SNEAKY cheating at university is on the rise, with an ongoing study revealing international students and engineers the most likely to do it.
Preliminary findings of a study into “contract cheating” — anything from sharing notes and assignments to paying for an essay or getting someone else to do an exam — reveal six per cent of students had engaged in some form of cheating.
And 68 per cent of university staff who took part in the survey said they had found “suspected contract cheaters” among their students, The Australianreports.
The ongoing study of 15,000 students and 1200 staff from eight universities and four colleges found “widespread tolerance” for cheating among students and staff, according to the lead researchers from the University of South Australia.
The Contract Cheating and Assessment Design: Exploring the Connection study also involves the University of Sydney, the University of New South Wales, Griffith University, and the Swansea University in the UK.
And the cheating techniques are far more sophisticated than scrawling a few exam answers on your palm.
Preliminary findings show one in seven students had bought, sold or traded notes, one in four had provided others with completed assignments and six per cent had engaged in “serious cheating behaviours”, lead researchers Tracey Bretag and Rowena Harper said.
About 900 students admitted to cheating on some level. Of those, 40 per cent speak a foreign language at home, one-third of them are international students and 25 per cent of them are engineering students.
The preliminary results come almost a year after 13 students — all undergraduates of engineering — were kicked out of Victoria’s Deakin University for contract cheating, after handing in work assignments they had paid someone else to complete for them.
“If you think about a university with 35,000 students, then six per cent is a big number,” Dr Bretag said.
“And while we found one in four had provided an assignment to another student, we didn’t count it as cheating behaviour because it might be legitimate learning — although we realise that is not always going to be the case.”
Business and information technology students also had high levels of cheating.
High levels of serious cheating — such as exam cheating and money changing hands — were in pathway colleges which pave the way to entry into university.
Pathway students were as likely as university students to get hold of someone else’s completed assignment, but six times more likely to pay for it.
The finding comes after The Guardian revealed a 42 per cent increase in the number of UK university students using mobile phones, hidden earpieces, smart watches and other gadgets to cheat in exams since 2012.
Experts fear the figure could be higher, because of the many gadgets such as mini cameras and micro earbuds are so sophisticated and hard to detect.
Websites including Monorean even advertise products directly to students, as “the essential invisible earpiece for cheating on tests. cheat on tests with no worry of being caught”.
Monorean sells the invisible earpieces: the chance to “cheat on tests with absolute discretion” for AUD$520.
Ironically, while engineering students are high up on the list among those most likely to cheat, the profession continues to enjoy trust.
Roy Morgan’s annual Image of Professions Survey recently saw engineers come in at number four on the list of most trusted professions.
University lecturers came in at number 10.
ncG1vNJzZmivp6x7r7HWrGWcp51jrrZ7056aoaafobyoxY6gmJ2flanAcL%2FIsWSpnaKYsq%2FAjKidZq2ennq0wNSdnKeso2KwqbHArWSopl2ptaa10Waqra2UnrK0edGeqp6Zopi1br%2FHqK6sZ56axLR50q2mq7FfbIV6fZdrbGyekm6up4HCcG5um2eXsHaBlW1pcJllmYU%3D