Lying, Cheating Universities! By James Reed
As a critic of the universities, I have from time to time got anonymous tips of the scams and corruption going on. It was hard to investigate most of this, as it was things usually happening outside my state. The tip off related to theses by international students which were sub-standard, often full of spelling and grammatical errors, but which were passed. I tried at one point to get access to the printed versions at one university, not to be named, but these were kept in a storage area, and I had no access. Now they are digital, and even harder to find.
However, an eye-opening article was published in all places by the Left-wing Guardian.com on July 30, 2024, which goes into detail about the scams going on in Australian universities with international students. Many such students are lacking in basic English, but are still getting top degrees. Academic whistle-blowers spoke to the Guardian about this, informing that cheating is being let go to get the money from the cash cows. There are overseas students, according to one whistle-blower, who cannot speak English, but use tech to get by, such as translators. Higher degrees are also handed out to such people, the report notes. One academic reported having overseas students who could not speak English, or even understand the course, still coming through with high distinction essays. These are likely to be produced by paper mills, where for perhaps a few thousand dollars, a PhD can be cooked up.
This is only part of the intellectual corruption of the universities, with there also being cheating from academics with publications, with paper mills who write articles. As cited below, even some on the inside are starting to agree that the Australian universities are rotten to the core. Yet apart from me, you will not find criticism of them by the freedom movement, which I hope to change, since all of our problems come from these woke places, producing poisonous ideas.
"In the first part of a Guardian series, academics say universities have turned a blind eye to language shortcomings because of the revenue generated from international student fees
International students who cannot speak "basic English" are walking away from Australian universities with prestigious degrees, academics say, a situation one described as "mind-blowing".
More than a dozen academics and students who spoke to Guardian Australia, most on the condition of anonymity, said the universities' financial reliance on foreign students over many years had hollowed out academic integrity and threatened the international credibility of the sector.
Many said the rise of artificial intelligence was accelerating the crisis to the point where the only way to fail a course would be to hand nothing in, unless universities came up with a coherent institutional response.
A tutor in an arts subject at a leading sandstone university said in recent years the number of overseas students in her classes – who may pay up to $300,000 in upfront costs – had reached as high as 80%.
"Most can't speak, write or understand basic English," she said. "They use translators or text capture to translate the lectures and tutorials, translation aids to read the literature and ChatGPT to generate ideas.
"It's mind blowing that you can walk away with a master's degree in a variety of subjects without being able to understand a sentence."
To gain entrance to Australian universities from overseas, students have to complete a mandatory English language test from an approved provider, of which the largest is the International English Language Testing System (Ielts), which costs a minimum of $445 to sit. It is owned by the $3.5bn student recruitment company IDP Education, the "leading education and migration agents in Australia".
Australia's 38 public universities owned a 40% stake in the education giant until Education Australia, which represented them, was dissolved in 2021. As of 2022, 18 universities retained their shares, totalling about 12% of the company.
An IDP Education spokesperson said higher education providers did not have a "controlling interest" in the company, holding at most 0.66% of shares each.
The federal government has proposed a cap on international students and doubled visa application fees to $1,600 as part of its plans to bring down overall immigration numbers.
As part of its overhaul of international student visa requirements, including English language skills, announced late last year, the standard required on the Ielts test was raised from 5.5 to six on a scale of nine bands, where five equates to "modest" English proficiency and six equals "competent".
The chief executive of Universities Australia, Luke Sheehy, said the university sector "welcomed" the tightening of language testing requirements.
"Universities want students to have the best possible learning experience and, in many cases, already exceed the minimum standards when it comes to language requirements for particular courses," he said.
But academics who spoke to Guardian Australia said they were continuing to teach courses where as many as half of their cohort did not appear to understand the content, yet still passed. Many blamed an institutional reliance on international student fees.
They questioned whether the minimum score requirement was high enough, and whether universities were adequately scrutinising the language skills of students intending to study a rigorous academic course.
'It breaks my heart'
An academic who was a sessional teacher for two decades and recently retired said universities that were "once centres of excellence" had become "profit centres chasing enrolments and revenue".
The academic, who wished to remain anonymous, said supervisors and coordinators in his faculty were "interrogated" if students were failing.
"It breaks my heart reading essay after essay with a strong suspicion students couldn't have written it," they said. "The writing is on par with mine but when I ask [students] what a citation and a reference is, they have no idea.
"I've interviewed students after grading with suspicions and they could not tell me a single thing about the entire semester, yet wrote beautiful posts online and a beautiful essay."
Students say the number of their peers with inadequate language skills has contributed to the decline in attendance at lectures and tutorials.
Dr Andrew Paterson, a former lecturer in social work at Flinders University, cited master's tutorials in which more than 50% of the students had language issues that were "obvious and clear".
Paterson said he frequently graded essays that software – and his intuition – suggested were plagiarised. He said he would fail the student, they would appeal and the outcome was that they would pass.
"You'd gauge the language proficiency [of students] and they would produce something extremely precise, it was common," he said.
"But they all went on to pass. I'd sit at graduation and think 'how could that possibly have happened?'
"They'd failed academically, they'd failed placements, yet they received their parchment."
"It's a shambles," he said. "We're pretending these students are serious, and they're pretending they're interested [in the content]. It doesn't make for a creative academic environment.
"But it's as though these universities are operating in another universe."
A spokesperson for Flinders University said Paterson had not worked there since 2019 and the institution "utterly refuted" his claim that the university admitted students with inadequate language skills because of the revenue they represented.
"Flinders does not admit students into courses for which they are not qualified," the spokesperson said."
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