Dear Editor,

I was seated at my dining room table preparing for the summer semester. While thinking about the assessments to be administered, I was prompted to check the Internet for past assessments that I had given. To my surprise, I was able to find projects, final exam questions, and test questions on two websites that students can pay to get questions answered.

Students pay as low as US$6.95 monthly for annual access or US$24.95 for monthly access on one website. Another website offered expert answers for US$14.95 in as little as 30 minutes.

This begs the question: How do students find the funds to pay an expert to do their exams but cannot fully pay their tuition to the point of being barred from viewing their grades at the end of a semester?

There has been much talk about the level of academic dishonesty/misconduct by students in higher education institutions worldwide. This has increased since several institutions had to switch to online modality as a result of the novel coronavirus pandemic. A study conducted by Professor Paul Golding of the University of Technology, Jamaica reported that one of the reasons students cheat is their inability to retain information and therefore they cheat to pass a module.

Students have found creative ways to collaborate during online assessments through screen sharing; social media sites, such as WhatsApp, Instagram, and TikTok; and more recently, sharing costs for answers from online experts.

A task force at Sydney University has released its first report into academic misconduct after the university was embroiled in several high-profile cheating scandals, including revelations that as many as 1,000 students from 16 universities paid a Sydney-based company to ghostwrite their assignments.

Institutions have implemented systems to reduce the incidences of cheating through proctoring software such as Honorlock, ProctorU, and Respondus. Students are monitored through their webcam for identification purposes and to track their online activities, and are required to turn on the audio and video for the duration of the assessment. The software also monitors their eye movements and the motions of the mouse. Students explain that they think they would have performed better on an assessment in the absence of a proctoring system.

It is clear that, for some, cheating is a means of survival, but students run the risk of damaging the reputation of the institution’s academic integrity and the value of their “earned” diplomas, certificates, and degrees to society at large.

Deloris Murray-Sterling

dmurraysterling@gmail.com