Degrees of Deception
By Linton Besser and Peter Cronau
UpdatedApril 21, 2015 18:01:00
KERRY O'BRIEN, PRESENTER: They promise a top-line education but they pay dodgy agents offshore to drum up business...
ROBERT WALDERSEE, DR., EXEC. DIR., CORRUPTION PREVENTION, ICAC: The university managers had personal and financial relationships with the agents.
KERRY O'BRIEN: ... turn a blind eye to cheating...
ZENA O'CONNOR, DR., SESSIONAL LECTURER, FACULTY OF ARCHITECTURE, DESIGN AND PLANNING, UNI. OF SYDNEY: There is an unwritten rule not to fail students.
KERRY O'BRIEN: ... and turn out poorly trained graduates.
LINTON BESSER, REPORTER: Would they have been safe in a hospital?
BARBARA BEALE, LECTURER (RET'D.), SCHOOL OF NURSING, UNI. OF WESTERN SYDNEY: No. No way.
ZENA O'CONNOR: Education is not an industry.
KERRY O'BRIEN: What is going on in our universities? Welcome to Four Corners.
They're supposed to be centres of excellence in learning. They're supposed to be securing this country's economic future and social wellbeing through the next generations of well-educated graduates.
They're selling access to millions of foreign students and reaping many billions of dollars of revenue.
But now the alarm has been raised that, increasingly, Australian universities are exposing themselves to corrupt practice, to lower standards, to systemic abuse of the system.
One instance you'll see tonight is the revelation from whistleblowers that some foreign students and other poor English speakers are graduating as nurses from Australian universities, dangerously under-qualified.
Universities have turned increasingly to foreign students regularly recruited through corrupt agencies to fill the gap left by a decline in funding from the public purse, which Education Minister Christopher Pyne wants to cut further.
Academics are under pressure to pass students, irrespective of their ability, in order to keep revenue from overseas students flowing in.
Linton Besser's story tonight reveals a sorry state: corruption, widespread plagiarism, cheating and exploitation.
LINTON BESSER: On this trading floor, an Australian commodity is running hot. But it's not coal or iron ore for sale: it's our other major export to the world - tertiary education.
This is the booming billion-dollar market in international students that now underpins the survival of Australia's universities.
ROBERT WALDERSEE: Universities are fully aware there are problems with, with international student businesses they operate. But it is a very difficult problem they face. They are heavily dependent on the revenue. It's a cut-throat industry.
LINTON BESSER: Right now, Australia is gripped by the question of how to pay for our university education.
But there's a more fundamental question to be asked: what exactly are we getting for our money? Have our universities traded away academic standards in the race for cash?
ZENA O'CONNOR: There is a culture of leniency. Help them through, help them to get through. Do whatever it takes. Bend over backwards. Help them to get through. Let them resubmit and resubmit.
PAUL FRIJTERS, LECTURER, SCHOOL OF ECONOMICS, UNI. OF QUEENSLAND: We've got to pass the vast majority of our students, no matter what their level is, no matter what their prior knowledge is, no matter how much or how little effort they put in.
ROBERT WALDERSEE: The conditions within the university are conducive to corruption.
LINTON BESSER: The New South Wales Independent Commission Against Corruption has got some big scalps, including some of the state's most corrupt politicians.
Now it's turned its sights onto universities.
ROBERT WALDERSEE: Students being exploited; students cheating; students bribing academics; academics being pressured to turn a blind eye to problems.
LINTON BESSER: In a new report, corruption prevention director Dr Robert Waldersee has raised the alarm about universities' troubling use of agents offshore to recruit students.
ROBERT WALDERSEE: So every single university we spoke to has said that, at some point, they've had problems with some of their agents: with false documentation and often collusion with their students.
The risk is they're going to put applicants through to the university with fake qualifications, or who they know have cheated on tests, or who are trying to undertake some sort of visa fraud.
LINTON BESSER: Four Corners decided to find out how education agents operate in Australia's biggest overseas market, China.
We went undercover, inside agencies servicing Australia's universities.
Vice-chancellors have accepted as necessary the use of these unregulated middlemen to recruit the vast numbers of overseas students on whom they now rely.
This Beijing agent is called Shinyway. It has represented universities including Queensland, Monash, Sydney, Newcastle, Southern Cross, ACU, ANU and UTS.
Our undercover reporter is asking how the agent can help if his child has a poor academic record. He is then told Shinyway will accept a forged school transcript.
SHINYWAY ADVISER (translation): Make some variation and make it look normal. As long as it's not lower than 60, I can process it. I don't want them to be written too high either.
LINTON BESSER: This time, it's EduGlobal, who also represents a string of prestigious local universities such as Monash, Melbourne, Queensland, Griffith, Tasmania, Southern Cross, Western Sydney, Macquarie and UTS.
UNDERCOVER REPORTER (translation): Is it possible to make it look better?
EDUGLOBAL ADVISER (translation): You can. It's acceptable as long as the school affixes their stamp on it.
LINTON BESSER: This hidden camera footage raises alarming questions about the integrity of international student admissions to a host of Australian universities.
EDUGLOBAL ADVISER (translation): As long as the academic transcript can show a result of at least 70, we guarantee the issue of an offer letter.
LINTON BESSER: Four Corners' undercover journalist also made a remarkable discovery about how lax English requirements are becoming to gain a student visa.
This agency is EIC.
She is promising special help to get around the robust English language test, known as IELTS, that has traditionally been used to enter an Australian university.
EIC ADVISER (translation): If this kid can't get a reasonable mark or close to it, we could arrange an internal test. The IELTS test is hard. The internal test is comparatively easy: listening, reading and writing, three parts. The level of difficulty will decrease.
