Contract cheating is a form of academic dishonesty in which students pay others to complete their coursework.Eaton, S. E., Curtis, G. J., Stoesz, B. M., Clare, J., Rundle, K., & Seeland, J., (Eds.). (2022). Contract cheating in higher education: Global perspectives on theory, practice, and policy. Palgrave-MacMillan. ISBN 978-3-031-12679-6 https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-12680-2 The term was coined in a 2006 study by Thomas Lancaster and Robert ClarkeLancaster, T., & Clarke, R. (2016). Contract cheating: The outsourcing of assessed student work. In T. Bretag (Ed.), Handbook of academic integrity (pp. 639-654). Singapore: Springer Singapore.Thomas Lancaster bio Glendinning, I., Foltýnek, T., Dlabolová, D., Linkeschová, D., & Lancaster, T. (2017). South East European Project on Policies for Academic Integrity. Retrieved from http://www.plagiarism.cz/seeppai/Final-report_SEEPPAI.pdf as a more inclusive way to talk about all forms of academic work, as opposed to more outdated terms such as "term paper mill" or "essay mill", which refer to text-based academic outsourcing. In contrast, Lancaster and Clarke are computer scientists who found evidence of students systematically outsourcing coding assignments. Hence, they coined the term "contract cheating" to include all outsourced academic work, regardless of whether it is from text-based or non-text-based disciplines.
Extent
The first published material detailing the extent of contract cheating was a study by Robert Clarke and Thomas Lancaster. The study presented three main findings:
Over 12 percent of postings on a popular website for outsourcing computer contract work were actually bid requests from students seeking contract cheating services. Contract cheaters posted an average of 4–7 requests, suggesting that some students make habitual use of such services. A smaller number of users have posted over 50 bid requests, including examples from multiple institutions. This suggests that these are agencies subcontracting work, not students who are directly making use of the services.
A 2007 study examined more than 900 examples of contract cheating by students studying computing subjects. The published results categorised the assignment types (e.g. programming, database, web design, etc.) and were analysed by country. One new concern identified by this study was the number of major projects (both final-year undergraduate and postgraduate) that had been posted on auction sites.
Research interest in contract cheating was significantly increased in the mid-2010s as a consequence of various scandals being reported in the media. For example, in 2014, Australian media exposed the MyMaster website, which provided custom-written assignments to hundreds of students.
In a 2017 meta-analysis of five studies, 3.5% of a total of 1,378 students reported having bought assignments to submit as their own. Of the students who reported engaging in contract cheating, more than 60% admitted to having done so more than once. A larger systematic review of 65 studies from 1978 to 2016 also found that 3.5% of students admitted to engaging in commercial contract cheating. Subsequently, a study of over 14,000 Australian students found that 5.8% of students engaged in one of five behaviours classified as contract cheating, with 2.2% submitting assessments completed by other people. However, a 2021 study argued that anonymous self-report surveys underestimate the extent of contract cheating, and using an incentivized truth-telling methods, it suggested that 7.9% of students buy and submit custom-written assignments while 11.4% submit assignments downloaded from file-sharing sites as their own.
A study was presented at the April 2012 STEM conference involving more than 600 assignments in subject areas ranging from anthropology to theology. There is debate about which subjects are most susceptible to contract cheating, but an overall consensus by several scholars, including Curtis & Clare (2017), Bretag (2017),Bretag, T. (2017). Tertiary Education Quality and Standards Agency, Good Practice Note: Addressing contract cheating to safeguard academic integrity Retrieved from https://www.teqsa.gov.au/latest-news/publications/good-practice-note-addressing-contract-cheating-safeguard-academic Lancaster & Clarke (2015)Lancaster, T., & Clarke, R. (2015). Examining contract cheating, essay mill use and academic misconduct by students on health courses. Retrieved from https://www.researchgate.net/publication/323425525_Examining_Contract_Cheating_Essay_Mill_Use_and_Academic_Misconduct_by_Students_on_Health_Courses and Eaton (2019),Eaton, S. E. (2019, February 15). The Ethics of Outsourcing: Contract Cheating in Medicine and Health Sciences. Paper presented at the Orthopaedic Surgery Citywide Rounds, Calgary, Canada. Retrieved from http://hdl.handle.net/1880/110102 indicates that the following disciplines have the highest incidence:
Business Engineering Sciences (including pre-medicine and health sciences) Humanities Education
The commercial aspects of contract cheating were examined in a paper given at the 2013 Conference on Innovation and Technology in Computer Science Education. This paper analysed the monetary value of contract cheating to the various parties who play roles in the contract cheating process. The main analysis was based on a corpus consisting of 14,438 identified attempts to cheat, collected between March 2005 and July 2012.
Other prominent academic integrity scholars and experts include Tracey Bretag (Australia),Bretag, T., & Harper, R. (n.d.). Impossible to prove? Substantiating contract cheating. Retrieved from https://cheatingandassessment.edu.au/wp-content/uploads/2018/07/EDUCATOR-RESOURCE-Substantiating-contract-cheating.pdf Cath Ellis (Australia), and Sarah Elaine Eaton (Canada)Eaton, S. E. (2018). Contract cheating: A Canadian perspective. Retrieved from http://blogs.biomedcentral.com/bmcblog/2018/07/24/contract-cheating-a-canadian-perspective/Eaton, S. E. (2019). The Ethics of Outsourcing: Contract Cheating in Medicine and Health Sciences. Retrieved from Eaton, S. E. (2019). U Have Integrity: Educator Resource - How to Lead a Discovery Interview About Contract Cheating. Retrieved from and Irene Glendinning (UK).
