A problem labelled “industrial scale cheating” is presenting a mortal threat to universities with students now routinely commissioning a proliferating range of online services to do their assignments. I see it as jeopardising learning and standards, the quality of research and ultimately knowledge itself.

Enforcement action

The Tertiary Education Quality and Standards Agency (TEQSA) has alerted universities to the severity of this threat and promoted attempts to contain it, such as a recent enforcement action to block 40 cheating websites. However the perpetrators are persistent in a rich market; the agency admits that when it gets sites closed down other ones keep coming up.

In 2022 universities, which operate committees on academic integrity, also have committed to take part in ‘deep diving’: investigations to better define and be able to tackle this problem. Hopes are pinned on digital solutions, such as protections provided through the online assessment system Inspera, (see its ‘Exam Portal’ - https://www.inspera.com/exam-portal), although I am told, and believe research indications to date are that the most cheat-proof will be ‘authentic assessment’: “using creative learning experiences to test students' skills and knowledge in realistic situations”; not written examinations or turned-in assignments, essays and the like.

A student interviewed for a recent radio documentary while denying any use of the cheat services, sympathised with a friend who was coming off an overnight shift at work, was required for a shift the next night, and had to submit an assignment in the meantime – so they paid.

Nothing to do with learning of knowledge

There is no need to demonstrate here how such practice has nothing to do with learning or knowledge, though we can comprehend it as a product of the ‘times’. With half of every generation getting university places, many find it hard going to keep up, competition can be tough, and there are cultural influences working against study: students are under commercial pressure to spend a lot, and therefore do too much paid work; the putsch from some business sectors, which have political allies, for more on-the-job-learning puts down the perceived value of time spent on ‘theory-learning’; with a premium on careerism and corporate achievement, more students feel they have to get grades well above their normal intellectual ‘pay-grade’, an added incentive to buy-in some expertise, to ‘get the right answer’.

Several who could get by well as ‘Credit’ students (Grade Point Average of 5/7) feel they have to get Distinctions for every piece of assessment – Credits not valued any more. It is a nauseating formula: disrupted routines instead of a mood of concentration; perpetuating a low standard of actual achievement; against an imperative to get high marks.

Universities contribute to it?

Universities are themselves making a contribution to the trend by treating students as customers; a notion exists that people are investing in, if not buying a degree that must have express links to employment. So much funding is now derived from fees, whether direct fees paid by International Students, or HECS-HELP loans, the universities run their competitive marketing campaigns to attract the numbers and the prestigious high achievers.

Efficiency drives, often-enough on digital management platforms, superimpose American business strategies on the university: the cutting of subjects and removal of choice in the design of individual academic programs, (much of it even under national ‘Framework’ requirements); the standardisation of assessment, committing academics to set work that meets a restricted formula, (most helpful to producers of assignments for sale); restrictive assessment criteria statements, however useful and well-considered, tend to generate distortions, where the learner can master getting the boxes ticked, without needing to do anything else all semester.

Dummying-up academic performance cannot be tolerated because it circumvents the advent of knowledge; bad for the learner, who does not get to grow or mature fully; bad for the country in its need for developed human resources, beginning with fully competent professionals. A cheating-driven system might still produce workforce entrants who are ‘start-ready’ and can struggle through a career, but chances are, without actual grounding in thought, they’ll never be much good – and Australia won’t be much good either.

Another anecdote might help at this point, a recollection from reading Alexander Solzhenitsyn’s First Circle about the corruption of the Soviet system under Stalin. A political prisoner, a distinguished scientist, made to work in a clandestine laboratory, had asked for more staff and received two of the brightest university graduates in his field –both looking very insecure. They had been going through the motions of learning, but had to fess up when he asked them: “Don’t know anything?” Naturally, in the story he was able to teach them, but you can see what the problem is.

