A billion-dollar industry helping students at Australian universities cheat

https://www.abc.net.au/news/2022-07-30/cheating-rife-australian-unis-online-assessments-covid/101277426

by adrian_mrd • 4 years ago

53 87 4 years ago

abc.net.au

I see two main points as to what Chegg is doing wrong:

1. Their "homework help" service is more of a "do my homework for me" service

2. They intentionally don't require any verification that questions submitted are actually from homework rather than from an exam

Glawen7• 4 years ago

With COVID I think we have reached a new level of cheating, I feel that students do not feel anymore ashamed to do it because that is what they did during lockdown.

I am amazed at all the possibilities of cheating which were technically impossible when I studied. Look at it now, students can have answers on chegg. They can translate using DeepL. They can find teachers explaining any topic they like on YouTube. Seriously there is no excuse to fail anything now. University need to do something about it real quick, otherwise their diplomas will not be worth anything

throwawaysleep4• 4 years ago

I attended a well known university and I graduated before COVID.

Cheating in next to universal. You didn't just cheat with people you knew. You could go ask any member of the year above for assignment solutions and quiz/test answer keys. You could ask any member of the prior section for what was on the quiz. Student union ran a solutions bank for past tests.

And yeah, plenty of us had Chegg.

Why do we do this? Very few of us went to university to learn. We wanted an access pass to the upper middle class.

Same thing with the students I mentor for remote interviews. I offer to help them cheat on them by sitting on a second webcam and feeding them the answers. Only one has turned me down, and not for moral reasons, but because they fear getting caught.

If you offered to just give everyone an A for a given course, maybe 10% of students would attend.

I am not sure that businesses care all that much, because the same skills work in companies too and it is considered legitimate outside of the academic world to take the work of others. In school, using a library is cheating. At work, it is good work.

contingencies• 4 years ago

University need to do something about it real quick, otherwise their diplomas will not be worth anything.

Too late.

brnaftr3612• 4 years ago

Is it chegg or is it the institutions?

I'd posit it's the latter; huge sums of money are at-risk for a fail grade not to mention time invested. People want to get on with their lives. Meanwhile institutions act as gatekeepers while jointly setting arbitrary standards and acting with the pretense that they're institutions of higher learning which simply isn't the case: they produce licensure for occupations. All of that pretense, the arbitrary expectations set makes it far more worthwhile to cheat. Why type up a paper on Shakespeare in a class deemed mandatory that a student has zero interest in or application for? And that can be stated about so many facets of college, the textbooks I've been expected to buy are formatted like a dumpster fire. The tuition I'm paying for what is essentially proctoring burns my ass. The fact I can get superior products across the board and actually have a gamut of options in instruction, methods, curriculum and resources - at significantly lower cost makes it a whole lot more justifiable both at the ethical and at the rational level to "cheat", I find it strange that someone might be upset that someone is swindling the swindler.

Having said that, I'd propose a bifurcation: actual higher learning institutions and vocational institutions. This weird amalgam that has developed, by my reckoning at least, results in the worst of both worlds.

josephcsible5• 4 years ago

Justifying cheating because of those points about institutions feels like justifying stealing because of high inflation.

paulpauper• 4 years ago

It goes to show how this is a problem that affects everywhere. Higher stakes education means more cheating. I think it also sheds light on the cynical reality that college is just a very expensive ticket to the middle class and learning will always be secondary to that.

mlindner5• 4 years ago

No this just sounds like an Australian problem. Cheating isn't the problem. Not expelling people is the problem.

Glawen7• 4 years ago

Is it better in other country who rely on the money brought by international students?

bpodgursky2• 4 years ago

My wife stopped teaching remote CS classes mostly because the cheating was so completely out-of-hand that grading was pointless and miserable.

Doesn't matter how creative or new or engaging the homework assignments were. Over half the class pays someone, shares work, or finds someone to do it for them.

throwawaysleep4• 4 years ago

Because can you honestly say that you paid $80K to learn? That was your primary goal of spending all that money?

It certainly was not mine. Learning wasn't in my top 5 reasons to attend university.

Glawen7• 4 years ago

You have a point indeed. You don't pay that much money to fail. That puts countries with free university in another perspective

mlindner5• 4 years ago

It was certainly mine and learn a lot I did. I took ethics very strongly as did my university. My friend had to re-do a class final project because some of his team members cheated, even though he didn't himself. His team members were expelled from the university.

mlindner5• 4 years ago

Why wasn't your wife getting these people thrown out of the classes?

josephcsible5• 4 years ago

At a lot of schools, the administration basically tells the professors to look the other way, because the alternative is giving up a lot of tuition income.

bpodgursky2• 4 years ago

She did, but it takes at minimum an hour to write up and defend an academic integrity violation. And that's with no back-and-forth .

