What Will Happen to Students Who Bought Uni Assignments?

Earlier today, Fairfax broke a story about a widespread cheating scandal affecting universities throughout NSW and possibly the rest of Australia, uncovering a website called MyMaster that sells essays and papers to international students.
Since then, the media has begun to speculate wildly about what might happen to those caught cheating – a Sydney Morning Herald report goes as far as to suggest that some could face criminal charges and even prison time.
The Herald’s legal expert said that students caught cheating could “fall foul of laws relating to dishonesty and gaining advantages and benefits via deception”, and face charges of fraud and forgery, carrying maximum penalties of 10 years.
Before we get too far ahead of ourselves here, let’s cool our jets for a moment and contemplate the fact that MyMaster has allegedly provided more than 900 fraudulent essays this year alone. 
Even assuming that some students used MyMaster multiple times (fraudulent academic essays – you can never just have one), the idea of that many people being prosecuted seems a tiny bit far-fetched.
That’s to say nothing of the fact that many students allegedly paid in cash or by such means as PayPal transfers, so tracking down all of those involved could prove to be a difficult and costly process.
The Herald went on to say that legal cases against students would be “challenging” to prove, albeit “not outside the realms of possibility.”
Academic discipline, including punishment for the breaching of university plagiarism protocols, seems like a far more likely bet, at least in the case of students who are still enrolled.
The student misconduct guidelines for UTS – one of the key schools thought to be affected – define plagiarism as:
“[Taking] and using someone else’s ideas or manner of expressing them and passing them off as his or her own by failing to give appropriate acknowledgment of the source to seek to gain an advantage by unfair means”

Students accused of plagiarism are expected to make a “reasonable attempt” to respond in written form. Consequences can then include anything from a requirement to rewrite the task, with a 50% penalty on subsequent marks, to a flat-out fail for the subject. 
More serious cases of plagiarism can result in exclusion from the course or university. For some students, who are alleged to have bought up to eight essays a year, this could be the case in the wake of the MyMaster scandal.
Since many of the students involved are likely to be international, a more interesting question is what will happen to their Student Visas if they are expelled or caught cheating.
Conditions for the Australian Student Visa state that holders “must be enrolled” in a registered course in order to hold it, and that said Visas can be cancelled due to criminal conduct.
Also worth noting is the fact that, if a student is to be deported from Australia for criminal conduct, the school is not obliged to refund the money that they have already paid for their tuition.
All of this brings us back to the original question – what will happen to students who obtained their academic papers fraudulently from MyMaster?
Crinimal charges are a worst-case scenario, but not totally unlikely. Academic penalties seem likely, and in some cases, Student Visas may be in jeopardy. In short, this situation is about to get a whole lot messier very soon.
We’ve reached out to a number of top NSW Universities to ask for comment. Macquarie‘s official statement is:
Macquarie University is concerned by today’s newspaper reports and takes allegations of academic dishonesty very seriously.

Cheating on assignments and in exams is practised by a tiny minority of students at all Australian universities, and indeed worldwide. Through their actions these students let down their classmates who are prepared to work hard in order to succeed. Ultimately, they only end up cheating themselves, because even if they are not caught, they do not learn anything from their study and leave the University without the skills and knowledge to be successful in their professions.

Universities are aware that a small number of students will be tempted to cheat, and go to great efforts to prevent it in the first instance through education and codes of conduct, to detect it via a variety of methods, and to punish it where it is detected.

The MyMaster payments represent less than one per cent of international students at Macquarie University. It’s unfortunate that their actions sully the reputations of the vast majority of honest and hardworking international students.

Image via SMH

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