Widespread academic dishonesty among higher education (HE) students has been a concern for higher education institutes (HEIs). Ethics literature reports that unintentional plagiarism is more prevalent among HE students and the root cause is, limited or no awareness of nuances of ethics concerning plagiarism resulting in poor ethical judgments.…

Academic cheating is a pervasive problem in many universities globally. The present double-blind randomized controlled field experiment tested whether reminding university students about academic dishonesty sanction policies would reduce their cheating in an actual exam. Students were assigned to either a Sanction Reminder or a No Reminder…

This study examines the emergent issue of blackmail and contract cheating through a scenario-based online exercise completed by 587 university students in Western Australia. Participants were presented with two consecutive scenarios, each involving a difficult assignment. The possibility of blackmail was introduced prior to (and within) the second…

The highest estimates of the prevalence of commercial contract cheating in Australia come from self-report surveys, which suggest that around 2% of students engage in commercial contract cheating during their higher education studies. However, self-report surveys are limited in that participants under-report socially-undesirable behaviours. In…

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…

Unethical behaviour has become an increasingly controversial issue in Higher Education institutes. There have been debates about the reasons for the increase in unethical behaviour. But many of those debates contain problems. A key problem has been the lack of empirical results about faculty members' perceptions of their role in the phenomenon,…

Historical trends in plagiarism are often estimated by comparing survey results from a diverse range of samples, institutions, and measures. However, in multi-institution multi-method comparisons changes over time are difficult to separate from differences in methods. We assessed self-reported engagement in, awareness of, and attitudes toward…

Most institutions of higher education presume that the pursuit of truth is central to their missions. However, the status of truth has been seriously challenged in contemporary society--by postmodern critiques, confusion about the goals and methods of scholarly disciplines, and the seductive power of social and other digital media. In this essay,…

Little research has investigated the conditions that lead to research misconduct. To develop effective intervention/prevention strategies, this void must be filled. This study administered a mixed-mode survey (i.e. mail and online) to a stratified random sample of tenured and tenure-track faculty in the natural, social, and applied sciences (N =…

The topic of governance is much discussed in the higher education literature. Corruption is less discussed, and mostly in general and cautionary terms. Yet there are important relations between the two. The current article critically examines the literature on governance in higher education and underlines the relationship to forms of corruption in…

Promoting authenticity and academic integrity in assessment continues to present a priority for educational institutions. Besides providing the foundation for high academic standards and best practice, authentic assessments and academic integrity enrich students with skills that advance their employability. Given the multilayered significance of,…

If media reports are to be believed, Australian universities are facing a significant and growing problem of students outsourcing their assessment to third parties, a behaviour commonly known as 'contract cheating'. Teaching staff are integral to preventing and managing this emerging form of cheating, yet there has been little evidence-based…

University faculty are frequently tasked with promoting academic honesty among students. However, there is little reliable evidence about whether faculty actions can prevent academic dishonesty. The purpose of this study is to examine whether more severe punishments from faculty can reduce academic dishonesty among students. We analyze nationally…

Most previous studies of academic dishonesty have been conducted in North America and Europe, and have focused on the contextual, institutional, and individual factors that influence students' propensity to cheat. While such studies offer useful background and structure to this endemic problem, this study aimed to gain deeper insights into student…

This study examines the use frequency by German faculty of 10 different methods for preventing and detecting cheating on exams, plagiarism, and falsification and/or fabrication of data. It also investigates the factors influencing their use. In total, 3,655 faculty members from 55 randomly chosen disciplines at 4 German universities were contacted…