tag:theconversation.com,2011:/us/topics/academic-dishonesty-in-australia-18005/articlesAcademic dishonesty in Australia – The Conversation2018-07-26T04:06:58Ztag:theconversation.com,2011:article/989362018-07-26T04:06:58Z2018-07-26T04:06:58ZDon’t assume online students are more likely to cheat. The evidence is murky<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/229359/original/file-20180726-106527-zvrwtx.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=0%2C0%2C5590%2C3724&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">You'd think that studying online would make it easier to cheat. But don't jump to conclusions.</span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://unsplash.com/photos/Hcfwew744z4">Christin Hume/Unsplash</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>More university students are choosing to study online rather than face-to-face, prompting concerns about academic integrity.</p>
<p>If you’re tempted to cheat in <a href="http://www.abc.net.au/4corners/degrees-of-deception-promo/6398568">face-to-face courses</a>, even during exams, how much easier would it be to pass off work that isn’t your own when you’re online?</p>
<p>But research by us and others shows how university courses are delivered is less important in predicting which students are more likely to cheat.</p>
<p>A better predictor is students’ demographic characteristics, particularly their age.</p>
<hr>
<p>
<em>
<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/a-few-bad-apples-dont-turn-a-blind-eye-to-academic-doping-8513">A few bad apples? Don't turn a blind eye to academic doping</a>
</strong>
</em>
</p>
<hr>
<h2>Students choosing online courses</h2>
<p>In Australia, the number of external (or online) students grew from 213,588 <a href="https://docs.education.gov.au/system/files/doc/other/2015_all_students.xls">in 2015</a> to 224,662 <a href="https://docs.education.gov.au/system/files/doc/other/2016_section_2_-_all_students.xls">in 2016</a>, the latest available figures.</p>
<p>There has been particular growth in online postgraduate education, as people juggle study with professional and personal commitments. </p>
<p><a href="https://www.deakin.edu.au/__data/assets/pdf_file/0017/1034801/Deakin-At-A-Glance-September-2017.pdf">Deakin University’s</a> Cloud Campus, for example, now enrols more students than its two Geelong campuses and its Warrnambool campus combined — 13,054 versus 12,868 enrolments.</p>
<hr>
<p>
<em>
<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/balancing-work-and-tertiary-study-is-harder-now-than-in-2012-study-89969">Balancing work and tertiary study is harder now than in 2012: study</a>
</strong>
</em>
</p>
<hr>
<h2>What’s the evidence on cheating?</h2>
<p>Evidence for whether online or face-to-face students are more likely to cheat is inconclusive.</p>
<p><a href="https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/10511250600866166">A 2006 paper</a>, for example, found more cheating in online classes than courses using traditional lectures.</p>
<p>Other studies, some looking at <a href="https://www.healio.com/nursing/journals/jcen/2010-11-41-11/%7B4b84effd-7567-4a90-b891-954dd6e0ee41%7D/academic-integrity-in-an-online-registered-nurse-to-baccalaureate-in-nursing-program">specific disciplines</a> and others at <a href="https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/09639280802044568">general student populations</a>, found <a href="https://eric.ed.gov/?id=EJ864302">less cheating online</a>.</p>
<p>In yet <a href="http://people.missouristate.edu/ardenmiller/swpa12.pdf">another study</a>, students who took only online classes were less likely to cheat than students who took only face-to-face classes.</p>
<p>This is consistent with Swinburne’s experience. Based on internal (unpublished) figures from 2016 and 2017, online students were ten times less likely to be involved in academic misconduct, including exam violations, compared to their on-campus counterparts. </p>
<p>These figures may simply mean the design of online courses makes it more difficult for students to plagiarise. Alternatively, it may just mean we’re better at detecting plagiarism when it happens face-to-face, rather than online.</p>
<h2>If not online students, who then?</h2>
<p>So other factors seem to be more important in academic integrity than how courses are delivered – in particular, a student’s age.</p>
<p>We know students aged 25 or over <a href="https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/pdf/10.1080/03075079.2018.1462788?needAccess=true">are less likely</a> to engage in academic misconduct, like sharing work. And, as <a href="http://ro.uow.edu.au/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1501&context=jutlp">online students are generally older than their on-campus peers</a>, this could explain how some researchers have found they’re less likely to cheat.</p>
<p>At Swinburne, there are about five times as many students who are over the age of 25 as under. The average age of online students is 32.</p>
<p>Of course, it may be that older students are more accomplished at concealing cheating, but this seems unlikely. </p>
<p>Swinburne’s experience backs <a href="https://www.teqsa.gov.au/sites/g/files/net2046/f/good-practice-note-addressing-contract-cheating.pdf?v=1507082628">other research</a> that shows younger students are more likely to cheat and engage in more “collaborative cheating” — like copying another student’s work and submitting it as their own — compared with their older peers.</p>
<p>But we need to be careful not to reinforce stereotypes. As anyone who has sat on disciplinary panels will know, academic cheats come in many shapes, sizes, disciplinary cohorts and ages.</p>
<h2>How do we support a culture of academic integrity?</h2>
<p>Universities certainly need to update and adapt their approach to academic integrity to suit online teaching, technological changes and globalisation.</p>
<p>For instance, this may mean <a href="https://cheatingandassessment.edu.au/">changing assessments</a> to reduce the likelihood of cheating. Students may need to demonstrate solutions to problems in-person or via video. And it means using text-matching software to minimise <a href="https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/03075079.2018.1462788">contract cheating</a>, where students outsource their assessment to third parties.</p>
<p>However, the overall approach needs to be the same, regardless of how courses are delivered. We need to support and communicate to students about <a href="https://www.teqsa.gov.au/latest-news/publications/guidance-note-academic-integrity">an overarching culture of academic integrity</a>. This involves actively engaging with our students, explicitly teaching the norms of academic writing and research. </p>
<p>This might be achieved through compulsory modules covering academic integrity, providing academic support services, and regularly reinforcing messages about ethics as a key part of academic and professional life. </p>
<p>All this needs to be backed by appropriate policies and processes, including training and support for academic and professional staff. </p>
<hr>
<p>
<em>
<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/assessment-design-wont-stop-cheating-but-our-relationships-with-students-might-76394">Assessment design won’t stop cheating, but our relationships with students might</a>
</strong>
</em>
</p>
<hr>
<p>We need to move beyond the idea that online courses are beset by academic integrity problems, or we need special measures to “fix” online learning. Online learning is, itself, not necessarily a contributing factor to an increase in academic misconduct.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/98936/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Chris Pilgrim works for Swinburne University which offers online courses</span></em></p><p class="fine-print"><em><span>Christopher Scanlon does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>Online students tend to be older, which might explain why new data suggest they’re less likely to cheat. But even with these data, the evidence is mixed.Chris Pilgrim, Pro vice-chancellor (Education and Quality), Swinburne University of TechnologyChristopher Scanlon, Associate Director, Learning Transformations and Enhancement, Swinburne University of TechnologyLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/434022015-06-18T20:11:40Z2015-06-18T20:11:40ZUniversities run as businesses can’t pursue genuine learning<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/85331/original/image-20150617-23332-pc3s15.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">If universities' main aim is securing funding for their survival, learning takes a back seat</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">from www.shutterstock.com.au</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>The past few months have seen a <a href="http://www.theaustralian.com.au/higher-education/essay-fraud-hard-to-detect/story-e6frgcjx-1227401083278">multitude of revelations</a> of cheating, academic dishonesty and sliding academic standards within Australian universities. </p>