If more than a handful of people in the class cheat, you're spending most of your time on this than grading.

And it's extremely stressful. You can be absolutely sure that 90% of the class is cheating, and there's still a margin of error for each individual case. And there are subtleties. What if this student was helping someone, and the other student copied their work without permission?

Rodeoclash2• 4 years ago

The Universities in Australia make so much money from international students that they're also disincentived to prevent cheating. Theirs been many anecdotes posted to the Australian subreddit of professors discovering cheating students and being strongly discouraged by the faculty to punish them.

Ultimately the universities are exchanging reputation for near term profits. When I hire in Melbourne for graduate software engineers the university they trained at is not a signal to me at all (despite all the advertising for say Melbourne University promoting how employees regard their distinguished degrees) and I rely purely on technical ability.

Thorentis2• 4 years ago

Completely agree with both paragraphs.

And unfortunately, in my experience as both a university tutor back in the day, and now as a hiring manager for some candidates - international students, even those who studied at local universities - are by far the least qualified in all areas.

The international student game is a billion dollar industry that lines the pockets of university staff, allows constant round-the-year renovations of university facilities, and allows the universities to present themselves as "diverse and inclusive" learning environments.

The problem will never be solved as long as money is involved.

geraldwhen4• 4 years ago

I’ve interviewed so many masters CS degree holders from prestigious schools.

0 of them, 0, could declare variables and get through hello world.

angus-g• 4 years ago

that lines the pockets of university staff

This is of course only the administrative/management levels. The staff doing the actual teaching and grading are lumped with all the work “as part of the job”, and also the money doesn’t see the post-grad or research sides of the university.

wincy2• 4 years ago

I was responsible for helping with interviews at my last job, and there seemed to be no bearing between having a degree and technical aptitude. We’d do a two hour pair programming session where we’d discuss architecture decisions, why you write code a certain way, etc. and it seemed pretty difficult to fake out the process.

However sometimes people wouldn’t even get to that point! We had a person interview with a masters in mechanical engineering over video chat and I swear he was getting coached via a chat app or something during the interview, because he kept glancing at his screen, especially when we’d ask questions.

Another person who had a computer science degree and was a team lead with over six years experience very confidently asserted that “interfaces make software more secure”. Trying to give him the benefit of the doubt we asked him to explain what he meant by that and his explanation was basically “they just are”.

ajsnigrutin3• 4 years ago

So... bring back the "old school" exams, pens, papers, large classroom, one professor, 2, 3 TAs walking around, no phones or computers, only paper and pen, and since it's university level, memorizing stuff is stupid, so either let them have books/notes or atleast a piece of paper (or more) with formulas or whatever is needed (because let's be fair, "cheat sheets" will always be a posibility, and even the best doctors and engineers google stuff all the time).

Some minimal cheating is still possible, but otherwise, it's a lot better than the current online situation.

josephcsible5• 4 years ago

It's fine to have exams on computers, as long as they're university-owned computers in a lab and not, say, the students' personal laptops at home.

867-53092• 4 years ago

which member of the covid-stricken workforce is going to provide, administer and police that? and how well?

students would just remotely connect to their laptops at home

Thorentis2• 4 years ago

Unfortunately COVID stopped this for a while, but agree this is the only way to stop this kind of behavior.

geraldwhen4• 4 years ago

Doesn’t matter. I saw 12 students submit the same binary for an assignment and 0 failed the class, let alone were expelled as the “academic integrity policy” would imply.

International students are cash cows, and college is a joke.

ajsnigrutin3• 4 years ago

So, it's not the "billion dollar industry"'s fault, but colleges that are becoming more of a joke than ever. There is a way to stop (atleast most of) the cheating, but if colleges are not interested in that, why shame and try to prevent people monetizing the thing colleges themselves allow?

czstar4• 4 years ago

I teach at a college. I stopped caring about cheating a while back. It’s not worth the hassle of reporting a student who cheats and the college needs students. College is being treated as a business and the client is the student.

charlie0• 4 years ago

You forget a lot of colleges are businesses. That stuff is just too expensive, they won't do it. Also, failing too many students looks bad as well, so they won't enforce anything too seriously.

SnowHill9902• 4 years ago

Good universities still take pen-and-paper exams even for physics, programming, math. No electronics allowed. 3 hours. No multiple choice.

tennisflyi• 4 years ago

No multiple choice.

