Late last year, a massive academic cheating scandal came to light when the essay ghost writing service MyMaster was exposed.
The site, run by Sydney-based businesswoman Yingying Dou, allegedly provided up to 900 fraudulent university assignments in 2014, charging up to $1000 for each; the service also helped students cheat in online tests.
Last month, two University of Newcastle students were expelled after being found using MyMaster, with eight others suspended. At the time, 70 students from institutions around New South Wales were being investigated.
Today, however, Fairfax report that dozens of University of Sydney students suspected of cheating could escape without consequence, thanks to a lower-than-average detection rate of academic dishonesty.
Per their reports, “a maximum of five” students have been identified as possible candidates for suspension or expulsion, a number fewer than any other major university involved in the scandal.
For comparison’s sake, Sydney University of Technology, Newcastle University and the University of New South Wales are each investigating more than a dozen cases.
Earlier this year, University of Sydney vice-chancellor Michael Spence, who said that “advanced software controls” across the university were part of an “advanced, multi-layered” anti-plagiarism initiative.
It has come to light, however, that only some academics and departments at the university use Turnitin, the plagiarism-detection software, as part of their electronic submission process.
Though the University of Sydney is conducting an ongoing internal inquiry into the matter, they have reportedly eliminated students who “left the university for on reason or another” from the investigation.
They have also refused to comment on whether electronic or hard copies of students’ assessments are kept on file – assuming they are not, it would be near-impossible to prove any accusations of past academic dishonesty.
In short, this exposes a pretty big flaw in the University of Sydney’s systems for detecting plagiarism, and means that a lot of students who used MyMaster to cheat will likely go undetected and unpunished. So much for studying hard …
Image via University of Sydney / Facebook
