Over the last decade, I have offered legal advice to thousands of students accused of cheating in their assessments. In university jargon, the term for cheating is ‘academic misconduct’. Although many assessments remain online after Covid, some have returned to the exam hall. There are still instances, therefore, of cheating à l’ancienne, with students writing notes on various limbs or smuggling in scraps of paper with minute writing.
I have had clients whose former partners have tipped off their ex’s university about historical episodes of cheating
At times, the cheat is caught by an invigilator spotting a nervous glance towards an annotated palm. In other cases, the crib sheet falls out of a pocket or protrudes from its hiding place. Other methods involve concealing notes nearby before the start of the exam, such as in a lavatory, and then finding excuses to visit those places during the exam. Frequent toilet visits will naturally arouse suspicion, especially if the student scribbles furiously on each return to the desk.
Some students carry phones in exams and, when caught, claim that they ‘forgot to put it away’. This explanation falls flat when the institution shows that the student accessed the online ‘virtual learning environment’, containing lecture notes and revision guides, at the same time as the exam took place.
With no invigilators patrolling the room, it is far easier to cheat in remote assessments. Students can access their notes or online materials, and they can interact with others with little chance of detection (‘hey, what did you get for question three?’). Some work-shy students divide up an exam paper among themselves, sharing the answers with each other. For example, student A would be tasked with answering the first two questions, student B the next two and so on.
Detection is more likely if a large number of students share materials on a WhatsApp group, or similar platform, because it takes just one guilt-ridden student to inform the university and land everyone in hot water.
Another common giveaway is multiple students making the same, unusual mistake. If student A and student B are the only ones to answer ‘2 + 2 = 143.527’, that constitutes strong evidence of collusion. Occasionally, students A and B each claim that they are as pure as the driven snow and blame the other for pinching their answer.
A few institutions use specialist proctoring software for online assessments, which can monitor eye and body movements. Some students have been accused of cheating after the software identified suspicious, prolonged gazing away from the screen. Having a covert device next to a computer during the remote assessment is simple enough, but I have had clients who installed listening equipment inside innocent-looking ear protectors (‘there are small children in the house and I need peace and quiet’). This allowed them to communicate with a third party in another room, who had a duplicate computer screen and fed them the answers verbally.
Many clients have paid others to write their essays. One Master’s student confessed to me that every single essay he had submitted that year had been purchased from an essay-writer. I have even had PhD students whose entire thesis – close to 100,00 words – was written by a third party. These essay-writers, aware that their clients are breaching university rules, can be unscrupulous. I have received several panicked calls from students, usually on weekends, who have been blackmailed by the essay-writer: ‘if you don’t pay us £1,000, we will tell everything to your university’. In another example of humanity’s vengeful side, I have had clients whose former partners have tipped off their ex’s university about historical episodes of cheating, sometimes years after the event. This can lead to the revocation of degrees and other qualifications.
This year, I have seen a sharp rise in allegations of AI-related cheating, with many universities still uncertain about how to deal with the rapidly evolving technology. Just months ago, AI-written essays were relatively easy to spot, with its errors and fictitious references. As the errors, or ‘hallucinations’, reduce and students realise that they should avoid cut and pasting responses, it is becoming harder to identify AI-written text. Ironically, there is AI software that ‘humanises’ AI-written text, and the savvier students know to sprinkle deliberate errors in the work.
My clients tell me that cheating is rife, and that the vast majority of it goes undetected. ‘Lots of people on my course have colluded but they didn’t get caught,’ is a phrase I often hear.
In 2022, I commissioned a study which asked 900 undergraduates about cheating. It was completely anonymous. One in six admitted to having cheated in online exams that academic year. Of those, only 5 per cent had been caught. Some 52 per cent of the students knew people who had cheated in online assessments that year.
As a barrister, I do not pass judgement on my clients, innocent or guilty, and I strain every sinew to achieve the best outcome for them. This ranges from securing a finding of ‘no case to answer’ to avoiding the nuclear sanction of expulsion.
However, when I take off my horsehair wig, I believe far more must be done by universities to teach students about the wrongs of academic misconduct. A few slides during induction, and a line or two in a mass e-mail to students, have little impact. They should also make it harder for students to cheat. Given the ease with which students can do so in remote assessments, through collusion, commissioning work from others, and more recently AI, a return to the exam hall should be the norm for most students. Cheating will still happen, of course, but at a lower rate, and while I would have fewer clients, the educational value of a university degree would be improved.
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