What concerns me is simplistic interpretation of FOI data by those not appreciating what they are indicating. After a similar press exposure by the Sunday Telegraph (in 2012 I believe), when a "league table" of university cheating was produced, Coventry Telegraph picked up the local interest story by comparing how good University of Warwick students were, with something like 20 cheating cases, compared to the hundreds of cases recorded across the same city by Coventry University.

As contributors to this list will recognise, the figures released by universities differed depending on recording methods. Warwick did not then record most misconduct cases centrally, devolving to faculties, therefore their institutional total consisted of only a few very serious cases referred to the Senate, which was the tip of the iceberg.

The great omission in this new study is lack of recognition that is a global problem which UK universities are relatively good at managing compared to most other countries in Europe and elsewhere in the world. We have a lot to be proud of, particularly in finding ways of deterring cheating, although there is a lot more we can all do.

On the positive side, any publicity is good that helps to raise awareness about the serious nature and complexity of the problems we are all trying to address.

From: Plagiarism <[log in to unmask]> on behalf of Thomas Lancaster <[log in to unmask]>
Sent: 04 January 2016 14:39
To: [log in to unmask]
Subject: Re: Four times more likely... discuss

For people who missed this, this is based on the main story in The Times on Saturday. There are various follow up letters in today's The Times too. Probably not the best day to release a big story when most universities are still closed and staff away, but maybe that was the intention.

There were actually four stories related to different aspects of student cheating in Saturday's The Times, but because that newspaper is behind a paywall, the much shorter retelling through the Press Association is the one that has been mostly picked up (as seen in The Guardian version).

I personally don't find the numbers surprising.

Some follow-up local stories have used the angle "students at university x cheat more". Others have looked at the angle "staff at university x better at detecting cheats". The latter version is closer to the truth and there must be some concerns about the universities that were reporting practically no cheating.

Nearly every time I give seminars on cheating and plagiarism, I get academics asking about international students and cheating. We saw the Australian cheating scandal last year which pointed to similar results. I've no doubt that there are issues specific to that group of students.

Whether international students really are as much as four times more likely to cheat is debatable. However, the indication from The Times data is that they are four times more likely to be detected as having cheated.

Thanks,
Thomas

From: Plagiarism [[log in to unmask]] on behalf of Dr. Mike Reddy [[log in to unmask]]
Sent: 04 January 2016 13:53
To: [log in to unmask]
Subject: Four times more likely... discuss

http://www.theguardian.com/education/2016/jan/02/universities-catch-almost-50000-student-cheats

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