For over half a century there have been concerns about increases in the occurrence of academic misconduct by higher education students and this is now claimed to have reached crisis proportions (e.g. Mostrous & Kenber, 2016a). This study explores the extent to which multi-national faculty judge the effectiveness of higher education…

Contract cheating happens when students commission someone else to do assessed work for them. While it is already illegal in 18 jurisdictions, others are considering making the provision of contract cheating services illegal. To date, legal approaches to addressing contract cheating have faced little scrutiny in the peer reviewed literature. This…

This paper presents the results of an exploratory study that examined engagement approaches of contract cheating services on the Twitter platform. The literature portrays the grey academic market as an invisible hand that magically delivers academic content at the click of a button, which leaves a wide gap in our understanding of their outreach…

Contract cheating providers exist as businesses with a single shared intention, to profit on a student's inability to fulfil academic requirements for themselves. For contract cheating providers to make money, the correct market conditions are required. First, providers need to be able to offer the expertise that students request. Second, students…

This study examines circumstances when academic integrity rules may not apply. To this end, we conducted a multinational survey of teaching, research, administrative and support staff (N = 79). The results suggest that exemptions may be granted on compassionate grounds such as personal welfare, situations where institutional policies are perceived…

Physical separation of students and instructors creates the gap of anonymity and limited control over the remote learning environment. The ability of academic institutions to authenticate students and validate authorship of academic work at various points during a course is necessary for preserving not only perceived credibility but also public…