<p>Commentary on these issues has, so far, focused on means of detecting and preventing fraud. Suggestions include <a href="https://theconversation.com/policing-wont-be-enough-to-prevent-pay-for-plagiarism-42999">revisions of the way we conduct assessments</a>, or <a href="https://theconversation.com/buying-essays-how-to-make-sure-assessment-is-authentic-34125">removing essays as tests of critical thinking</a>. However, these measures treat the symptoms, not the cause.</p>
<p>The cause of academic dishonesty and other entrenched problems is the commodification of education, which has been increasing in recent years. Universities themselves must take substantial blame for this. By <a href="https://theconversation.com/the-slide-of-academic-standards-in-australia-a-cautionary-tale-40464">thinking of students as customers</a>, we have turned education into a consumer good.</p>
<p>In the face of continuing cuts to funding, the search for new revenue streams has <a href="https://theconversation.com/australian-unis-should-take-responsibility-for-corrupt-practices-in-international-education-40380">had serious consequences for our integrity</a>. A number of worrying trends have emerged as a result of a shift in the way students view higher education. Because students now “buy” their education, their attitudes to university study have fundamentally changed. </p>
<h2>The rise of plagiarism</h2>
<p>The universal adoption of plagiarism detection software across the university sector shows how entrenched this problem is. At the more extreme end of the scale, students can buy bespoke assignments online. The <a href="http://www.smh.com.au/national/education/students-enlist-mymaster-website-to-write-essays-assignments-20141111-11k0xg.html">recent exposure of the MyMaster</a> website and a growing number of similar sites are merely the tip of the iceberg. </p>
<p>The cost of ghost-written essays is falling as <a href="http://www.theaustralian.com.au/higher-education/essay-fraud-hard-to-detect/story-e6frgcjx-1227401083278">more companies</a> take advantage of this <a href="http://www.abc.net.au/triplej/hack/stories/s4256186.htm">growing market</a>. Competition for university entry means that even <a href="http://www.smh.com.au/national/education/teachers-demand-change-to-combat-endemic-cheating-20150608-ghiqik.html">high school students are using essay-writing services</a>.</p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/85452/original/image-20150618-23256-1r8zpeq.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/85452/original/image-20150618-23256-1r8zpeq.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/85452/original/image-20150618-23256-1r8zpeq.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/85452/original/image-20150618-23256-1r8zpeq.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/85452/original/image-20150618-23256-1r8zpeq.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/85452/original/image-20150618-23256-1r8zpeq.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/85452/original/image-20150618-23256-1r8zpeq.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Students are buying bespoke essays, and even forged testamurs online.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">from www.shutterstock.com.au</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>The fact that students can purchase assignments reduces an exercise in scholarship and critical thinking to a box that needs to be ticked in order to pass. It also misses the central aims of such exercises: retrieving, understanding and assessing evidence; coming up with solutions to problems; and communicating these ideas. </p>
<p>Students who use essay services value grades above learning. Such students may leave university without having acquired the core skills that essays are designed to develop. </p>
<p>Ditching the essay format is not a solution. Rather, we should be explaining why essays are valuable. Regardless of our disciplines, they train us in critical thinking and crisp communication.</p>
<h2>Shortcuts as alternatives to real learning</h2>
<p>Online delivery of material is comprehensive and convenient. And importantly for university finances, it is cheap. However, it does mean that participation is hidden. </p>
<p>This has two serious consequences. For assessment material such as online quizzes, we can never be certain who is completing the task. We can also never be sure that students are engaging with the course material.</p>
<p>What is the solution for disengaged students? Their task is clear: pass the exam. To cater for this need, many groups have sprung up offering concentrated sessions with this aim specifically in mind. They spruik “cram sessions” and “cheat sheets”. Often they are run by recent students who have “aced” the course, and their aim is simple: coach students in exam content. </p>
<p>Examinations aren’t necessarily an ideal way to test people. We can only use examinations to test part of the content of a unit. Results are then used as an indirect measure of how well a student understands the entire content.</p>
<p>However, cram sessions invert this aim. They generate students who can pass one specific exam, with no guarantee that they even understand the exam material, let alone the broader content.</p>
<p>Another shortcut is to simply make things up. <a href="http://www.smh.com.au/national/education/sydney-university-medical-students-invented-patients-for-assignments-20150605-ghgsy2">Recently it was revealed</a> that final-year medicine students at Sydney University falsified records of interviews with patients who were actually dead. In a supreme twist of irony, <a href="http://morningmail.org/future-doctors-your-health-in-the-hands-cheats/">this exercise was designed to help</a> them understand the plight of patients with chronic medical conditions.</p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/85467/original/image-20150618-23263-6nqfo.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/85467/original/image-20150618-23263-6nqfo.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/85467/original/image-20150618-23263-6nqfo.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=399&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/85467/original/image-20150618-23263-6nqfo.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=399&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/85467/original/image-20150618-23263-6nqfo.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=399&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/85467/original/image-20150618-23263-6nqfo.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=501&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/85467/original/image-20150618-23263-6nqfo.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=501&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/85467/original/image-20150618-23263-6nqfo.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=501&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">It’s difficult to ensure work is genuine and completed by the student.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">from www.shutterstock.com</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>But the worst of all shortcuts are the recent revelations of <a href="http://www.news.com.au/finance/work/the-great-aussie-degree-scam-forgers-raking-in-thousands-selling-bogus-qualifications/story-fnkgbb3b-1227284475119">high-quality forgeries of testamurs</a> from almost 100 Australian universities and TAFEs. </p>
<p>For some, a degree is no longer a statement of achievement and scholarship, but a passport into the high-end job market. Knowing something about the field you plan to enter seems to be not as important as the ticket to enter.</p>
<h2>So what do we do to fix it?</h2>
<p>A university degree implies that a graduate is capable of performing the roles we have certified them for. Over three-quarters of the students using the MyMaster essay-writing service were <a href="http://www.smh.com.au/national/education/macquarie-university-revokes-degrees-for-students-caught-buying-essays-in-mymaster-cheating-racket-20150528-ghba3z">enrolled in finance or economics degrees</a>. </p>
<p>One-third of the final-year class of medical students at Sydney University had irregularities in an assessment designed to teach them empathy. </p>
<p>Management of our personal finances and health are two fields where we place absolute trust in providers. Do we really want a future filled with <a href="http://www.smh.com.au/national/education/cheating-scandal-sydney-university-to-review-medical-study-unit-20150606-ghi5d2.html">corruptible financiers and doctors who have no empathy?</a></p>
<p>University study should be undertaken because you are passionate and interested in learning. Students are not paying to get a degree, they are paying to participate in a <a href="https://theconversation.com/how-do-we-value-universities-40005">unique cultural institution</a> that fosters rational inquiry, critical thinking and human progress.</p>
<p>What we can do about these issues is a much harder question. The problems we face are entrenched and have taken decades to ferment. They will probably take the same amount of time to be solved. </p>
<p>We can start by making it clear to students they will naturally do better if they are interested in learning about their chosen subject. But the onus for change is on universities and governments, not students.</p>
