Putting university exams online during the pandemic has led to a record number of students trying to cheat their way to a degree.
Where assessments once lasted two hours in examination halls, with rows of students sat apart under the watchful eyes of invigilators, remote testing at home during the Covid-19 pandemic has been harder to monitor — giving students scope to collaborate on answers.
Data collected by the Glasgow Guardian, a student newspaper at the University of Glasgow, showed that the university received 868 allegations of cheating in the academic year 2020-2021, the highest in Scotland and a 95 per cent increase on the previous year’s 446 cases.
This was followed by Stirling with 480 allegations, a 40 per cent increase, and Dundee with 403 cases, a more than 859 per cent increase on the previous year. St Andrews reported 231 cases, a 15 per cent increase on the previous year, closely followed by Aberdeen, which had 202 cases of cheating, also 15 per cent up from the previous year. Strathclyde had 23 allegations of cheating over the past five years.
The most recent available figures for Edinburgh University, which covered 2019-20, showed 419 incidents of cheating — a 15 per cent increase from the previous academic year.
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In the case of Glasgow University, the most common penalty was for papers to be severely marked down, which happened in 417 cases.
However, across Scotland some students claim they got away with cheating their way to good grades. One, who achieved a first-class degree from a university in Edinburgh, said that while online exams were emailed to students individually, groups would congregate to answer separate parts of the exam. He said they would send messages to coursemates to confirm answers before making submitted answers appear distinct.
Another student who recently graduated with a 2:1 from the same university said he colluded throughout his exams. “I fully accept I did not earn my degree fairly,” he said. “If I had sat the exams under normal conditions, I would have failed catastrophically.”
Monitoring rules varied between university departments, with some students required to verify their identity before the exams and others forced to take online exams in a few hours rather than days. That may help to account for variations across departments. Last year about 200 of the Glasgow University claims related to students in the school of engineering. At Stirling about 60 per cent of all claims came from the management school.
Universities have tried to combat plagiarism and cheating in recent years with software that can identify common use of words across student assessments and where material has been lifted without proper attribution. Spokesmen for the universities said they took cheating seriously.
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Some universities said the increase in reported cases was due to improvements in exam surveillance. A spokesman for Glasgow University said: “There is likely to be a combination of reasons for any increase in cheating allegations, including an increase in the number of students and online assessments - potentially making it easier for the university to detect occurrences.”
A spokesman for St Andrews University said: “The small rise in recent cases detected is due to improvements in sophisticated detection software, staff training and vigilance.”
A spokesman for Aberdeen University said: “While these figures do show an increase, the actual numbers remain relatively low.”
Edinburgh University said it was “committed to ensuring that such incidents are detected and dealt with appropriately under the university’s academic misconduct procedure”.
Dundee University said it was committed to tackling any form of cheating, adding: “Dishonest conduct committed by a student for academic gain is treated with the utmost seriousness.”
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Stirling University said: “As part of our continued focus on academic integrity and responding to cases of academic misconduct, the university undertook a review of our policy and processes during 2018 and 2019, and implemented a new policy on academic integrity.”
Scottish Conservative shadow education minister Oliver Mundell said the problem was an inevitable consequence of the pandemic. “While no-one would condone cheating it’s not hard to understand why record numbers of students would ho to such desperate lengths to after the challenges they’ve faced,” he said.
Jamie Hepburn, Scottish higher education minister, said: “The vast majority of students achieve their qualifications by legitimate means. Any form of academic misconduct or cheating is completely unacceptable.”
