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The number of suspected cheating cases at Oxford University rose from 26 in March to 55 in October 2019. The figures showed that 36 students had been investigated for plagiarism during assessments this year and 19 were suspected of collusion in open-book assessments. An additional six students received zero grade but were allowed to resubmit their piece of work.

A former Harvard coach accepted $1.5m in bribes in exchange for helping a businessperson get his two sons into the Ivy League school as fencers. They face charges with conspiracy to take bribes under federal programmes. The coach was fired in July 2019 for violating Harvard’s conflict-of-interest policy.

The assessment watchdog Ofqual figures for the 2017-2018 academic year show 1,539 penalties for malpractice in vocational qualifications, of which 55 per cent were for students, 39 per cent for staff, and 6 per cent for schools and colleges. There were 606 penalties issued to staff, with the most common offense being “improper assistance to candidates”, which accounted for 75 per cent of all penalties. Only 7 per cent of penalties for staff came in the form of suspensions or bans. In 45 per cent of cases, staff received a written warning, while 41 per cent of the penalties involved further training. The most common type of cheating reported was plagiarism, which accounted for 46 per cent of all student penalties, followed by in the use of mobile phones or other communication devices in exams, accounted for 19 per cent.

There has been an increase in cases of cheating in examinations at several Norwegian universities. 37 cases will be examined at the University of Agder while the University of Tromsø reported that they had encountered more cheating in examinations at the beginning of the year than last year, with 17 cases this year compared to 8 last year.

The Quality Assurance Agency (QAA) reports that the pandemic has demonstrated how innovative and adaptable essay mills marketing could be” by advertising discounts and “suggesting they could fill a gap resulting from a lack of supervision, or even offering essay writing to help students stay safe”. According to QAA, universities must look at how to prevent or catch cheating in the physically distanced assessment.

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.