<p>Universities should not be run as businesses. Because where monetary interests are the primary concern, there is a clear scope for negative effects on academic integrity. Universities require stable government funding to ensure their pursuit of cash doesn’t corrupt the reason they exist in the first place.</p>
<hr>
<p>Read more of The Conversation’s coverage of <a href="https://theconversation.com/au/topics/academic-dishonesty-in-australia">Academic dishonesty in Australia</a> here.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/43402/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Michael Gillings receives funding from the Australian Research Council</span></em></p><p class="fine-print"><em><span>Jane Williamson has received funding from the Australian Research Council.</span></em></p>Universities’ pursuit of stable income streams means they are corrupting the reason they exist in the first place.Michael Gillings, Professor of Molecular Evolution, Macquarie UniversityJane Williamson, Associate Professor in Marine Ecology, Macquarie UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/429992015-06-11T19:59:10Z2015-06-11T19:59:10ZPolicing won’t be enough to prevent pay-for plagiarism<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/84654/original/image-20150611-9352-1l2vsc9.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">It's impossible to compare student work against a database of sources because each pay-for plagiarised assignment is a bespoke creation.</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">AAP/Alan Porritt</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>Buying and selling high-stakes assessments is bad for education. It undermines community confidence because we can’t be sure if a grade was earned or bought. Plagiarism hurts plagiarists too, because they miss out on the learning opportunities that the assessment was supposed to provide. Tensions around plagiarism may be part of a <a href="http://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/02602930801895786">culture of distrust</a> between teachers and students.</p>
<p>Recently, it was revealed that high school students in NSW are buying essays made-to-order online for <a href="http://www.smh.com.au/national/education/cheating-endemic-in-nsw-high-schools-20150607-ggw8h9">little more than A$100</a>. University assignments can be more expensive, costing <a href="http://www.smh.com.au/nsw/mymaster-essay-cheating-scandal-more-than-70-university-students-face-suspension-20150318-1425oe.html">up to $1000</a> from the controversial (and now-defunct) MyMaster website.</p>
<p>With the recent media attention, we could be fooled into thinking pay-for plagiarism is a modern, high-tech invention. However, the internet merely supports the logistics. Pay-for plagiarism is much older than computers – many of your favorite books were <a href="http://julieannamos.hubpages.com/hub/Ghostwriting-Exposed---The-Top-50-Ghostwritten-Books">“ghostwritten”</a>.</p>
<h2>The difficulties in policing</h2>
<p>The problem is that pay-for plagiarism is very difficult to police. Unlike “copy-paste” plagiarism or using an assignment that a previous student submitted, each pay-for assignment is made-to-order. We can’t just compare student work against a database of sources because each assignment is a bespoke creation. </p>
<p>Identifying exactly who wrote a particular piece of text is a hard problem. Disputes about authorship date back to biblical times – even the bible itself has <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Authorship_of_the_Pauline_epistles">books with disputed authorship</a>. New technology may help discern if a student wrote a particular piece, but it is <a href="http://llc.oxfordjournals.org/content/27/2/183">far from perfect</a>, and far from application in a mass education context. </p>
<p>As anti-plagiarism enforcement gets smarter, so do the plagiarists. While we may be able to spot a ghostwritten university-level essay submitted by a struggling high school student, this is a rookie pay-for plagiarism mistake. Smart plagiarists rework the essays they pay for, or even employ techniques like <a href="http://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/02602938.2014.950553">“back-translation”</a> by running plagiarised text through tools like Google Translate. </p>
<p>Some high-end services will even produce a tailored assignment just for you, based on analysis of your previous writing style. Techniques like these make it difficult to detect plagiarised work.</p>
<h2>The possible way forward</h2>
<p>Policing pay-for plagiarism may work to some extent, but it won’t completely solve the problem. So, what are our alternatives? How can we complement an enforcement approach?</p>
<p>NSW Teachers Federation president <a href="http://www.smh.com.au/national/education/teachers-demand-change-to-combat-endemic-cheating-20150608-ghiqik">Maurie Mulheron</a> favours requiring students to complete all assessments in class. Students can’t pay for someone else to do their work for them if the teacher is watching. </p>
<p>However, this approach creates further problems. The classroom environment is not an <a href="http://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/02602938.2013.819566">“authentic”</a> environment for some of the tasks teachers set students. Consider an in-class essay versus a take-home essay assignment. Even in disciplines like history where an essay might be a true representation of what professional practitioners do, a stressful classroom and time limit can lead to students producing different work. </p>
<p>Mulheron’s approach would tell us much about what students are capable of within a classroom environment, but surely we want to know what they can do in the real world too.</p>
<p>Clever assessment design may be another part of the solution. Assessment that builds on the student’s own experiences, classwork, prior drafts and feedback is more challenging to ghostwrite. We can also build sequences of tasks that have a small mandatory supervised component. This is commonly implemented at universities as an exam that needs to be passed to pass a unit.</p>
<p>Above all else, we should examine the root causes of pay-for plagiarism. One <a href="http://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/07294360701310805">study</a> into the reasons higher education students plagiarise – the study was not restricted to pay-for plagiarism – found a variety of factors that we can learn from. One of these factors was pressure: time pressure, stress, pressure from family, and pressure from society.</p>
<p>This may be a factor for students paying for HSC assignments as well. For example, students at one school were apparently told they would be <a href="http://www.smh.com.au/national/education/teachers-demand-change-to-combat-endemic-cheating-20150608-ghiqik">kicked out</a> if their work was not good enough. Perceptions that poor performance will be punished, rather than addressed with support, may make pay-for plagiarism an attractive option.</p>
<p>Other issues in the study included teaching and learning issues (ranging from workload to bad teaching), laziness or convenience, and – my favourite – “pride in plagiarising”. Better detection of ghostwriting will not completely address these issues.</p>
<p>Solving the pay-for plagiarism problem requires us to understand why paying $1000 seems like a better choice than completing a particular assignment. Cheating students are definitely in the wrong, but when placed in a high-stakes, high-stress environment, they may feel like they have few other options. We need to change this.</p>
<hr>
<p>Read more of The Conversation’s coverage of <a href="https://theconversation.com/au/topics/academic-dishonesty-in-australia">Academic dishonesty in Australia</a> here.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/42999/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Phillip Dawson receives funding from the Office for Learning and Teaching.</span></em></p>We could be fooled into thinking pay-for plagiarism is a modern, high-tech invention. However, the internet merely supports the logistics.Phillip Dawson, Associate Professor and Associate Director, Centre for Research in Assessment and Digital Learning, Deakin UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/419702015-05-19T20:03:15Z2015-05-19T20:03:15ZBook review: Selling Students Short<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/81983/original/image-20150518-25403-xemh5n.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Selling students short comes at an important time for higher education in Australia: funding uncertainties and questions over academic standards have never been more pronounced. </span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">from www.shutterstock.com.au</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>Richard Hil’s <a href="http://www.allenandunwin.com/default.aspx?page=94&book=9781743318898">Selling Students Short: Why You Won’t Get the Education You Deserve</a> is a timely exposé of the difficult conditions facing students at Australia’s increasingly corporatised universities.</p>
