Who's cheating?
A recent survey, led by the University of South Australia, found international students demonstrated proportionately higher cheating behaviours. So did students who spoke a language other than English at home.
A 2015 study of US student demand for commercially produced assignments found students with English as their first language who liked taking risks were about as likely to buy an assessment as students who were reluctant risk-takers, but who spoke English as
a second language.
It's no surprise that students whom we aggressively court for their higher fees and who are working in a less familiar language environment are turning to these services at higher rates.
A recent study on contract cheating in Australia concluded that the over-representation of non-native English speaking students in cheating surveys is linked to the failure of universities to provide support for language and learning development.
What's being done about it?
Widely used plagiarism-detection companies, such as Turnitin, can detect similarities to material that already exists. But essay-writing companies loudly promote the fact their product is original.
In February this year, Turnitin announced plans to crack down on contract cheating. Its proposed solution, authorship investigation, hopes to automate a process familiar to any human marker: detecting major shifts in individual students' writing style that may point to help from a third party.
But despite these technological advancements, students who are turning to such services have reasons far more complicated than laziness or disregard for personal responsibility.
Is it worth it?
Despite the moral panic over grades for cash, there's some evidence to suggest students turning to essay mill services are not getting what they pay for. A 2014 mystery shopping exercise in the UK revealed the astonishingly low standard of commissioned work produced by essay mills. Of all the essays purchased, none received the requested grade, and many fell dramatically short of expected academic standards.
Rather than buying top grades, desperate students are being exploited by companies that take advantage of the very shortcomings (lower literacy and an ignorance of plagiarism protocols) students are hoping to mitigate.
How can we discourage it?
In recent years, several scholars have explored the legality of contract cheating, along with the possibilities of defining a new offence under criminal law of providing or advertising contract cheating.
In 2011, for example, a law was introduced in New Zealand that makes it a criminal offence to provide or advertise cheating services. Yet the criminalisation of such services leads inevitably to the prosecution of cheating students, something the legal system has so far been reluctant to do.
But even discounting the possibility of legal action, plagiarism has hefty consequences for university students under misconduct policies, including revoking course credits, expulsion, and a permanent record of cheating.
Rather than simply completing an essay, for example, a history student might be tasked with interviewing a local non-profit organisation, and producing a podcast episode.
Teachers who use authentic assessments hope to reduce cheating by tying learning to student's hopes for their futures, but one obvious benefit is the difficulty of cheating in such individualised tasks. One key problem for overhauling assessment design is the troubling proliferation of casual labour in universities.
Understanding why students are willing to pay for assessments might also illuminate a problem at the heart of tertiary education – one that is related to our present repackaging of knowledge as a resource to be bought, rather than an ennobling pursuit that is worthy of all the energy, time, and attention teachers and students can devote to it.
Jedidiah Evans is from the Australian Catholic University
