The latest crisis in education: many university degrees may now be obtained by fraud

Here’s a moral conundrum. Would you cheat in an exam by getting outside help if no-one knew you were doing it? No? Well, would you cheat in an exam if you were nearly sure that everyone else was cheating and, by being honest, you’d put yourself at a disadvantage?

That’s a tougher ask. And if the difference between a stellar result and a middling one might have an effect on your career, wouldn’t that be the point when you’d think: to hell with it? 

If your answer is no to all the above, I salute you. But you’re probably outnumbered by the rest.

This isn’t an abstract question. It’s the position that many universities, including the top ones, are putting their students in. Two academic assessment experts, Philip Newton and Michael Draper, at Swansea university used Freedom of Information requests to find out if, five years since Covid, universities were still using online remote exams.

And the thing about remote exams is that no one knows if you get your brainy room-mate or your mother or your old teacher to help you do the work. Of the 119 universities that responded, 78 per cent used this model. That’s nearly 100 institutions. What’s more, they included almost all the elite Russell Group universities, apart from Imperial College. Birmingham didn’t respond. So…that’s 22 out of 24.

To make matters worse, three quarters of them did not use any invigilation service; only ten said they used remote supervision of candidates for all online exams. Not surprisingly, the academics observed in their report that “widespread” lack of invigilation should raise concerns about the validity of these examinations as an assessment format and the quality assurance of degrees relying on them. They noted too that ChatGPT made it worse.

I’d go further. The results based on remote exams aren’t worth having. Employers shouldn’t take them seriously. Universities are issuing degrees based on results that they know are probably obtained by fraud.

Worse, students have a perverse incentive to cheat. As Prof Newton put it: “Students are forced to choose – do they cheat, or risk getting lower marks than peers who did cheat, with consequences for employability?” 

Any exam that isn’t based on supervised work, preferably pen and paper at a desk in an exam hall, under the nose of an alert invigilator, is useless; unless it’s an oral exam where the candidate can be questioned. 

Anything else isn’t worth having.  The same goes for any kind of coursework, unless it’s art, craft or technology which is essentially practical. To put it another way, any examination that allows the candidates’ parents, friends or helpers to contribute is an incentive to cheat.

It’s not just university degrees that are affected by remote working. My daughter is doing English A level and an eighth of her marks are awarded for an essay done outside school. “Lots of people’s parents are helping them”, she observed. I bet they are. 

The middle-class parents especially will make sure that their child’s university place isn’t compromised by sub-par coursework. I can see the point of an extended essay, but what’s wrong with doing it on school premises?

This is serious. The integrity of British degrees is being blatantly compromised by universities and it’s time the minister responsible for higher education, Jacqui Smith, issued a statement on what’s being done about it. 

If universities can’t be bothered to conduct fair examinations, then they shouldn’t be in business.

As Prof. Newton told me: “the simple solution to this is for the Office for Students and/or the Quality Assurance Agency to make a statement that these sorts of exams are not valid under the terms of registration/accreditation. Universities would cease to use them immediately.” So, Jacqui Smith…what’s stopping you?