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The Tertiary Education Quality and Standards Agency received 385 referrals about contract cheating in the first half of 2022, compared with 138 in 2021 and 21 in 2020. Cheating is becoming an “arms race”, and it ranges from students visiting cheating sites to have just one question answered, to paying ghost-writers to complete an entire subject. According to a professor in academic integrity, a new weapon in this race is artificial intelligence, which generates essays almost from scratch or answers problems with the right prompt.

Following the impact of Covid-19 on the education sector, learning institutions worldwide are adopting digital tools that help assessors identify original content, and are working with their faculty to develop an awareness of academic integrity. The Learning Spiral survey shows over 70 per cent of students in India admitted to cheating in online exams, and others admitted to copying answers word-for-word without offering citations.

The new Globethics.net University Ranking (GUR) will provide a unique global ranking instrument that places values, ethics, and sustainability as central principles of higher education institutions worldwide. It encompasses a new higher education framework to assess student learning experience, and key stakeholders on integrity, values-driven leadership, and sustainability commitment. Universidad de Santiago, a private institution in Cape Verde, received the highest overall score and gained the best marks for student sustainability and integrity.

Images of students wearing so-called "anti-cheating hats" during college exams have gone viral on social media in the Philippines. To ensure integrity and honesty in a fun way during exams, a professor at Bicol University College of Engineering asked the students to innovate headwear that would block their ability to see their peers' answer papers. The idea had been effective, and it was implemented for recent mid-term exams sat by hundreds of students at the College in October.

TEQSA’s Higher Education Integrity Unit has updated a database of 2,333 suspected commercial academic cheating service websites, including 579 sites specifically targeting students at Australian Higher Education institutions. This intelligence sharing will enable providers to block access to these websites from their institutional networks and is part of TEQSA’s ongoing partnership with the Higher Education sector to strengthen cultures of academic integrity.

Following a growing number of misconduct allegations involving ministers and public servants, Queensland Department of Education Director-General announced zero tolerance to fraud and corruption and encouraged a culture of commitment to working with integrity. Employees and state school teachers and staff can now report alleged corruption through a new anonymous online portal.

The National Higher Education Fund Corporation (PTPTN) launched the Organisational Anti-Corruption Plan 2022-2024 to support efforts to strengthen governance, integrity, and anti-corruption measures. As an agency under the Higher Education Ministry, PTPTN is committed to supporting the government’s plans to create an environment free from corruption and abuse of power that can jeopardise the organisation’s image.

Following the rapid transition to digital delivery that many institutions have had to navigate, there has been an increase in online services that help students cheat. A simple Google search for the term ‘assignment help’ returned 279 million results in mid-June 2020 and 302 million in early 2021. In Australia to help combat the problem, the Government has passed a law that makes it an offence to provide or advertise academic cheating services in higher education and published an academic integrity toolkit.