2025/09/16 by Guy J. Curtis, Cath Ellis · 1 voice
Social Sciences · #Corruption and Economic Development #Academic integrity and plagiarism
paper · doi:10.4337/9781035320240.00023
openalex publication_date 2025/09/16 · openalex created_date 2025/10/10 · openalex updated_date 2026/07/18
Although contract cheating—students outsourcing their educational assessments to other people—is fraudulent, it is not typically labeled as corruption. This chapter illustrates how contract cheating can facilitate corruption within higher education. Through two case studies based on recent events, we illustrate how contract cheating could allow people to benefit from courses of study that they do not complete themselves. These cases show how such corruption could also benefit higher education institutions financially. We argue that low detection rates of contract cheating and the widespread misperception that it is impossible to prove enable schemes like those illustrated in our cases to operate with plausible deniability. We suggest that the recent rise of accessible Generative AI tools has shifted this into the realm of implausible deniability. We conclude by recommending that substantive efforts to improve the detection of contract cheating are needed to prevent it from facilitating corruption in higher education.