Degrees of deniability: contract cheating and the value chain of corruption in higher education—experiences from Australia

Guy J. Curtis and Cath Ellis

Chapter 12 in Handbook on Corruption in Higher Education, 2025, pp 182-198 from Edward Elgar Publishing

Abstract: Although contract cheating—students outsourcing their educational assessments to other people—is fraudulent, it is not typically labeled as corruption. This chapter illustrates how contract cheating can facilitate corruption within higher education. Through two case studies based on recent events, we illustrate how contract cheating could allow people to benefit from courses of study that they do not complete themselves. These cases show how such corruption could also benefit higher education institutions financially. We argue that low detection rates of contract cheating and the widespread misperception that it is impossible to prove enable schemes like those illustrated in our cases to operate with plausible deniability. We suggest that the recent rise of accessible Generative AI tools has shifted this into the realm of implausible deniability. We conclude by recommending that substantive efforts to improve the detection of contract cheating are needed to prevent it from facilitating corruption in higher education.

Keywords: Contract cheating; Academic integrity; Academic dishonesty; Academic misconduct; Detection; Corruption (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2025
ISBN: 9781035320233
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