Contract cheating in Australian higher education: a comparison of non-university higher education providers and universities

Abstract

This paper reports on one aspect of a nationally funded research project on contract cheating in Australian higher education. The project explored students' and educators' experiences of contract cheating, and the contextual factors that may influence it. This paper reports the key findings from non-university higher education providers (NUHEPs). It compares survey responses from 961 students and 91 educators at four NUHEPs with previously reported findings from eight universities (14,086 students and 1,147 staff). NUHEP and university students report engaging in contract cheating in similar ways. However, while NUHEP educators spend more time teaching academic literacies and discussing contract cheating, NUHEP students are 12 times more likely than university students to report use of a professional academic writing service. Both NUHEP and university educators require systematic professional development regarding the relationship between the teaching and learning environment and students' contract cheating behaviour. NUHEPs need to be cognisant of students' vulnerability to commercial contract cheating services, and ensure they have access to timely academic and social support.

Academic integrity at doctoral level: the influence of the imposter phenomenon and cultural differences on academic writing

“…In this review, collusion is defined as unauthorised collaboration with someone else on assessed tasks while cheating is defined as seeking an unfair advantage in an assessed task, including resubmission of work from another unit. Notably, academic settings have seen a rise in what has been termed contract cheating, where assignments are completed by outside actors in a fee-for-service type arrangement (Bretag et al 2019;Bretag et al 2020;Clarke and Lancaster 2006;Dawson 2021;Newton 2018). Finally, we consider research misconduct to be misrepresenting the study design or methodology, falsifying or fabricating data, and/or breaching ethical research requirements.…”

Why Students Do Not Engage in Contract Cheating

“…This definition distinguishes contract cheating as an independent form of academic misconduct, despite its similarities with ghostwriting per se . Since this seminal work, contract cheating has gained notoriety as a problem facing tertiary institutions around the world (e.g., Cook, 2017; Vallance, 2018) and there has been substantial recent research examining contract cheating and other outsourcing behaviours (e.g., Walker and Townley, 2012; Rigby et al, 2015; Clare et al, 2017; Curtis and Clare, 2017; Ellis et al, 2018; Rowland et al, 2018; Bretag et al, 2019). In higher education, assessment exists as a measure of learning, and academic misconduct, such as cheating, undermines the validity of higher education assessments.…”

Managing the mutations: academic misconduct in Australia, New Zealand and the UK

“…Relatively few studies have investigated academic misconduct from the perspective of university staff (Bretag et al 2019b;Bretag et al 2020;Harper et al 2019;Lindahl and Grace 2018). Participants in this study provided a great deal of detail on the creative forms of academic misconduct they are experienced in managing.…”

“…Factors that contribute to misconduct have also been investigated (Barbaranelli et al 2018;Grira and Jaeck 2019;Moss et al 2018;Yu et al 2018), including cultural or international status (Ison 2018;James et al 2019;Mahmud et al 2019;Makarova 2019). While most current research in the area of student misconduct relates specifically to plagiarism, considerable work has been in respect of contract cheating (Bretag et al 2020;Dawson and Sutherland-Smith 2018;Harper et al 2019), particularly the motivation for student use (Amigud and Lancaster 2019a;Rundle et al 2019;Sarwar et al 2018), essay mill processes (Ellis et al 2018;Foltýnek and Králíková 2018;Kaktiņš 2018;Lancaster 2020;Medway et al 2018;Rowland et al 2018) and the relationship with assessment design (Bretag et al 2019b;Ellis et al 2019;Harper et al 2020).…”