<p>The book is a follow-up to Hil’s <a href="https://www.newsouthbooks.com.au/books/whackademia_an-insiders-account-of-the-troubled-university/">Whackademia: An Insider’s Account of the Troubled University</a>. This focused on the perspective of academics struggling to negotiate progressively more burdensome bureaucracies.</p>
<p>Shifting to the “student experience”, Selling Students Short is a companion piece to Whackademia that mirrors one of the National Tertiary Education Union’s <a href="http://www.nteu.org.au/article/NTEU-message-to-students-about-May-21-Strike-16279">consistent refrains</a> from recent industrial action across the country:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>Our working conditions are your learning conditions.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>Hil’s wit and frequently irreverent tone afford the reader a more pleasurable experience than might be expected given the dire conditions of Australian universities that he details. The situation has largely been brought about by a steady decrease in Commonwealth funding, coupled with a dramatic expansion of student enrolment numbers in recent years. </p>
<p>Large sections of the book are devoted to discussions and interviews Hil conducted with 150 students around the country. It may be tempting to dismiss these accounts on the basis of their anecdotal nature, but readers would be remiss to do so. The focus on student narratives is a welcome antidote to the “empirical drudgery” that pervades “the great student surveyathon”, which Hil argues places far too much faith in metrics and measures of student satisfaction. </p>
<p>One student interviewed by Hil lamented that the federally funded University Experience Survey published in 2014 posed questions that felt like he was “being asked to comment on the quality of a service at a local supermarket”.</p>
<h2>Increasing focus on brand power</h2>
<p>The corporate culture of universities has responded to increased competition with an increasing focus on marketing and brand management. Hil’s chapter on “Brand Power” deftly lampoons some of the more head-scratchingly silly mottos to emerge from costly consultancies. Deakin’s slogan — “We’re not only worldly, we’re world class” — comes in for some deserving rebuke. The glibness of such language pervades many aspects of student life. </p>
<p>One comes away from this chapter with the impression that the marketisation of the student experience is not only an unnecessary and wasteful use of taxpayer money, but is also shabbily executed. More worrisome is that such gimmicks </p>
<blockquote>
<p>seriously debase and trivialise what universities are supposed to be about: teaching, research, scholarship and professional service. </p>
</blockquote>
<p>University managers increasingly refer to students as “consumers” and “clients” without grasping how this language both reflects and reshapes teacher-student relationships in harmful ways. One of the most basic insights that academics in the humanities cultivate in their students is an appreciation for how language is never innocent and neutral. Yet the corporate ethos of universities seems to ignore this. </p>
<p>The overall impression that one gleans from Hil’s book is that academics and students are increasingly expected to follow decisions that come from above. The critical thinking skills that we foster in our teaching and research are to be thrown out the window as soon as they conflict with management imperatives. </p>
<p>For example, the growing shift toward online and “blended learning” has been welcomed by some students for pragmatic reasons. However, Hil’s discussions with students (some of whom had no choice but to study online because of work or family commitments), as well as the academic research that he cites, overwhelmingly show that the majority of students still prefer face-to-face learning. Whether universities will listen to student preference remains to be seen.</p>
<h2>International students</h2>
<p>Hil’s chapter on the international student market also contains a number of first-person narratives from students whose high course fees cross-subsidise those of their domestic counterparts. This chapter is the most disquieting from an ethical point of view. Hil’s conclusion that foreign students are being “fleeced in order to prop up Australia’s teetering university system” is hard to argue with. </p>
<p>That many foreign students possess weak English language skills and find themselves struggling to stay afloat underscores just how exploitative and morally hazardous the international student market has become. This chapter also includes a brief discussion of allegations of fraud and deception in this market. </p>
<p>Hil documents accusations that overseas recruitment agents and other middlemen have coached prospective students to pass English language tests and have doctored credentials. The recent exposé on Four Corners called <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=T4YsjxTgOLk">“Degrees of Deception”</a> and an investigation by the NSW Independent Commission Against Corruption lend further support to Hil’s findings and have motivated Senator Kim Carr to call for an <a href="http://www.theaustralian.com.au/higher-education/four-corners-allegations-must-be-investigated-kim-carr/story-e6frgcjx-1227314161161">immediate federal investigation</a>.</p>
<p>Selling Students Short has emerged at an important time in Australian tertiary education. Christopher Pyne’s proposal to deregulate fees has twice failed to pass the Senate. It occupies a notional space in the government’s <a href="https://theconversation.com/pyne-fails-to-deliver-any-surprises-in-the-higher-education-budget-41741">recent budget</a>, but barring either a sudden change of heart among key crossbenchers or a <a href="http://www.afr.com/news/politics/christopher-pyne-plans-election-trigger-20150401-1mcnfo">double dissolution</a>, full fee deregulation seems unlikely. At least in the near future. </p>
<p>As a number of <a href="https://newmatilda.com/2015/05/14/pyne-ignores-elephant-lecture-hall-reactions-higher-ed-budget">commentators</a> have observed, Pyne’s failure to pass fee deregulation has been an unintended gift to the university sector in one crucial respect: it has spawned a long-overdue public debate about the nature and purpose of public higher education, a discussion to which Hil’s book productively contributes.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/41970/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Christopher Peterson is affiliated with The National Alliance for Public Universities</span></em></p>Richard Hil’s Selling Students Short: Why You Won’t Get the Education You Deserve is a timely exposé of the difficult conditions facing students at Australia’s increasingly corporatised universities.Christopher Peterson, Senior Lecturer in American Literature, Western Sydney UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/407522015-04-24T04:00:28Z2015-04-24T04:00:28ZBiased reports on international students not helpful<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/79204/original/image-20150424-25563-rx8zrz.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Have cheating and plagiarism increased in universities as a symptom of more international students or just of more students?</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">Shutterstock</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>Monday’s <a href="http://www.abc.net.au/4corners/stories/2015/04/20/4217741.htm">Four Corners episode</a> shed some much-needed light on longstanding problems in our higher education sector. Most importantly, it highlighted the role of some dodgy overseas education agents and the apparent collusion of some universities in fraudulent recruitment schemes for international students. </p>
<p>Pressing questions were raised about the status of academic integrity in the lucrative billion-dollar business, in which Australian universities find themselves under unprecedented pressure to raise revenue. This is in a context of high demand for an Australian education experience by international students and their families.</p>
<p>Throughout this important story thread, unfortunately, the producers seemed unable to resist the siren song of catchy jingoism, parading background shots of nameless Asian students walking through universities while the voiceover spoke of “corruption, widespread plagiarism, cheating and exploitation”. The problems raised are real, but the tone taken does both our universities and our students a grave disservice.</p>
<h2>Universities today, the changed context</h2>
<p>Australian universities consistently perform very strongly in the major international rankings of universities. Many of our institutions quite rightly claim to be “world class”. </p>
<p>Having a strong international reputation means taking part in the international scholarly community. Students from around the world want to come to Australia to study – <a href="https://www.universitiesaustralia.edu.au/australias-universities/key-facts-and-data#.VTme5CljqM4">around a quarter of million</a> of them. In the context of shrinking public investment in higher education, the fees these students pay are integral to university budgets.</p>
