Service fined $500k for helping students cheat

“The Federal Court of Australia has ordered student-support service Chegg to pay a $500,000 fine for giving students answers to three questions for a Monash University assessment. The case is the first time the Tertiary Education Quality and Standards Agency (TEQSA) has used powers they were given in 2020 to prohibit the provision of academic cheating services. Chegg Inc, one of the world ’ s biggest ed-tech companies, was found to have facilitated cheating through its ‘expert Q&A’ service, where subject-matter experts uploaded the answers to IT and water engineering assessment questions three times throughout 2021 and 2022. Chegg has also been ordered to pay TEQSA ’ s $150,000 legal fees along with the half million-dollar fine. TEQSA has disrupted 370 cheating websites so far. Picture: iStock/demaerre. The service advertises itself as providing ‘24/7 homework help’ where a chatbot provides the ‘solution’ to study questions for USD$10.95 a month. It also has a ‘plagiarism checker’ tool, where students can upload essays and check if they have copied and pasted other work into their own. More on this story: Government to reform ‘toothless’ TEQSA | New standards address racism, disability issues | Students told degrees revoked in WSU hack TEQSA chief executive Mary Russell urged students and staff to report suspected cheating services. “Academic integrity is fundamental to the quality and reputation of Australia’s higher education sector and the academic success and experiences of students,“ Dr Russell said. “This outcome reinforces the importance of academic integrity to Australian higher education. TEQSA will act decisively to address allegations of academic cheating services being provided or offered to Australian higher education students.” TEQSA said it has removed or changed access to 370 websites and 925 social media accounts that offered cheating services since 2020.

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