Increasing pressure is being placed on governments and legislators in different countries to take action against assignment outsourcing in higher education. Global discussions focus on prohibiting commercial outsourcing providers, such as contract cheating services. Despite evidence to suggest that outsourcing behaviours by students are…

Student plagiarism in colleges and universities has become a controversial issue in recent years. A key problem has been the lack of reliable empirical data on the frequency, nature and extent of plagiarism in student assignments. The aim of the study described here was to provide this data. Patterns of plagiarism were tracked in two university…