TEQSA tests Australia’s academic cheating laws with US company Chegg

Australia’s university regulator has initiated a legal challenge against a US ‘education support’ company for allegedly prohibiting cheating laws.

TEQSA Acting Chief Commissioner Adrienne Nieuwenhuis.

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The university regulator has for the first time initiated a legal challenge against a US ‘education support’ company for allegedly breaching Australia’s cheating laws by providing or offering to provide academic cheating services to university students.

The proceedings will serve as a test case, being the first time Australia’s Tertiary Education Quality and Standards Agency (TEQSA) has sought civil penalties for alleged violations of Australia’s academic cheating laws, which were introduced in 2020.

TEQSA will allege that US-based company Chegg.com, which describes itself as a “digital learning platform to improve student outcomes” and has 100,000 paying Australian subscribers, had “contravened Australian laws designed to prohibit academic cheating”.

The Australian understands TEQSA filed the claim with the Federal Court on Tuesday afternoon.

“These laws were introduced in 2020 following an amendment to the Tertiary Education Quality and Standards Agency Act 2011 (TEQSA Act),” TEQSA’s statement said.

Parts of that act “prohibits providing, offering to provide, or arranging for a third party to provide, an academic cheating service to a higher education student”.

TEQSA will allege that Chegg “contravened this provision on 5 occasions across 2021 and 2022.”

“TEQSA is seeking declarations about the alleged contraventions, civil penalties, costs and other orders,” the statement continued.

The university regulator said it had received concerns from multiple institutions about Chegg’s operations in Australia and tried to engage the company in an attempt to resolve those concerns.

In their 2023 academic integrity reports, top Australian universities including the University of NSW and the University of Sydney referred to Chegg as a contract cheating service – a label the company firmly rejects.

A Chegg spokesperson told The Australian the US company believed the lawsuit was "meritless". 

"The lawsuit brought by TEQSA relies on outdated academic integrity policy, which was formulated long before the advent of AI and the profound impact it has on education and technology today," the Chegg spokesperson said.

"Despite the rapid advancements in generative AI technology, offering immediate and comprehensive student support, TEQSA seeks to apply backward-thinking policy and continues to single out Chegg’s student-centric products – viewing them more critically than other similar technologies."

"TEQSA continues to reject our efforts to address their concerns with innovative solutions. We believe this lawsuit is meritless and we will vigorously defend ourselves in court. We take our legal obligations seriously and structure our operations to fully comply with the law.

"Put simply, TEQSA’s case is a misguided attempt to hold back progress at the expense of students’ futures."

It comes after Chegg filed a separate judicial review against TEQSA on September 5, telling The Australian last month it had been “singled out” and viewed “more critically” than other similar technologies like artificial intelligence.

The Australian understands the judicial review challenged a notice issued by TEQSA to the company, which required Chegg to provide certain documents to the regulator.

On Tuesday, TEQSA’s Acting Chief Commissioner Adrienne Nieuwenhuis said the regulator would take firm action against those who had allegedly breached Australian laws.

“Where TEQSA finds academic cheating services being advertised or offered to students, we will take appropriate action to protect the integrity and reputation of Australia’s higher education sector,” she said.

Mid-last year, TEQSA wrote to all 193 universities and other higher education providers to raise concerns from universities that “the online platform Chegg.com facilitates contraventions of the provisions of the TEQSA Act which prohibit providing, offering to provide or arranging for a third person to provide academic cheating services”.

A Chegg spokesperson told The Australian the US company had engaged in conversations with TEQSA for over two years "investing significant time and resources into finding a constructive path forward, including custom-building an expanded Honour Shield cheating prevention tool specifically for Australian universities."

The Chegg spokesperson said that as part of their conversations with TEQSA, they had custom-build a program called “Honour Shield” for internal university Learning Management Systems “to prevent cheating”.

Chegg operates through a Q&A system, where subscribers post questions and get expert worked solutions, with additional support from AI chatbots. According to its website, with Honour Shield a university can block students from searching particular questions during an allocated exam.