Last week, Chinese international student Ju told TVNZ that Chinese students were paying for essays.
The story swept through Chinese-language media.
Online comments sparked lively debate:
Some criticised TVNZ's reporting as biased, while others accused Ju of crying thief when she was guilty herself! Some even thought she had failed after buying an essay herself and was now trying to label all her compatriots as users of ghostwriting services.
Some readers commented online and messaged us directly, saying that while they could not rule out assignment buying at the University of Auckland, the proportion certainly could not be as high as half.
Here are some representative comments:
“Students do occasionally copy each other's assignments, but there certainly aren't that many buying them. Essays only account for part of the overall grade. Even if you buy your essays, won't you still fail the exams?”
“Most of those who arrive earliest and leave latest at the library are Chinese students. How could half of them be buying essays?”
“Some subjects or advanced courses are extremely difficult, and finding a ghostwriter is very hard. How was that 50% figure calculated?”
In fairness, TVNZ's reporting lacked balance.
Every student interviewed insisted that cheating was widespread at university, with no dissenting voices, while TVNZ itself had no hard evidence.
So both the sampling and the presentation of the report were indeed unbalanced!
The New Zealand International Students' Association (NZISA) also issued a statement rejecting the report as “overly sensationalised and divisive”.
However, some industry insiders say the University of Auckland has taken the blame unfairly this time, but Chinese students buying essays and paying to have attendance records altered is indeed rampant at certain institutions.
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“It's hard to give an exact proportion, but these are definitely not isolated cases.”
Anderson, a pseudonym, previously worked in marketing at institutions recruiting international students and now works for an education agency.
The institutions he is referring to are the so-called “diploma mills”.
Anderson says the chaos at diploma mills is almost beyond belief. For example, some cookery students cannot even make an omelette.
“You need to meet the English language requirements to study specialist courses in New Zealand. But many students bypass IELTS by passing the institution's own internal tests. These students can barely utter a word in English. How could they possibly graduate without buying essays?”
Rocky currently works in student recruitment at an educational institution. He points out that diploma mills and their students are effectively meeting each other's needs, so deception is not necessarily involved.
“These institutions are diploma factories. As long as students pay their fees, attend classes as required and hand in assignments, they can get a diploma. These students could never gain university admission back home. Without diploma mills, their highest qualification would be a high school diploma.”
“Exams at diploma mills are usually easy. Institutions generally enforce attendance requirements, but inevitably some staff accept cash gifts or luxury goods to alter attendance records. The institutions turn a blind eye. If they are too strict, students will transfer elsewhere, taking their tuition fees with them.”
Anderson also points out that Chinese and Indian students accounted for the largest numbers at diploma mills shut down by the New Zealand Qualifications Authority (NZQA) or exposed by the media in recent years. This is not because Chinese and Indian students are of lower calibre, but because these countries are New Zealand's largest sources of international students, so their overall numbers are greater.
“Contrary to what people think, Indian students do not all speak good English. Some speak very quickly, but their English is actually poor. Also, Indian international students in New Zealand are generally less financially well off than Chinese students and need to work to pay their tuition fees, so absenteeism is also a serious problem among them.”
Both Anderson and Rocky point out that New Zealand's international education market was indeed plagued by problems in the years before 2018. Cheating scandals involved not only diploma mills but also well-regarded institutions such as Unitec.
“There are many reasons. The international education market grew rapidly, attracting good and bad operators alike. Another reason is fragmented oversight: institutions are overseen by education authorities, while agencies fall under the Ministry of Business, Innovation and Employment (MBIE).
Sometimes agencies arrange an entire chain of cheating, from admission to buying assignments and sitting exams. But the Ministry of Education and MBIE pass the buck to each other, and there is little the police can do either.”
Industry insiders were calling for stronger oversight as early as 2002, but little progress was made. The market even saw bad operators driving out good ones. “If you try to tighten student management, someone immediately helps them transfer to another institution.”
However, both Anderson and Rocky point out that the New Zealand Government has noticeably stepped up oversight over the past two years. Some diploma mills have been shut down, while even Unitec, the country's largest public polytechnic, was downgraded by two categories within 3 years, moving from its previous category to Category 3 (there are 4 categories in total).