In 2020, during the COVID-19 pandemic, increases in contract cheating were identified as being particularly problematic. Test and exam based assessments, which are typically conducted in invigilated halls, took place online as a social distancing measure; without the rigorous monitoring that is typically present in such assignments, opportunities for contract cheating over the Internet arose.Eaton, S. E. (2020). Academic Integrity During COVID-19: Reflections from the University of Calgary. International Studies in Educational Administration, 48(1), 80-85. Retrieved from https://prism.ucalgary.ca/handle/1880/112293White, A. (2020, March 23). Amanda White on education for and detection of contract cheating in virus times. Campus Morning Mail. Retrieved from https://campusmorningmail.com.au/news/education-for-and-detection-of-contract-cheating-in-the-age-of-covid-19/Rossiter, S. (2020, June 21). Cheating becoming an unexpected COVID-19 side effect for universities. CBC News,. Retrieved from https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/edmonton/cheating-becoming-an-unexpected-covid-19-side-effect-for-universities-1.5620442McKie, A. (2020, June 18). Essay mills ‘targeting students’ as pandemic crisis shifts HE online. Times Higher Education. Retrieved from https://www.timeshighereducation.com/news/essay-mills-targeting-students-pandemic-crisis-shifts-he-online
Prevention Assessment design strategies may help to prevent contract cheating from occurring. For example, individualized assessments have been shown to be effective against contract cheating."Individualized Assessments using Dividni - Enhancing Learning via Assessments Unique to Every Student"; ACM; February, 2020.
In addition, some institutions have taken pro-active measures to block access to contract cheating companies websites from campus users. Since August 2022, Australia started blocking access to contract cheating sites nationally.
Detection In July 2007, Lancaster and Clarke proposed a systematic six-stage process that tutors can use to detect students who are contract cheating. Since then, additional research has been conducted with evidence now pointing to training for those who grade academic work being an important aspect of detection.Rogerson, A. M. (2014, June). Detecting the work of essay mills and file swapping sites: some clues they leave behind. Paper presented at the 6th International Integrity and Plagiarism Conference, Newcastle-on-Tyne, United Kingdom.
The quality of solutions to assignments sold by essay mills has been questioned, though other research claims that academic work obtained through the use of an auction site was of sufficient quality to gain satisfactory grades and thus remain undetected by educators. Contract cheating sites often boast that the use of their services is undetectable, however such claims have been refuted by empirical research that shows educators can be effectively trained to detect contract cheating in student work. There are now various resources available to educators to help train them on how to effectively identify contract cheating.Deakin University: CRADLE. (2018). How to detect contract cheating. Retrieved from https://www.deakin.edu.au/__data/assets/pdf_file/0007/1853881/01-cradle-detect-contract-cheating.pdfSambell, K., Brown, S., & Race, P. (n.d.). ENhance QUICK GUIDE: Combatting Contract Cheating. Retrieved from https://staff.napier.ac.uk/services/dlte/Documents/14%20Combatting%20Contract%20Cheating.pdfUC San Diego. (n.d.). Detecting Contract Cheating in Narrative Assessments. Retrieved from https://academicintegrity.ucsd.edu/_files/Detecting%20Contract%20Cheating.pdf
It has been proposed that existing assignment and invigilated assessment data can be systematically analyzed in order to detect patterns of students' performance that may be indicative of contract cheating. At the 2015 Plagiarism Across Europe and Beyond conference, it was demonstrated how collecting analytical data at the time of writing can help in identifying cases of contract cheating.
Although text-matching software is unlikely to detect contract cheating, such tools have shown some success in identifying the source of assignments found on auction sites.
Policy and penalties The way higher education institutions across the world address contract cheating is inconsistent. The UKQuality Assurance Agency for Higher Education (UK) (QAA). (2020). Contracting to cheat in higher education: How to address essay mills and contract cheating(2nd. ed.). Retrieved from https://www.qaa.ac.uk/docs/qaa/guidance/contracting-to-cheat-in-higher-education-2nd-edition.pdf and AustraliaTertiary Education Quality and Standards Agency (TEQSA). (2017). Good Practice Note: Addressing contract cheating to safeguard academic integrity. Retrieved from https://www.teqsa.gov.au/sites/g/files/net2046/f/good-practice-note-addressing-contract-cheating.pdf?v=1507082628International Network for Quality Assurance Agencies in Higher Education (INQAAHE). (2020). Toolkit to support quality assurance agencies to address academic integrity and contract cheating. Retrieved from https://www.teqsa.gov.au/latest-news/publications/toolkit-support-quality-assurance-agencies-address-academic-integrity have developed some of the world's most systematic approaches to addressing contract cheating through policies, quality assurance guidance, and corresponding penalties for students. Meanwhile, research and advocacy are underway in countries such as Canada, to promote better understanding of how universities and colleges can address the issue through policy measures.