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.

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.

Education agencies across the globe are joining forces to fight the rise of commercial cheating services that target students worldwide. The newly formed Global Academic Integrity Network (GAIN) will share experiences and resources to help jurisdictions develop legislation, regulatory approaches and frameworks that penalise facilitating and advertising of cheating services. It was founded by Quality and Qualifications Ireland and Australia’s Tertiary Education Quality and Standards Agency and launched in Dublin last October.

Researchers globally have reported that since the pandemic, there is growing concern about cheating and the risk it poses to the integrity of higher education. The Tertiary Education Quality and Standards Agency recently used its powers to block academic cheating websites for the first time. The Agency blocked 40 websites that were visited about 450,000 times a month.

Penn's Center for Community Standards and Accountability released its annual disciplinary report, which indicates that academic integrity and student conduct violation cases have gotten closer to pre-pandemic levels. While there was a decrease in total conduct and academic violations from the 2020-2021 academic year, the data remained relatively consistent with years prior to the COVID-19 pandemic.

A study by a professor of cyber ethics and academic integrity at the University of Wollongong in Dubai identified 34 rogue businesses promoting online contract cheating services. There has been nearly a 200% increase through a site which students regularly use to get help, often with exam-style questions being posted with a request by the student to get the answers back quickly. The price would range from $40 (Dh150) for an exam question to thousands of dollars for a 10,000-word report.

A study by The Center for Academic Integrity reveals that 80% of college students today admit to having cheated in some way at least once. To track down plagiarism in students’ work, professors use online plagiarism scanning tools, like Turnitin. At Huntington University, punishment for students who commit plagiarism varies by the professor, ranging from failure of the assignment plagiarized to the entire course. However, 7 out of 10 students questioned the accuracy of tools like Turnitin stating that professors should do backup checks before grading.

Four students have been arrested for allegedly engaging in malpractice during the Kenya Certificate of Secondary Education (KCSE) examinations via Whatsapp and Telegram platforms. Detectives used cyber and digital forensics to intercept dozens of messages containing screenshots of the papers that are currently being examined. According to the Directorate of Criminal Investigations (DCI), the Ministry of Education’s efforts to preserve the integrity of administering the examination have been jeopardized by corrupted government officials.