<p>At the same time as the expansion in international student participation has been taking place, Australia has seen very rapid growth in participation by domestic students. <a href="https://www.universitiesaustralia.edu.au/australias-universities/key-facts-and-data#.VTme5CljqM4">Around one million</a> Australians presently attend university – double the number that attended two decades ago. </p>
<p>Local students, too, come from diverse backgrounds. More come from families with no experience of university education, or from families where English is not the main language spoken.</p>
<p>In short, the university is no longer an enclave for a small group of Anglo-Saxon elites brought up in “good families” and having attended “good schools”. When Australian universities go mass and global, diversity becomes inherent. The Four Corners episode ignored this diversity.</p>
<p>Higher education in Australia is now big, diverse and international. Being vigilant in eradicating poor practice when it occurs should not be conflated with hand-wringing that our domestic and international students no longer fit the norms of the “elite” era of higher education.</p>
<h2>Cheaters and the cheated</h2>
<p>Anecdotal evidence about plagiarism is a good example here. The program explicitly drew a link between the surge of overseas students and “the increase in plagiarism”, blaming the rising participation of international students in Australian tertiary education for falling academic standards. </p>
<p>It would be unsurprising if plagiarism was on the increase – more students likely means more cheating, unfortunately. But do international students plagiarise more than locals? Or are perceptions that this is the case simply an effect of increasing participation and better software? It is hard to tell.</p>
<p>One thing is certain though – this kind of practice is a rarity. If plagiarism is indeed widespread in some courses or some institutions, we should be shocked and it is right to call it out. However, we need to be careful in creating the impression, as Four Corners did, that this is some kind of new or predominantly Asian problem.</p>
<p>What was disappointing about the Four Corners episode was the disservice it did to international students by presenting them as either cheats or victims. </p>
<p>International students are a heterogeneous group. Their capacities, aspirations and behaviours as learners ought not to be simplified and stamped with certain stereotypes.</p>
<p>Deakin University education researcher <a href="https://www.academia.edu/11717702/Tran_L._T_forthcoming_._Mobility_as_becoming_A_Bourdieuian_analysis_of_the_factors_shaping_international_student_mobility._British_Journal_of_Sociology_of_Education">Ly Tran</a> conducted semi-structured interviews with 105 international students in 25 vocational education institutions across Australia. She found many aspired to develop their skills and knowledge so that they can advance in their chosen profession and transform their professional self.</p>
<p>The program’s explicit emphasis on depicting international students as strugglers with a mere motive to pass and a threat to the Australian academic standard may subsequently create an incomplete and biased imagining of international students.</p>
<p>Again, the claim that cheating and plagiarism occur is not contentious. That’s why we have double marking and specialised software. But what of the outstanding students that come here to study?</p>
<p>When an employer sees an Asian face on a person holding an Australian degree, should they be asking themselves whether this person falls in the cheat category or the victim category? What an awful disservice to these graduates.</p>
<h2>A better way forward</h2>
<p>The alarming message from the episode to Australian tertiary education is that institutions must think hard and act fast to protect their academic integrity against the temptation of profit-making and from sub-standard, even criminal, practices. But we need to watch out for unnecessary effects on public perceptions and treatment of international students.</p>
<p>The sense of feeling welcome and the sense of belonging to the learning environment and the host society is indispensable to international students’ well-being, their education experience and social integration in a foreign country. </p>
<p>In the cause of protecting and improving the credibility and prestige of Australian education, we must guard against parochial institutional and social stereotypes. These promote hostility to international students, especially the vast majority with genuine capacities and aspirations.</p>
<p>Instead, working on institutional and social conditions to improve understanding of international students’ dreams and struggles, protect their rights and enable these students to contribute to Australian academic integrity is exactly where we should start.</p>
<hr>
<p>Read more of The Conversation’s coverage of <a href="https://theconversation.com/au/topics/academic-dishonesty-in-australia">Academic dishonesty in Australia</a> here.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/40752/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>The authors do not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and have disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>While Four Corners shed some much-needed light on long-standing problems in higher education, these problems aren’t reserved for international students.Emmaline Bexley, Lecturer in Higher Education, The University of MelbourneThao Vu, PhD Candidate in Education, The University of MelbourneLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/404642015-04-21T01:19:58Z2015-04-21T01:19:58ZThe slide of academic standards in Australia: a cautionary tale<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/78651/original/image-20150420-25705-1efc5cr.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">When thinking about academic standards, it's important to think about the incentives to keep standards high - or low.</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">from www.shutterstock.com.au</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>The <a href="https://theconversation.com/australian-unis-should-take-responsibility-for-corrupt-practices-in-international-education-40380">recent furore</a> about academic standards in Australian higher education – including Monday night’s damning <a href="http://www.abc.net.au/4corners/stories/2015/04/20/4217741.htm">Four Corners expose</a> – has the potential to bring not only desperately needed attention, but actual change, to the sector. </p>
<p>The uninitiated observer of this frenzy may struggle to gain a balanced understanding of what has gone wrong, and how much more wrong it has gone in Australia than in other countries. </p>
<p>Let’s take a good look through the lens of an economist at where academic standards come from and how they are nurtured, so as to have a hope of crafting an Australian policy remedy.</p>
<h2>Lesson 1: incentives matter</h2>
<p>Any economist recognises these as the most important two words that our discipline offers. In the case of what is taught in higher education, the “<em>cui bono?</em>” question – meaning “to whose benefit?” in Latin – asks who stands to gain from actively upholding academic standards, and who stands to gain from their decline.</p>
<p>Let’s first consider the top leadership of a university: those responsible for making ends meet. This group, having increasingly lost ground in the battle for funding from the Commonwealth and having <a href="https://theconversation.com/top-ranked-universities-have-more-money-than-australian-unis-could-dream-of-39189">precious little endowment</a> or <a href="https://theconversation.com/university-balance-sheets-tell-us-only-some-are-right-to-cry-poor-37093">alumni-sourced revenue</a> – frequent go-to sources in other countries – has been pushed further and further toward dependence on the market for education services in order to meet its spending targets. </p>
<p>This translates into a need to focus squarely on customer appeal. The question then changes to: what do young high school graduates want from university?</p>
