Abstract
The paper identifies a growing problem, referred to as contract cheating, considered to
be the successor to pure plagiarism. Contract cheating is defined as the submission of
work by students for academic credit which the students have paid contractors to
write for them. The usage of one particular site, RentACoder, known to be used for
contract cheating is manually monitored. RentACoder is a site where computer
solutions are written to contract for legitimate uses but can also be used for students to
cheat. An exhaustive study shows that 12.3% of bid requests placed on RentACoder
are identified as contract cheating. The primary study reported in the paper quantifies
and discusses these contract cheaters. Out of 236 identified contract cheaters only
8.1% of these have made only a single bid request. Over half of the 236 cheaters have
previously requested between two and seven pieces of work. The paper argues that
this shows that this form of cheating is becoming habitual. The primary study
identifies that as well as the usual types of individual students using the services of
RentACoder non-originality agencies also appear to be working as subcontractors
offering to complete student assignments. This adds an extra layer of complexity to
methods of tracking cheating students. The paper concludes by advising that more
automated detection techniques are needed and advises that assessments and academic
policies need to be redesigned to remove the potential for contract cheating to be
committed.
This paper was submitted to the International Integrity & Plagiarism Conference which ran between 2004-2014. The paper was peer reviewed by an independent editorial board and features in the conference proceedings.