BLUF

Australia's Special Broadcasting Service (SBS) estimates that ten per cent of university students submit assignments written by another person.

Summary

This article from SBS  by Ue Gong, Tania Lee  makes the following points regarding cheating at Australian Universities:

  • Cheating is rife at Australian Universities.
  • An SBS  investigation showed that some teachers could not distinguish between a student's work and an assignment written by somebody else.
  • Universities use a variety of methods to spot cheats.
  • It is not always easy for teachers/lecturers to spot ghostwritten assignments.
  • For some markers, the marking load is so heavy that they do not have time to scrutinise every piece of marked work carefully.
  • One reason is that casual markers are so poorly paid that it is not worth their while to spend a lot of time detecting cheats.
  • One academic noted that the main predictor of hiring a ghostwriter is that the student did not have English as a first language.
  • Some senior academics are concerned that some students leave university with a qualification that says they can do something they cannot do.

References