<p>Most want a job when they get out, and most also want to have a pleasant student experience, and neither of these is particularly well-correlated with their program’s level of academic excellence. Most also want to attend the best university that they can get into, and this would normally lead to pressure to uphold academic standards, since the university that is seen as “the best” will presumably be more successful at attracting students. </p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/78656/original/image-20150420-25721-esd8a4.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/78656/original/image-20150420-25721-esd8a4.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/78656/original/image-20150420-25721-esd8a4.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=412&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/78656/original/image-20150420-25721-esd8a4.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=412&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/78656/original/image-20150420-25721-esd8a4.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=412&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/78656/original/image-20150420-25721-esd8a4.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=517&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/78656/original/image-20150420-25721-esd8a4.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=517&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/78656/original/image-20150420-25721-esd8a4.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=517&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">What do school leavers look for in a university? Student experience, job readiness, or academic rigour?</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">from www.shutterstock.com.au</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>However, university quality isn’t always obvious to an outsider. What’s more, Australian domestic students do not typically change cities in order to attend university, meaning that Group of Eight universities all have either monopoly or two-player oligopoly access to demand from most of the top students within their home city. </p>
<p>This translates into market power for those institutions lucky enough to be already at the top of the rankings, which in turn means less of a competitive incentive to keep standards high in order to keep students coming.</p>
<p>Finally, let’s consider the incentives of academics. Academics are judged on both research productivity and teaching “quality”, where the latter is typically measured using student evaluations of teaching that are conducted online. </p>
<p>Because no serious incentives are given to students to fill in these online forms, most response samples are comically small in size. It would not be unreasonable to suspect that those students who do fill out evaluations are frequently the ones who either adored or hated the teacher. </p>
<p>Students don’t like feeling bad about their performance or being pulled up for academic misconduct, and can use teaching evaluations as a vehicle to make their displeasure known. </p>
<p>Academics also frequently face large time and effort costs if they pursue problems like plagiarism and academic misconduct, not to mention the raised eyebrows from university management if too large a fraction of students fail. </p>
<p>In sum, the university bureaucracy sees strong incentives to let standards slide in order to please prospective students and thereby get more revenue, while the individual academic at the coal face sees strong incentives to go easy on students so that students are happy and the academic’s chances of promotion are favourable.</p>
<h2>Lesson 2: academia is defined by academics</h2>
<p>Notwithstanding the protestations of teaching and learning administrators, academic standards cannot be perfectly pinned down in assessment rubrics or statements of learning objectives. </p>
<p>This is because evaluating university students’ work is largely subjective: it is based on the gut feel of the person doing the evaluation, where that gut feel is formed over years of exposure to the type of work that is expected in the given discipline.</p>
<p>This means that academics are ultimately the only valid institutional store of knowledge about what academic standards should be. </p>
<figure class="align-right zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/78653/original/image-20150420-25725-9azruu.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/78653/original/image-20150420-25725-9azruu.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/78653/original/image-20150420-25725-9azruu.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/78653/original/image-20150420-25725-9azruu.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/78653/original/image-20150420-25725-9azruu.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/78653/original/image-20150420-25725-9azruu.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/78653/original/image-20150420-25725-9azruu.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/78653/original/image-20150420-25725-9azruu.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Academics are really the only ones who can say what academic standards should be.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">from www.shutterstock.com.au</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>There is a better chance of Australian universities keeping up with international best practice if academics have been rigorously trained, are active in professional bodies, travel regularly to high-profile conferences, and so on.</p>
<p>In truly world-class universities, the bureaucracy plays second fiddle to the academics who produce the service that the university sells. By contrast, in many universities in Australia, arguably the tail is wagging the dog. </p>
<p>Entrenched and disproportionately powerful bureaucracies act like fiefdoms, perennially announcing new platforms that the rank-and-file scurry to be seen to embed, and rewarding or punishing academics in accordance with how well they are seen to toe the party line.</p>
<h2>The policy response</h2>
<p>What to do? Some countries have trialled the creation of explicit sector-wide learning standards, endorsed by various groups, in a bid to control what gets taught (like the <a href="http://www.oecd.org/education/skills-beyond-school/testingstudentanduniversityperformancegloballyoecdsahelo.htm">Assessment of Higher Education Learning Outcomes in the UK</a>). </p>
<figure class="align-left zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/78654/original/image-20150420-25711-1t2aoc3.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/78654/original/image-20150420-25711-1t2aoc3.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/78654/original/image-20150420-25711-1t2aoc3.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=398&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/78654/original/image-20150420-25711-1t2aoc3.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=398&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/78654/original/image-20150420-25711-1t2aoc3.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=398&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/78654/original/image-20150420-25711-1t2aoc3.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=500&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/78654/original/image-20150420-25711-1t2aoc3.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=500&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/78654/original/image-20150420-25711-1t2aoc3.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=500&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Make students surveys compulsory.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.flickr.com/photos/yourdon/3475417696/in/photolist-6i7qAL-dXTThm-k4LmDT-aFeJrf-cVmRf7-dQFZHk-cVmSaw-54biY7-9sFaaD-fPavA9-fFs1k-fFs9g-fFsiL-fFsfh-fFs5T-fFsh4-fFsbn-fFs76-fFs3e-fFsds-6iiZGo-89ofQY-9QYkgL-athJTp-6Mnnm1-boQV57-bBKQzc-Ps5Bk-4pnff5-bu5HVP-bu5KyR-bu5JYp-jrP5xy-bu5Jtt-ati1uT-k4KmQB-pQBCjN-mXzciZ-7fnnJw-9REi7J-4EjVBt-99smVp-9qVPap-tKe8X-o75fzC-7YzmZM-km18x7-doQhEj-7XKwwh-ffN5Ti">Ed Yourdan/Flickr</a>, <a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/">CC BY</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>The Commonwealth-sponsored <a href="http://disciplinestandards.pbworks.com/w/page/52657697/FrontPage">National Discipline Standards in Australia project</a>, which taps selected professionals from across the country to develop explicit statements of academic standards in different fields (such as <a href="http://www.economicslearningstandards.com/index.html">economics</a>), falls under this heading. Without wide adoption by academics and embedding in university departments, however, such standards have a hollow ring to them.</p>
<p>No intervention will provide an overnight fix. Those who benefit from the present system will wince at the prospect of the potential remedies below being put to public debate and independent evaluation.</p>
<ol>
<li><p>Require student evaluations to be submitted by every student as a pre-requisite for the release of their final marks each semester. This small systems change – designed to shift students’ incentives to provide feedback – will make the provision of student feedback operate more like voting, and less like blackmail.</p></li>
<li><p>Have teachers evaluate each other on a rotating basis and use these evaluations in promotion decisions. At the same time, mandate the complete freedom of individual academics to fail as many students as they see fit to fail, ensuring that appeal committees (staffed by academics) and support services are in place to process an increase in the numbers of failing students.</p></li>
<li><p>Connect the admissions and teaching functions of the university by increasing the voice of teaching academics in the admissions process. Admissions decisions are an academic matter, and should be treated as such.</p></li>