Yup. That test recognition and maybe recall - never really a fan.

slavboj2• 4 years ago

Astonishingly, nothing about the demographics of the students involved, just a vague implication towards "international students". It's not exactly a secret who is taking advantage of Australia's efforts to diversify from primary production to exporting education as well, but you would have no idea from reading the article.

axpy906• 4 years ago

What country would have students that think it’s okay to cheat?

slavboj2• 4 years ago

I have no idea whether they think it's "okay", but Chinese students are vastly overrepresented.

Archelaos• 4 years ago

Perhaps it is time for more radical thoughts: Should we not abolish university exams altogether? Instead the receiving institutions (companies, administrations, organisations, etc.) should undertake them -- or outsource them to a 3rd party. There are some areas, where this is already the case, at least partly, such as TOEFL tests for English as a foreign language.

redact2073• 4 years ago

I've been hiring SEs here in Australia for a few years, and finding decent graduates is hard.

Covid made this worse by pushing more people through bootcamps who did it for the tech salary rather than genuine interest, which just added to the noise.

The thing is that good developers could be anywhere. I've had great hires come through good unis with fantastic grades, as well as some who transitioned from a different industry and did a bootcamp.

Unis for a lot of industries are losing their relevance. Here in Australia they'll continue to be subsidised by internationals who get favourable visa conditions upon graduation that can be worked into a family immigration plan, but for the rest of us it's just a lot of unnecessary debt.

finikytou2• 4 years ago

what is the pay you offering? in most markets it is the number one problem of people finding it hard to hire. they pay bad.

redact2073• 4 years ago

We don't find it hard to hire in the sense that our offers are always accepted. I was moreso trying to indicate the difficulty of finding competent developers in a sea of candidates who are disinterested and lack the technical aptitude.

nfw22• 4 years ago

"Their profits come from helping students to cheat and I would be amazed if they don't know this."

I worked briefly at Chegg and the only viewpoint I heard expressed, from either management or regular employees, was that the company was enhancing education, not hurting it. If anyone acknowledged that students were using the platform to cheat, the fact was framed as an unfortunate edge case, not the norm. It definitely felt to me like a bit of a "drink-the-koolaid" company culture.

doctor_eval• 4 years ago

According to DFAT, education is Australia's biggest services export category - ahead of tourism¹, and contributing more than $37B to the Australian economy² (2019). Although tertiary education here is not free to residents, domestic students receive significant subsidies relative to international students.

A lot of my friends here in Australia are uncomfortable with the potential effects of this on domestic education outcomes, and certainly allowing certain students to cheat is going to reduce the value of a degree to those who are genuinely trying to bootstrap their career.

¹ https://www.dfat.gov.au/about-us/publications/trade-investme...

² https://www.macrobusiness.com.au/2019/11/australias-37-6b-in...

euos2• 4 years ago

I worked for a company when I was in college (Ukraine) that would send me to pass in-person exams instead of other students. Money was good and I needed them. There was also a risk of being caught (though I did not really risk anything, just my employer would have to bribe the professor or someone higher up)

Since then I strongly believe tests in the college are pointless. Doctors and such should have a strict licensing exam outside.

musicale2• 4 years ago

send me to pass in-person exams instead of other students

Did they require a thumbprint on the exam? Did you write all of the written assignments as well so that your handwriting would match?

More seriously, it seems like it would be hard to pull off in a small course where the instructors might recognize the students.

euos2• 4 years ago

1. I was in the same college so I had a “test book” cover with my photo. For some reasons n they put the photo on the cover and the name and the rest on the book pages

2. No one remembers students’ handwriting.

3. In our system professors only read lectures before large groups of students. They have “docents” (not sure what’s English word for that) who do smaller practical classes professors were taking the exams. Also, some of them passingly saw my face in the hall. Once or twice I got by mistake to my former professors - the company had to fix the issue (with money)

alexashka• 4 years ago

Good. Paperclip maximizer is working as intended.

nonrandomstring• 4 years ago

What has happened to our universities is a tragedy beyond words.

Glawen7• 4 years ago

The issue come from tution fees. If you look at student debt it also creates other issues in society. Instead of erasing the debt, why not make university affordable? That would remove the motivation to pass cheating students

__d4• 4 years ago

The point of an undergraduate university degree is to represent to others that the holder has some level of knowledge and skill in a particular subject.

The value to the student is as a key to further opportunities: academic, social, commercial. The value to the institution is almost entirely financial.

