The reality is that Canadian schools aren’t immune from university cheating misdeeds
Of all the scandals swirling around these days, none is as outrageous as privileged parents paying bribes or hiring impostors to cheat on entrance exams.
So far, 50 people have been charged, including Hollywood celebrities, Felicity Huffman, Lori Loughlin and wealthy businesspeople. Even more are under investigation, according to the FBI.
One Canadian accused is British Columbia businessman and philanthropist David Sidoo, alleged to have paid US$200,000 to have an American fly to Vancouver to take SAT tests for his sons, in addition to a high school exam in June 2012. He allegedly used a fake ID to write the tests.
Frankly, IDs should be replaced with fingerprints or retina scans to eliminate impostors.
Canadian schools are not immune from such frauds. There are already a few examples that have come to light that indicate a more widespread problem than most would believe.
One major issue lies in the deluge of foreign students entering Canadian universities and colleges whose credentials or examination results may sometimes be unreliable.
In 2018, Niagara College in Ontario flagged concerns that foreign students who allegedly passed English tests in India to qualify for admission lacked the necessary skills. As a result, 400 students in India were told to retake the language test.
Admission fraud is one issue, but there is also the matter of other forms of student misconduct — foreign and domestic students included — from plagiarism to something known as “contract cheating.”
This year, CityNews published an excellent article on “contract cheating” in Canada. Journalists followed up on posters around the University of Toronto that advertised a website offering essays and assignments for students in return for a fee of $165. The journalists hired the service and interviewed one of the contractors, in Kenya, who said he had written hundreds of assignments for at least 50 students in the past year from the University of Toronto, York University, University of Ottawa and Simon Fraser University. There’s a proliferation of such websites online, wrote CityNews.
The reporters were also told plagiarism at the University of Toronto has been on the rise over the past four years. In 2018, there were 1,000 incidents and 600 cases of “unauthorized aid,” or contract cheating.
Schools mete out discipline for such offences, but all these misdeeds — plus admission cheating — constitute fraud. There should be laws in place to immediately dismiss or charge those responsible. Some states in the U.S. and New Zealand have set up such laws, but Canada relies on universities to impose rules and discipline — a questionable remedy given how ambitious universities are to increase enrolment.
Clearly, Canadian schools should be legally responsible for preventing admission fraud and cheating by students. This would require them to supervise testing abroad, not delegating oversight to middlemen. And if misbehaviour involves foreign students, there should also be consequences by immigration authorities, as is the case in other countries.
In 2015, the Department of Immigration in Australia cracked down on abuses and cancelled 9,000 student visas over academic misconduct. These included incidents involving plagiarism, sitting for exams on another student’s behalf and bribery.
The reality is that the incentive to cheat, to obtain a student visa or a prestigious degree, is too great to rely simply on the honour system. The vast majority of students work hard to achieve graduation, but Canada’s institutions of higher learning, and lawmakers, must smarten up and close all loopholes.
There should be laws in place to immediately dismiss or charge those responsible (for fraud).