Buying ‘chunks’ of ‘knowledge’

Information technology may have its answers, beyond the practicality of generating counter-cheat systems to deal with the cheat systems it creates. It has a pedagogical and epistemological proposition, which says: you can assume that everybody already knows enough to be able to choose ‘chunks of knowledge’ they want to buy for entertainment or work, because of the availability of voluminous, deep or shallow, well curated and indexed, catalogue knowledge. It is true. ‘Digital’ ‘knowledge’ is such a credible new body of extremely well remembered, accessible information, in due course we might not strictly need any ‘old’ knowledge. So the learner who cheats can go on through life buying whatever ‘chunks’ (a term used in the Higher Education business) that they want to ‘know’, piecemeal, at any juncture.

As I have tried to show here cheating finds a natural home in such a system, where there will be narrowly-specified outcomes and transactions, where a dull rationality can be partnered with moral neutrality, and those responsible for what goes on might continue to express dogged faith in the ‘market’, no matter if it is dysfunctional or failed outright.

On the other hand organic knowledge, ‘old’ knowledge, improved ‘wetware’, obtained through study, collaboration with others, and experience, is tied up with personal development, and amongst other things adaptability and moral choice. It is to do with thinking in abstract. It can be foundational for such skills as good time management, a skill missing from the lives of so many students today, half-enslaved in the ‘gig economy’.

What about thinking?

At least some of the universities, maybe almost all are far from giving up on thought. The proposition is alive that a university which easily corners the ‘market’ for the brightest students, can work on this. The University of Queensland is an example, first in Queensland by far with acceptance of offers to ATAR 90+ students, and able to set tightest entry standards generally; situated in the world top 50 universities for research by several quality ratings agencies. Pedagogically, such a university may concentrate on building core skills, for critical thinking and understanding, those students and graduates then very able to take on any vocational learning they will also want. Is it not a premise of liberal thought that if you properly learn something you may then take on anything?

Back to dealing directly with cheating: As with all things a university should take best and judicious advantage of what is on offer in the way of digital systems, in this case to fight the digital problem of industrial scale cheating. As with all things it might also deploy some rigorous ‘authentic’ measures, such as testing in the room with no connectivity as part of the regular process, (employing unconnected digital devices where needed, no reversion to scribble exams); the same with spot checks ordered by academic supervisors; oral examinations, observation and so on. Yet more creative means can be devised and tested for efficacy, appropriate to the different situations. It would be well worth comparing the costs for this, employing the expertise of existing, high-quality academic personnel, against the management of thousands of ‘instances’ of digital exchange, including the anti-cheating processes.

Academics know the students

Such a move would entail giving power back to academics, those who demonstrate strong and active discipline knowledge. It would endorse the proposal that what the teacher knows about a subject is central to learning and to the entire university project. Most discourse about universities in the present era does not mention academics, who are under pressure to make a dire calculation: how to be compliant enough yet somehow be able to get on with your work. Such a move would entail fully valuing knowledge, held by its human repositories and custodians. As well as providing the opportunity to academics to design and carry out a vital share of student assessment, as ‘authentic assessment’, a university wanting to adapt such ‘old’ practices to ‘new’ systems, advantageously, would need to revise some regulations and ditch some of the ‘new’ process-driven routines.

A final paragraph is given to an old friend, (both meanings), who graduated in Engineering from a European university in the 1970s, through a then-form of ‘authentic assessment’. Over his four or five-year course there was no assessment at all, until the last few months. Then he went through the hoops: sit-down examinations, orals, professional consultations, dissertation, practical exercises -- to find out if he had become an engineer. He had, and went on to a distinguished career in his field.

Reference

https://www.teqsa.gov.au/latest-news/articles/teqsa-action-against-academic-cheating-websites (25.8.22)

https://www.inspera.com/exam-portal (25.8.22)

https://www.teaching.unsw.edu.au/authentic-assessment (25.8.22)

https://www.teqsa.gov.au/contextual-overview-hes-framework

https://universityreviews.com.au/atar-course-entry-scores/

https://www.sbs.com.au/language/english/en/article/what-is-atar-and-why-is-it-important/ti4eav165

This article was prepared by Lee Duffield, as a member of the University of Queensland Senate, elected by graduates of the university. It was circulated among university alumni members in September 2022. It is not a publication of the university. It was published also in Subtropic, 13.9.22.