Once or twice a year Republic Resumes is contacted by university students who want ‘help’ with essays.
By help, I mean writing their essays for them for a fee. I was a senior lecturer and selection officer yonks ago and cheating isn’t our scene. This story is by Conor Duffy (ABC)
Cheating, foreign interference, cyber hacking and academic integrity will be policed at universities by a federally funded “Education Integrity Unit” announced recently.
The unit will aim to protect Australia’s tertiary sector from research and intellectual property theft, with a focus on students who cheat.
It will seek Federal Court injunctions to shut down the online essay factories or so-called “contract cheating” that has grown and commercialised since large-scale cheating emerged early last decade.
According to Australian researchers it is estimated between 6 and 10 per cent of students at Australian universities — or about 150,000 students — have cheated during their studies.
The Federal Government drafted legislation last year – which is still before Parliament — making it an offence to provide or advertise the contract cheating services, including websites offering to complete assignments or sit exams in exchange for a fee.
“The unit will seek Federal Court injunctions to block access to cheating websites under [that] prohibited academic cheating services bill,” Federal Education Minister Dan Tehan said.
“One of the issues we want to guard against is research theft. [It] might be cyber theft by third parties, whether they be industries or foreign governments.”
The new unit will also work with agencies such as the Australian Federal Police, Commonwealth Director of Public Prosecutions, Home Affairs and the Cyber Security Centre.
Mr Tehan said it would have strong powers to deal with academic misconduct. “It will be an agency that has teeth,” he said.
“Obviously it’s designed to work with the sector to protect [its] reputation, but we need to crack down on things like academic cheating, cyber intrusion and research theft.”
For more got to: https://www.abc.net.au/news/2020-06-24/university-integrity-unit-targets-students-cheating/12385460