A widespread and overpowering thirst for international student fees is to blame for an increase in the buying and submitting of fraudulent papers according to whistleblowing academics who are today accusing their institutions of contributing to systemic cheating.
That’s where we’re at in the conversation regarding the large scale cheating scandal brought to attention yesterday a Fairfax investigation into Sydney-based ghostwriting business MyMaster, who profited greatly from a known to be lucrative practice endemic of all academic institutions since the inception of homework.
tl;dr? Basically, this is your university:
In the absence of any official statements from most major Australian universities to whom we reached out for comment yesterday (except Macquarie), a number of academics have overnight come forward to speak out against their employers’ willingness to turn a blind eye to the long-running problem.
Fairfax are today reporting that twenty professors have come to them to air their grievances, claiming that their universities’ reluctance to upset the revenue stream generated by international students, which can account for almost a third of their revenue, is “completely destroying our universities [and] buggering the thing for everyone.”
“Just as governments have become addicted to gambling revenues from poker machines, universities have become addicted to revenue streams from international students.“
That’s according the head of the ANU’s South Asian Program, Dr McComas Taylor, who describes cheating as the natural progression for “functionally illiterate” students who can’t “read, write or speak English at a sufficiently high level.”
Another professor alleges he routinely encounters students who will address him in his office via an interpreter and that there’s “unbelievable pressure” on faculties to pass international students – who can pay three times as much in fees – regardless of evident academic foul play. Another attributes his institutions wilful ignorance of the problem as the reason he retired.
That last one especially is very sad indictment of the kind of widespread institutional ineptitude and mismanagement that, if we’re being really honest, is something every student learns first and foremost at Australian universities. Perhaps that’s the most important lesson of all.
If you’re a disgruntled academic with an axe to grind – if you are, with respect, why on earth are you reading PEDESTRIAN? Also, do you like Rih too? – you can reach us here.
via SMH