<li><p>Mandate an increase in the voice of academics within university governance more broadly. While Commonwealth funding to the higher education sector has fallen dramatically over the past 30 years, it is also true that large amounts of money are spent on <a href="http://www.modern-cynic.org/2013/05/08/university-leaders/">large salaries to university bureaucrats</a> with <a href="http://economics.com.au/?p=9696">questionable academic credentials</a>. We should design university governance to raise the voice of those who know what academic standards are, and whose personal incentives it serves to uphold them.</p></li>
</ol>
<hr>
<p>Read more of The Conversation’s coverage of <a href="https://theconversation.com/au/topics/academic-dishonesty-in-australia">Academic dishonesty in Australia</a> here.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/40464/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Gigi Foster receives funding from the Australian Research Council. She was a member of the national Office of Learning and Teaching-sponsored working party on the project entitled "Embedding and benchmarking core knowledge and skills as the foundation for learning standards in the undergraduate economics curriculum".</span></em></p>The recent furore about academic standards in Australian higher education – including Monday’s damning Four Corners expose – has the potential to bring not only desperately needed attention, but actual change, to the sector.Gigi Foster, Associate Professor, School of Economics, UNSW SydneyLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/403802015-04-20T11:21:29Z2015-04-20T11:21:29ZAustralian unis should take responsibility for corrupt practices in international education<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/78546/original/image-20150420-3238-14d7jnf.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">International students provide universities with a large chunk of their revenue - but at what cost?</span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.flickr.com/photos/44534236@N00/4730575439">Faungg/Flickr</a>, <a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/">CC BY-SA</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>The higher education sector has become increasingly reliant on income from fee-paying international students since Australian universities first entered foreign markets in 1986, <a href="http://www.icac.nsw.gov.au/media-centre/media-releases/article/4781">a new report from the NSW Independent Commission Against Corruption says</a>. </p>
<p>From 1988-2014, the number of international students at Australian universities <a href="http://www.icac.nsw.gov.au/media-centre/media-releases/article/4781">increased 13-fold</a>. These students now comprise 18% of the student population in NSW universities, and often exceed 25%. </p>
<p>In many business schools, this percentage is substantially higher. The need to generate revenue has often conflicted with the obligation to ensure academic quality and integrity. However, to date, the “blame” for declining standards has tended to rest with international students themselves rather than educational institutions or the sector more broadly.</p>
<p>The <a href="http://www.icac.nsw.gov.au/media-centre/media-releases/article/4781">range of corruption issues</a> that has emerged suggests standards have indeed been compromised. These include: falsification of entry documents, cheating in English language proficiency tests, online contract cheat sites selling assignments or providing the means for so-called “file sharing”, widespread plagiarism, and cheating and fraud in examinations.</p>
<p>It is <a href="http://arrow.monash.edu.au/vital/access/manager/Repository/monash:64104?collection=monash%253A63642">widely known by all stakeholders in the sector</a> that a significant number of international students for whom English is an additional language struggle to meet the linguistic and academic demands of their courses. </p>
<p>It is also widely known that international students are burdened with additional pressures relating to culture, finance, family and peer groups. </p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/78563/original/image-20150420-7631-h3wkj9.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/78563/original/image-20150420-7631-h3wkj9.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/78563/original/image-20150420-7631-h3wkj9.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=435&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/78563/original/image-20150420-7631-h3wkj9.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=435&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/78563/original/image-20150420-7631-h3wkj9.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=435&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/78563/original/image-20150420-7631-h3wkj9.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=547&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/78563/original/image-20150420-7631-h3wkj9.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=547&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/78563/original/image-20150420-7631-h3wkj9.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=547&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">The My Master cheating scandal uncovered a website international students were using to purchase essays.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Shutterstock</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>While cheating is certainly not limited to international students, they are particularly vulnerable to the brazen marketing tactics of a burgeoning cheating industry which has the capacity to infiltrate social media, university email systems and message boards. This occurs both on campus and online. </p>
<p>International students are easy targets for unscrupulous businesses advertising “assistance” with assignments and exams. They are striving to make sense of the new academic environment and <a href="http://search.informit.com.au/documentSummary;dn=334865480475401;res=IELHSS">often have inadequate English or poor educational preparation</a>. They may also have entered the system with false credentials, or may have come from cultures more accepting of practices that we would regard as corrupt.</p>
<p>The <a href="http://www.smh.com.au/nsw/mymaster-essay-cheating-scandal-more-than-70-university-students-face-suspension-20150318-1425oe.html">media have been at the forefront</a> in exposing cheating and plagiarism scandals by international students. The <a href="http://www.smh.com.au/nsw/sydney-university-to-crack-down-on-cheating-following-mymaster-investigation-20150413-1mju3q.html">recent MyMaster investigation</a> revealed the widespread use of cheat sites. In this case, Chinese students could purchase ready-made essays on a given topic. </p>
<p>The resulting public outcry has, at times, been little more than thinly veiled racism. International students have been blamed for declining academic standards, while the higher education sector has not been held to account.</p>
<p>The recently released <a href="http://www.icac.nsw.gov.au/media-centre/media-releases/article/4781">ICAC NSW report</a> has turned its attention to the role of universities in enabling and facilitating corrupt practices. </p>
<p>The report suggests that Australian universities were not well prepared to enter the international student market. This lack of preparation had long-reaching and most often negative consequences. </p>
<p>The report says competition for international students has led universities to:</p>
<ul>
<li>aggressively market for international students without considering the associated costs and risks </li>
<li>set inappropriately low English language requirements</li>
<li>rely on largely unregulated agents with inducements to submit applications from insufficiently qualified students or, worse, to submit fraudulent applications</li>
<li>establish offshore partnerships without the necessary due diligence </li>
<li>set recruitment KPIs, reinforced by financial incentives, with no accountability for quality or resulting pressures on academic workloads</li>
<li>leave the burden of maintaining standards with teaching academics, while simultaneously pressuring them to pass work of insufficient quality and turn a blind eye to misconduct.</li>
</ul>
<p>ABC TV’s Four Corners expose, “Degrees of Deception”, validated every one of ICAC’s conclusions. The program gave voice to the desperation of many academics. Their life work of teaching has been undermined by an environment that has little to do with education and more to do with revenue raising. </p>
<p>Tales of being forced to change grades, ignore incomprehensible English, pass plagiarised assignments and manage their own and students’ rising stress levels characterised the interviews.</p>
<p>It is apparent that corruption has seeped into every aspect of the higher education sector, from admissions all the way through to graduation. The information shared on Four Corners will no doubt come as a shock to the average family. For those of us in higher education, this isn’t news.</p>
<p>Rather than become despondent and accept the status quo, positive moves are afoot. ICAC has provided a list of “12 corruption prevention initiatives” to counter problems that have been</p>
<blockquote>
<p>created by a university’s reliance on revenues from international students who struggle to meet the academic standards of the university that recruited them. </p>
