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5 April 2022

How cheating at uni could ruin your career

Trimester 1 is flying by and you’re probably starting to focus on assignments and deadlines. We know this can be a stressful time – personal circumstances may be making it hard for you to study effectively, or perhaps you’re finding the unit concepts hard to grasp or are facing language barriers.

If you’re struggling, you need to use the legitimate study help that’s available and not turn to illegal cheating services. Making the wrong decision could have lifelong consequences for your degree and career.

Here’s what you need to know.

Contract cheating is illegal

‘Contract cheating’ is where you get someone to do part or all of your assignment or exam, and then claim the work as your own. This includes asking friends or family to do the work for you or paying a company that promotes ‘study or assignment help’.

Commercial contract cheating services offer to:

How to recognise a contract cheating service

It’s not always easy to identify illegal cheating services, but you should avoid any company that offers the above services via social media, email or on-campus advertising. Sometimes you’ll even see these services promoted on otherwise legitimate study help sites.

Some of these services just offer ‘help’ with your work, while others are more explicit and ‘guarantee’ you a high grade. Either way, they’re illegal. It’s a good idea to:

If you’ve received an advertisement for contract cheating services in your student inbox, please hit the ‘Report phishing’ button or forward the email to [email protected]. If you know of students at Deakin who are promoting or using contract cheating services, you can raise your concerns with the Student Conduct Team (this can be anonymous).

What could happen to you if you cheat

If you use cheating services, you could:

Think you can get away with it? Think again

It’s easier than ever for universities to detect cheating and we take it very seriously at Deakin. No matter how careful you are, it’s only a matter of time until we catch any student who uses a contract cheating service. If you use a cheating service, you could be identified by:

You might only use a contract cheating service once to get through a particularly stressful time, but the consequences of being caught could mean that you lose your entire degree even after you’ve graduated and built a career.

We can help you study honestly



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