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Computer students are making their first foray into offshore outsourcing by paying developers in Bangalore to complete their University software assignments. Cyber cheats from Britain & the US post their projects on freelancers’ portals, ordinarily used by Western companies, to source low-cost developers on the subcontinent. The phenomenon, already dubbed ‘Contract Cheating,’ was exposed after a test on RentACoder.com revealed one in ten bids came from students desperate to turn their backs on academic papers. Bids on the site included computer programming requests, IT assignments and essays for other subjects, said Dr Thomas Lancaster, professor at UCE Birmingham, which carried out the study. His analysis shows less than 10 per cent of contract cheats caught on the portal made one bid request – the majority wanted between two and seven projects done by someone else. By tracing back the cheaters’ online footprints, the academics found universities in America, Canada and Australia, as well as within the UK, are ‘hosting 21st century plagiarists,’ UCE hinted. Handing over only a “few dollars”, students were found to be in the process of hiring a freelance for projects or annual papers assigned by 46 higher education institutions across the globe. “There is a serious concern that, unlike plagiarism, academic institutions are not yet fully aware of the potential prevalence of contract cheating and the measures that can be taken to avoid it,” Dr Lancaster said. He warned the process of students putting their work online for tender for suppliers to complete is, the analysis shows, “becoming habitual.” “This type of cheating is cost effective for students, because many of the suppliers are internationally based and can complete the set assignments for a few dollars a time. “More automated detection techniques are needed to monitor these sites and assessments and academic policies need to be reconsidered to remove the potential for contract cheating to be committed,” Dr Lancaster said. Indian press reports claim one student from the subcontinent was recently deported from the US after all his assignments were found to have been outsourced. Jun 30, 2006 Email this article Printer friendly page Previous Page
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