TEQSA blocks more cheating websites
The education regulator has blocked 60 more commercial cheating websites that allow students to pay someone to complete assessments for them.
The education regulator has blocked dozens more “predatory” academic cheating websites in Australia.
The Tertiary Education Quality and Standards Agency last week blocked 60 commercial cheating websites that allow students to pay someone to complete assessments for them.
“This undermines the student’s learning and the trust in the qualification they receive. Further, using these services leaves the student vulnerable to blackmail and identity theft,” TEQSA said in a statement.
It included websites such as a-writer.com, which offered the “Perfect Essay Writer For All Your Needs” for $21.99, or “The Best Assignment Help” – a site launched in 2015-16, according to the website – that offered “access to low-cost assignments in a different field” due to the “low pocket size for the students in Australia”.
It brings the total number of cheating websites blocked by TEQSA to 475.
TEQSA chief executive Mary Russell said academic integrity was “fundamental to the reputation and credibility of Australia’s higher education sector”.
“Despite claims or perceptions that the rise of generative AI would result in the rapid demise of illegal academic cheating services, evidence shows they are continuing to target vulnerable students,” she said.
“In addition to posing risks to academic integrity, illegal cheating services are known to threaten students who pay to cheat with blackmail or engage in identity theft.
“The sharing of passwords with cheating services also poses a cybersecurity risk to providers.”
She said TEQSA’s work to disrupt illegal cheating websites targeted the most visited sites, with TEQSA “monitoring for the emergence of new websites and trends in web traffic”. She said it would “continue to take action to disrupt access to emerging illegal cheating websites”.
It includes services advertising or offering illegal cheating services via social media and messaging apps, in languages other than English or services based overseas.
In September 2020, TEQSA made it illegal to provide or advertise a commercial academic cheating service in Australia.
Pay-per-essay cheating websites are separate from the threat of generative AI tools, such as ChatGPT, to academic integrity.
More than half of students are using AI to help with their assignments, and 5 per cent have used it to cheat, according to a 2024 study by the Higher Education Policy Institute.
Some universities, such as the University of Sydney, allow the use of AI for assessments, except for exams and in-semester tests.
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