Contract Cheating: An Insight into a Growing Academic Concern
Contract cheating refers to students outsourcing their academic assignments, exams, or projects to third parties, often for payment. This unethical practice undermines academic integrity, devalues honest students’ qualifications, and challenges educational institutions worldwide. Below, we explore the origins, implications, and strategies for combating this growing problem.
Contact cheating in Australian higher education.
What Is Contract Cheating?
Coined by Clarke and Lancaster in 2006, contract cheating refers to students deliberately engaging external providers to complete academic work on their behalf. Unlike traditional plagiarism, contract cheating often involves original content, making it more difficult to detect. Learn more about its origins.
The rise of essay mills and freelance platforms has made this practice easily accessible. Students can request essays, coding assignments, or even hire someone to take exams. Some services explicitly market themselves to students. For example, BBC reported on essay mills targeting university students, revealing their prevalence and aggressive marketing tactics.
How Does Contract Cheating Work?
The process involves three main actors:
- The Student: Seeking help due to time constraints, lack of confidence, or pressure to succeed.
- The Provider: A freelance writer, essay mill, or peer providing the work. Freelancers often advertise services on platforms like Upwork or Fiverr.
- The Platform: Facilitates transactions while offering anonymity, making it challenging to trace parties involved.
These elements create a clandestine system that bypasses traditional detection methods, such as plagiarism software like Turnitin.
Why Is Contract Cheating on the Rise?
- Ease of Access: A simple Google search for “write my essay” yields thousands of results, many leading to professional-looking websites promising “plagiarism-free” work.
- Pressure to Succeed: Students face immense academic and personal pressure, often viewing contract cheating as a last resort.
- Proliferation of Essay Mills: Essay mills operate globally, with some governments struggling to regulate them. The UK, for instance, banned essay mills in 2021 under its Skills and Post-16 Education Act.
- Technological Gaps: Current plagiarism detection tools may fail to identify contract cheating, as the work is original, though purchased.
Consequences of Contract Cheating
The impact of contract cheating is profound and far-reaching:
- Devaluation of Degrees: Employers may question graduates’ competence if contract cheating becomes widespread. Times Higher Education highlights this issue.
- Academic Inequality: Honest students are disadvantaged when their peers cheat for better grades.
- Erosion of Integrity: Institutions risk losing credibility when they fail to address cheating effectively.
- Long-Term Consequences for Students: Cheaters graduate with insufficient skills, leading to professional failures.
- Legal Implications: In jurisdictions like Australia, promoting or facilitating contract cheating is illegal under laws such as the Tertiary Education Quality and Standards Agency (TEQSA) Act.
Challenges in Detecting Contract Cheating
- Anonymity of Transactions: Essay mills and freelance platforms protect both students and providers, complicating investigations.
- Customization: Unlike traditional plagiarism, the purchased work is original, making it undetectable by plagiarism software.
- International Scope: Essay mills operate globally, often outside the jurisdiction of affected institutions.
- Student Awareness: Many students underestimate the ethical and academic consequences, viewing it as a shortcut.
Combating Contract Cheating
- Legislative Actions: Countries like the UK and Australia have passed laws to ban essay mills. Advocacy for broader global regulation is crucial. Explore legal frameworks in higher education.
- Technology Upgrades: Tools like Authorship Investigative Tools use machine learning to detect inconsistencies in writing style, identifying potential ghostwritten work.
- Innovative Assessments: Institutions can reduce opportunities for contract cheating by using oral exams, personalized projects, or in-class writing assignments.
- Awareness Campaigns: Educating students about the consequences of cheating is vital. Resources like Academic Integrity.org offer guidance for students and institutions.
- Collaboration with Platforms: Encouraging platforms to restrict or monitor essay mill advertisements can reduce accessibility. Google, for instance, removed ads for essay mills in compliance with the UK ban on essay mills.
Conclusion
Contract cheating is a pervasive issue that threatens the integrity of higher education. Addressing it requires collaboration among educators, institutions, governments, and technology providers. By raising awareness, adopting innovative solutions, and implementing stricter regulations, stakeholders can uphold academic honesty and ensure the value of educational qualifications. For further reading, explore TEQSA’s resources on academic integrity.