My proposal is that the degree-granting institutions be separated from educational institutions.

To get a degree, you submit a request for examination. That will be an intensive two or three week long process of written, practical, and interview assessments conducted by a team of people who attempt to satisfy themselves that you meet the requirements of the degree. The cost (and difficulty) will vary, depending on the institution you select. You pay for the assessment, regardless of the result. The institution's motivation is to ensure that its graduates actually meet the degree criteria. If it issues degrees for sub-par applicants, its degrees become worth less (and ultimately, worthless), and fewer people will bother to acquire one.

Educational institutions can then be separate. They can be exam-prep, cramming specialists with experience in getting students past a particular degree-granting institution's assessment, or they can be a genuine, broad-based, learning facility that students can attend to learn whatever they want, for however long they want, subject to continuing to pay for that tuition.

If you want to teach yourself off YouTube, go ahead, and then test for the degree. If you want to be a well-rounded, educated person, maybe spend some time at a learning facility.

rhco• 4 years ago

I think this idea has some serious merit, but I do wonder what the roll-out would look like - how could it be implemented practically, considering the reputation-base value of degrees.

For example, the value of a degree from MIT is not just the degree itself, but also quality and depth of the course work. We assume that if a student passed with A+ grades, they have a solid understanding. But we also know that, i.e., MIT teaches CS in a way that's very applicable to the CS industry, including many bits of non-standard knowledge that are not tested in the exam.

Imagine that MIT decides to become a degree-granting institution, and I obtain an "MIT CS Degree". How would an employer know whether I learned at a top-quality education provider and gained deep knowledge that covers more than the exam ever could -- or if I self-taught and scraped through the exam with the bare minimum knowledge.

I guess MIT could structure their exams so that they cover the subject deeply, but to cover 2 years worth of intense learning, surely they would need a very long (maybe impractically long) exam period?

Maybe I'm over-thinking this - I guess an MIT student would list on their CV "2 years studying at MIT".

Anyway, I think this is a fantastic idea and I'm very interested to see what other HN users think!

__d4• 4 years ago

I envisage the examination process being very thorough, with a combination of practical tests, in person cross-examination by a team of interviewers, essays, etc.

MIT could absolutely ask you any sort of question they would expect you to know, or ask you to do anything you’re expected to know how to do.

I envisage it being a multi-week process. I think for undergrad CS, maybe two weeks is enough? But it’s be up to the degree-granting institution how long they take and how it works. I can easily see it taking a variable amount of time too, depending on the applicant. A one-day multiple-choice vs a two-week hands-on assessment would mean the degrees would have quite different value.

em-bee2• 4 years ago

i think the idea would be the opposite, that none of the schools are granting any degrees, but that degrees are granted by a new independent government funded institution.

then you can go to MIT to study, take tests and pass courses, but to get the actual degree you have to go elsewhere.

the school can provide transcripts of the classes you attended and any projects and tests you did.

if the company cares they can look at that, or maybe they are satisfied with a proof that you were enrolled at MIT for 4 years.

for a company that wants MIT graduates, the only risk would be that someone paid for being at MIT but not actually study there. i don't know, maybe that's possible if you live in boston already and pay only for one class per term, but again, they could find out through the transcript.

isn't that exactly what happens with the bar exam? you can study wherever you want, but in order to work as a lawyer you have to pass a state bar exam. later when people are interested in a lawyers credentials, they don't ask where you passed the exam, but where you studied.

__d4• 4 years ago

I’d be pretty tempted to legislate that the two types of institutions be prohibited from having any commercial relationship as well. There cannot be any incentive to grant degrees that aren’t earned.

PebblesHD• 4 years ago

This anecdote relies on the knowledge that many Australian universities, particularly for technical subjects, rely on a lot of group work for assignments, which the conspiracist in me thinks is to help mask the prevalence of plagiarism. Now, the anecdote:

When I was in university one of our projects was to submit a functional web application handling sales and loans. It was a group assignment with 3 other students, and I asked everyone to contribute on git, not for any technical reasons but because I wanted an audit trail.

One of the group members, a ‘full fee’ student, submitted something so obviously copied, including a bunch of comments in another language, and that looked nothing like our UI, that I googled a snippet and got back almost the entire thing.

I immediately sent the commit link and link to where it came from to both the class tutor and the lecturer because I’m not risking this having my name on it, and the response was nonexistent. The student still passed the class.

That’s the state of Australian universities as far as I’m concerned, having lived it for 6 years and never seen any other action taken against any instance of it.

A billion-dollar industry helping students at Australian universities cheat

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