Last week, the regulator of Australia’s higher education institutions – the Tertiary Education Quality and Standards Agency (TEQSA) – sent universities a list of more than 2000 commercial cheating websites, where students pay for others to complete their work, of which almost 600 are specifically targeting Australian students.
Over the weekend, the ABC ran a sob story about how international students with poor English-language proficiency and a ‘lack of support’ have turned to cheating services en masse to complete their studies:
While Australia sleeps, Ramesh is flipping cheeseburgers. He works the overnight shift at a fast-food shop. It’s tedious, exhausting work, and when he clocks off at 7.30am, he needs to dash across town to sneak through the door for a 9am lecture.
Most days he never makes it…
And, being an international student, he doesn’t have access to Centrelink support like his domestic-student counterparts…
In his desperate attempt to juggle work and study, Ramesh has found a solution. He cheats. “It’s not just a temptation, you have to do it to pass exams,” he says…
He isn’t worried about getting caught, because he says everyone’s doing it…
For little more than a Netflix subscription, students can upload questions, and get the correct answers in minutes…
University of Adelaide MBA student, Yegs, is exhausted…
She feels like universities are more competitive than ever, and the odds are stacked against international students like her.
“I’m competing against domestic students which, in most cases, employers prefer. I have to make sure that all aspects of my resume are perfect, including my grade-point average.”
There has been a long and sordid history of international students cheating at Australia’s universities, often to get around having insufficient English-language proficiency.
For example, in 2014 “functionally illiterate“ Chinese students were involved in an elaborate “ghost writing” scandal.
The following year, ABC’s Four Corners’ “Degrees of deception” reported systemic cheating by international students, with one university lecturer claiming half of their students had plagiarised their work.
Dozens of international students across New South Wales were then busted engaging in an elaborate cheating racket, prompting a strong rebuke from the Independent Commission Against Corruption.
In 2019, international student associations demanded regulation of overseas agents amid systemic cheating on English language tests.
Then Four Corners’ “Cash Cows” report highlighted widespread plagiarism and misconduct by international students.
In July 2019, The AFR reported that “cheating has spread like wildfire” across Australia’s universities, driven by international students, whereas The ABC reported a “proliferation of ghostwriting” services targeted at international students.
In 2020, TEQSA CEO, Anthony McClaran, vowed to tackle industrial-scale contract cheating, which is most prevalent among international students struggling with poor English language skills.
The fundamental problem is that Australia’s higher education system has turned into a commodity ‘volume-based’ business, with providers dumbing-down standards to sell as many places as possible to international students to maximise their revenues.
The trashing of entry standards has meant that virtually any international student qualifies to study so long as they can pay the fees. Hence, we witnessed the absurd rise in students from non-English speaking backgrounds – particularly China, India and Nepal – before the pandemic.
Because these international students lack the necessary English language skills to succeed, they inevitably turn to contract cheating services to ensure they pass.
The real victims here are Australian students who’ve had the quality of their education eroded as universities dumbed down courses to cater to those with poor English skills.
Australians also can no longer trust that a university graduate is who they claim to be. Did they pass their studies fair and square, or did they cheat their way through university?
The ultimate solution is to treat the problem at its source by targeting a smaller intake of higher quality students, including by:
- Raising entry standards (particularly English-language proficiency);
- Raising financial requirements needed to enter Australia; and
- Removing the link between studying, work rights and permanent residency.
Basically, international education needs to become a genuine export industry rather than a people importing immigration industry.
Policy makers must restore Australia’s higher education system back to being about ‘higher learning’ rather than ‘higher earning’.
Students must come here to study, not as a means of getting a backdoor work visa and permanent residency.