</blockquote>
<p>These revolve around relationships with partners and agents, marketing and financial strategies, risk, due diligence, accountability of international offices, governance strategies and admissions. </p>
<p>While no specific “initiative” was provided in relation to setting minimum English language requirements, this issue underpinned the whole report. It notes that: </p>
<blockquote>
<p>of all the reasons cited to the Commission, low English-language proficiency was the most common basis given for international students engaging in academic misconduct. </p>
</blockquote>
<p>It is evident that universities ignore this fact at their peril.</p>
<p>Thirty years after entering foreign markets, the Australian higher education sector is beginning to recognise that a short-sighted and ill-planned grab for revenue has had long-reaching and potentially disastrous effects on academic standards, integrity and reputation. </p>
<p>ICAC has provided a number of useful recommendations. These make clear the responsibility of universities, not students, for rectifying these issues.</p>
<hr>
<p>Read more of The Conversation’s coverage of <a href="https://theconversation.com/au/topics/academic-dishonesty-in-australia">Academic dishonesty in Australia</a> here.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/40380/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Tracey Bretag is affiliated with the International Center for Academic Integrity, as the President of the Executive Board. Tracey Bretag has received funding from the Australian Office for Learning and Teaching for the Exemplary Academic Integrity Project and the Academic Integrity Standards Project.</span></em></p>A new report from the NSW Independent Commission Against Corruption says Australian universities have become increasingly reliant on income from fee-paying international students, and is letting academic standards slide for the valuable income stream.Tracey Bretag, Senior Lecturer, School of Management, University of South AustraliaLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/341252014-11-12T04:21:09Z2014-11-12T04:21:09ZBuying essays: how to make sure assessment is authentic<p>The essay, as the primary form of assessment, should be dead. This is the kind of comment that terrifies academics everywhere – but it is an idea that I think we all need to consider. The <a href="http://www.smh.com.au/national/education/students-enlist-mymaster-website-to-write-essays-assignments-20141111-11k0xg.html">“news”</a> that there are cheating factories which have penetrated universities in Australia was not news to anyone in academia.</p>
<p>Universities have complex processes to discover when students cheat. They apply those processes to a range of assessments, particularly to discover plagiarism. However, there is a clear answer if universities want to ensure that all students do their own work – and that’s by changing to what educators call <a href="https://teaching.unsw.edu.au/authentic-assessment">authentic assessment</a>.</p>
<h2>Assessment should mirror real life</h2>
<p>Current methods of assessment do not mirror real life. When, for instance, in one’s real life does one ever have to write an essay, unless you happen to be an academic? And when in our working lives do we ever sit for exams – particularly the kinds of exams that are closed-book and require memorisation of content for the purposes of reproduction?</p>
<p>Even those exams that I would describe as better – those that allow students to take in their notes and annotated textbooks – don’t allow those sitting the exam to search the internet and online databases. In real life, no matter how much pressure we are under, we get to search the internet for better, more particular knowledge. More contentious is the idea of “phoning a friend” to get ideas.</p>
<p>A very small minority of students are using more and more sophisticated methods of cheating. That includes paying ghost writers, which effectively outsources the learning. Pity the employer who must rely on those people who never effectively learnt how to do the task themselves. </p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/64340/original/vvn2fp67-1415763694.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/64340/original/vvn2fp67-1415763694.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/64340/original/vvn2fp67-1415763694.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=450&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/64340/original/vvn2fp67-1415763694.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=450&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/64340/original/vvn2fp67-1415763694.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=450&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/64340/original/vvn2fp67-1415763694.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=566&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/64340/original/vvn2fp67-1415763694.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=566&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/64340/original/vvn2fp67-1415763694.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=566&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">When in real life would anyone have to do this?</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.flickr.com/photos/jackhynes/366958167/in/photolist-yqKSX-4cqJqb-aK5WYT-2PB9xi-bbJLEK-o1hUE-xLUqy-ibH2GU-9wpbUi-8Xny6G-5DLXjR-7UUFEK-B8h55-y8LpY-32opj-82BuNu-7BKfT-dNWpa-5HDAMF-8BFyhi-8BJENU-8BJEHj-8BJESy-8BFyai--hdBRQ4-aJk4UH-ea182S-no7bQT-2GhKG-4Xy5NR-bbJFui-nEznGE-6Mndug-6fUjGy-xLUqv-6mp8EY-d1NJa-e9UrVc-2KQUGx-9pheQk-brtAS4-6PP61e-naBjky-aSKBy6-4c5KPc-9pBnDm-nGnQe8-nEArGc-anduxr">Flickr/Jack Hynes</a>, <a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/">CC BY</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>With the kinds of assessments universities have now, it is becoming increasingly difficult to detect that kind of cheating, unless of course the student refuses to pay the ghost writer, who then promptly informs the university of their role in the student’s success.</p>
<p>Biometric scanning, of course, will eventually sort out the students who get someone else to sit the exam. But I think that kind of cheating is still very unusual. So what’s the real challenge?</p>
<p>In many respects, my university (the University of Technology, Sydney) is already on the way. Academics are increasingly ditching lectures in favour of a learning model that engages students in what we call <a href="http://www.smh.com.au/nsw/frank-gehry-paper-bag-building-at-university-of-technology-set-to-seduce-students-20141111-11kbtt.html">“high-touch”</a>, face-to-face learning experiences. That means students want to be part of the learning activities that the university offers. And now the challenge is to replace standard assessments in the same way.</p>
<h2>The alternative to exams and essays</h2>
<p>Prospective employers want to know exactly what graduates can do and, as part of the selection and interview process, increasingly ask applicants to complete the kinds of tasks they might be expected to perform in the role they are applying for, including the ability to work as part of a team.</p>
<p>Universities need to mirror this to prepare students for the workplace. Some examples of real-world tasks that have been introduced at UTS include:</p>
<ul>
<li><p>Students in health are engaged in caring for patients as early as first year under the supervision of trained clinicians;</p></li>
<li><p>Architecture students work with real clients to develop plans, costings and council submissions;</p></li>
<li><p>Engineering students design and build for real projects;</p></li>
<li><p>Journalism students investigate, report and deliver stories across a range of platforms and external partners then publish those same stories; and</p></li>
<li><p>Law students enter moots and volunteer in non-profit organisations.</p></li>
</ul>
<p>The benefit of this kind of assessment is that it includes all stakeholders – and that means future employers.</p>
<p>Universities are in the midst of significant change in moving to this new approach to assessment. When they get there, students will not only have a higher-quality learning experience, but they will be even better prepared for the kinds of complex tasks and roles they will undertake. And, of course, cheating will be non-existent.</p>
<p>That’s the path to authentic assessment.</p>
<hr>
<p>Read more of The Conversation’s coverage of <a href="https://theconversation.com/au/topics/academic-dishonesty-in-australia">Academic dishonesty in Australia</a> here.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/34125/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Shirley Alexander does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>The essay, as the primary form of assessment, should be dead. This is the kind of comment that terrifies academics everywhere – but it is an idea that I think we all need to consider. The “news” that there…Shirley Alexander, Deputy Vice-Chancellor and Vice-President (Teaching, Learning & Equity), University of Technology SydneyLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.