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Plans for a national body to tackle research fraud have been published by doctors and scientists concerned that foul play is undermining the good name of science. The Committee on Publication Ethics (Cope) agreed at a meeting in October that concerted action was needed.

It is claimed that a "slow corruption" is being installed as universities are struggling for funds. Degrees are for sale and in one university a professor at a former polytechnic was found to have ordered his staff to "minimise" the number of failing students by marking up those at risk of failing because there has been a drop in applications.

Last year, Times Higher Education reported allegations thatan emeritus professor of sociology at the University of Leeds, often hailed as the world’s greatest living sociologist, had included several unacknowledged passages in his 2013 book Does the Richness of the Few Benefit Us All? that were near-exact quotations from Wikipedia and other web resources.

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.

Ways in which students cheat are either ingenious or surprisingly obvious. Why do students cheat, and risk having to retake a module, having their degree classification lowered, or even being kicked out of university? There are many reasons – including financial pressure, poor organisational skills and panic – sometimes among young people who should never have gone to university in the first place or, at the very least, who should have had more support structures in place when they started.