The scale of student misconduct in Ukraine has been exposed by a survey of undergraduates that revealed nearly half have paid bribes and almost all admitted to cheating in exams and plagiarism. Of 600 students surveyed at public universities in Lviv — a city in the west of Ukraine seen as relatively uncorrupt — 48 percent had paid bribes.

This might be to obtain a better mark from a faculty member or to falsely mark attendance, explains Elena Denisova-Schmidt, lecturer in Russian culture and society at the University of St. Gallen and co-author of the new research. Some academics deliberately make their courses particularly difficult as an “informal signal” that they need to be bribed, she adds.

Meanwhile, 95 percent of those surveyed admitted to cheating in exams or tests. Students are normally given exam questions in advance, and take “cheat sheets” — easily bought from bookshops — into exams to tell them what to write, says Dr. Denisova-Schmidt. Academics fail to discipline cheating students or take action, as that would take up “additional time (and) additional resources for the faculty member”.

In addition, 93 percent of students said they plagiarised by copying and pasting others’ work into their own; nearly two-thirds handed in essays that they found on the Internet; and 40 percent submitted ghostwritten work, according to Ukraine: Endemic Higher Education Corruption, a paper recently published in International Higher Education.

Although efforts have been made to reform Ukraine’s higher education system since the country’s revolution in 2014, these results show how difficult it will be to clean up the system. In part, corruption in universities is a reflection of broader problems in Ukraine, believes Dr. Denisova-Schmidt. “It’s a system of endemic corruption in the whole society. They probably don’t recognise what they are doing,” she says.

But there are other factors at play that may be familiar to academics in other countries. The corruption and cheating problem has been made worse by the over-expansion of higher education in Ukraine, where around 80 percent of youngsters now go to university. “Not all of these 80 percent are ready to study at this high level,” says Dr. Denisova-Schmidt, but, as it was “almost impossible” to get a job without a degree, students make sure they complete university “no matter what”. A lack of alternative vocational education routes compounds the problem, she adds. The survey found that students with a poor academic record were more likely to cheat.

(Excerpted and adapted from The Economist and Times Higher Education)