Contract cheating: a survey of australian university students
Open accessAbstract
Recent Australian media scandals suggest that university students are increasingly outsourcing their assessments to third parties – a behaviour known as ‘contract cheating’. This paper reports on findings from a large survey of students from eight Australian universities (n = 14,086) which sought to explore students’ experiences with and attitudes towards contract cheating, and the contextual factors that may influence this behaviour. A spectrum of seven outsourcing behaviours were investigated, and three significant variables were found to be associated with contract cheating: dissatisfaction with the teaching and learning environment, a perception that there are ‘lots of opportunities to cheat’, and speaking a Language Other than English (LOTE) at home. To minimise contract cheating, our evidence suggests that universities need to support the development of teaching and learning environments which nurture strong student–teacher relationships, reduce opportunities to cheat through curriculum and assessment design, and address the well-recognised language and learning needs of LOTE students.
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Violations involving writers-for-hire or parents are difficult to detect and challenging to prove in university academic violation proceedings.
“violations involving writers-for-hire or in some cases, the students' parents, are not only difficult to detect but challenging to prove in university academic violation proceedings (Campbell et al., 2000; Rogerson, 2017; Bretag et al., 2018; Smith, 2019).”
From Using version control to document genuine effort in written assignments: a protocol with examples for universities (2023) · cites this paper as Bretag et al., 2018
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“Despite cited benefits in knowledge recall (Butler and roediger 2007) and deterrence of academic misconduct, these advantages are increasingly contested in contemporary educational research (Bretag et al. 2019; Harper, Bretag, and rundle 2021; French, Dickerson, and Mulder 2024).”
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- Authors
- Bretag, T., Harper, R., Burton, M., Ellis, C., Newton, P., Rozenberg, P., Saddiqui, S., & van Haeringen, K.
- Affiliations
- University of South Australia (AU)
- School of Management, University of South Australia, Adelaide, Australia
- Corresponding author
- Bretag, Tracey
- ORCID
- Venue
- Studies in Higher Education
- Publisher
- Informa UK Limited
- Published
- 2018-04-17
- Volume
- 44
- Issue
- 11
- Pages
- 1837-1856
- ISSN
- 0307-5079 (ISSN-L)
- 1470-174X
- OpenAlex
- W2802580307
- Cited by
- 476
- References
- 57
- Citations by year
- 2026: 55 · 2025: 41 · 2024: 78 · 2023: 104 · 2022: 72 · 2021: 57 · 2020: 32 · 2019: 22 · 2018: 11 · 2017: 3
- FWCI
- 60.60
- Type
- journal article
- Language
- en
- Update notices
- correction (2018-05-03)
- Open access
- green
- figshare.com
- Licence
- cc-by
- Locations
- Studies in Higher Education (publishedVersion)
- UWA Profiles and Research Repository (UWA) (submittedVersion)
- Figshare (submittedVersion, cc-by)
- Griffith Research Online (submittedVersion)
- Funders
- Australian Office for Learning and Teaching (SP16-5383)
- Topics
- Social Sciences › Safety Research › Academic integrity and plagiarism
- Social Sciences › Education › Higher Education Research Studies
- Social Sciences › Education › Evaluation of Teaching Practices
- Keywords
- contract cheating, academic dishonesty, university students, student attitudes, teaching and learning environment, teacher-student relationship, assessment design, home language, academic integrity
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