon have been doing awareness training with their students on the question of plagiarism. Presented as members of the animal kingdom – sheep, parrots or chameleons, the campaign distinguishes between different types of plagiarists: involuntary, negligent or serious.

Plagiarism is increasing at the secondary school level, according to the numbers revealed by the Inter-academic Commission of Ile-de-France. Between 2013 and 2014, the number of cases of plagiarism and copying reported to the disciplinary commissions in Ile-de-France doubled, increasing from 24 to 47. They represented last year 25% of the 188 cases of fraud on exams reported to disciplinary commissions.

According to the candidates, it is still « complicated » to use one’s mobile phone or any other connected utility during exams. They will not be discouraged of cheating, however: a certain number make do with traditional cheat sheets… Why count on connected utilities, and risk being found out, when good old cheat sheets or plagiarism are more discreet and just as effective?

A sign of the times, cheating comes down to glancing at your smartphone during an exam, or copy-pasting whole sections of texts found on the Internet. Attempts to cheat on final exams increased by 10% in 2014, when compared to 2013, according to National Education Ministry statistics.