LINTON BESSER: Down the road is AOJI, one of the biggest agents in the country. It made a similar offer.
AOJI ADVISER (translation): To enrol into a university there is a standard, but through our application we could manage that.
LINTON BESSER: The agent suggests the student could sit an alternative exam called Versant.
AOJI ADVISER (translation): The 48th ranked university in the world, UNSW, which is rated third in Australia: they have their own internal test system. It is called Versant. It is acknowledged by the international community and is the same as IELTS.
LINTON BESSER: But it's not the same: it's much easier.
Since 2012, the Government has asked universities, not the Department of Immigration, to determine who gets a visa to enter the country to study. It no longer asks that entrants meet a nationally recognised standard.
And universities, which are desperate to increase the flow of overseas students, can now decide how many come into the country.
AOJI ADVISER (translation): Some people might have difficulty with IELTS. They could use this system.
ROBERT WALDERSEE: The falsification of documents that comes through from students is often done in collusion with the, ah, agents themselves. In some cases, the universities have hired independent verifiers to check documents and qualifications and only to find that the students and the agents have been colluding or bribing the document verifiers as well.
LINTON BESSER: BarmakNassirian is a Washington DC-based specialist on international education.
BARMAKNASSIRIAN, FMR DIR., US ASSOC. OF COLLEGIATE REGISTRARS: When you put such an agent, such a gatekeeper on commission, the risk that sending an adequate number of warm bodies, ah, may be paramount for them. The risk that they may engage in manipulation, embellishment or other kinds of academic shenanigans, just to make sure they meet their quota, ah, is not negligible.
LINTON BESSER: In America, the college code of conduct has cautioned against the payment of incentives to offshore agents and commissions have been banned domestically.
There's no such ruling in Australia, even though universities have already been compromised by these relationships.
ROBERT WALDERSEE: We were told in one case where the university managers had personal and financial relationships with the agents they were supposed to be overseeing. And the university now has to rotate its managers to stop that corruption developing.
LINTON BESSER: These agents usually charge students and their families for their services. What they don't tell them is they also pocket often secret commissions from Australian universities seeking a winning edge over others around the world.
In total, these commissions are estimated to amount to hundreds of millions of dollars per year. Students are none the wiser.
IRIS, CIVIL ENGINEERING STUDENT, UNSW: They were sort of trying to say that University of Sydney, maybe, is better.
LINTON BESSER: Did the agent ever say that he or she was being paid by the universities as well?
IRIS: Mmm, no. I'm thinking maybe University of Sydney is paying them a higher rate. (Laughs)
(Iris and Josie are serving dinner for themselves and Linton)
JOSIE, ARCHITECTURE STUDENT, UNSW: Smells yummy.
LINTON BESSER: Iris and Josie are just two of the 250,000 international students in Australia.
JOSIE: Do you use chopstick?
LINTON BESSER: They might not know it but they are the vital income stream keeping Australia's universities afloat.
JOSIE: I need to take a picture of my masterful...
LINTON BESSER: But they're highly conscious of what it's costing their parents.
(to Iris) Just tell me again, how much it is?
IRIS: Oh, they used to be, last year it was $16,000 for each semester. This time it's $18,000, so it's pretty much, my parents say, "After four years we ha- we can buy you a house."
LINTON BESSER: Iris and Josie are good students but even they are under considerable pressure.
Iris hopes her $140,000 degree will lead to a job in Australia and permanent residency - or PR.
(to Iris) And do you feel the pressure of how expensive that is? Do you think about that?
IRIS: Yeah, I do, 'cause, um, my parents say, ah, "You'd better stay in Australia and get a PR, otherwise if you come back to China it's really pointless."
LINTON BESSER: But there are big obstacles to overcome and the biggest of all is the English language.
IRIS: The first semester of my first year, um, I just came into uni and, ah, I was doing an assignment with a local group.
In the beginning I couldn't understand anything they said. I can understand the lecturer. I can understand all the textbook, but I can't understand normal conversation.
After a while they really just get familiar with me. They say, "At the beginning we thought you have antisocial, some sort of problem."
(Josie and Linton laugh)
IRIS: I was like, "No! I don't have antisocial problems." (Laughs) Yeah, they just - now, some of them still think I'm weird just because the first impression is: I'm so quiet.
LINTON BESSER: Alex Barthel used to run the language centre at the University of Technology, Sydney. He has been a long-standing advocate for higher English language entry standards for universities.
ALEX BARTHEL, HIGHER EDUCATION ACADEMIC LANGUAGE & LEARNING CONSULTANT: Academic staff increasingly are frustrated by the fact that they are there to teach pharmacy or engineering or IT or whatever they're, they're teaching. And they basically say, "It is not my job to help somebody with 65 spelling errors on the first page of an assignment. It's not my job to teach them basic English grammar."
LINTON BESSER: Although the Federal Government has abandoned a national standard, The International English Language Testing System - or IELTS for short - still recommends a score of seven out of nine for university entry.
But most students arrive here with far lower scores than that: scores as low as 4.5.
ALEX BARTHEL: They're coming in believing that, "If the university says that I require an IELTS 5.5, I believe the university and I trust them that they have told me the truth about what's required. Now I find that, in fact, to be able to read the text that I'm asked to read in, in my, in my degree course, I find that I don't understand, er, what it is. I don't understand the questions that I'm asked in assessment tasks."
LINTON (to Iris and Josie): You both have such wonderful English but do you think other international students: do you think that's their biggest challenge?
IRIS: I think it is.
JOSIE: Actually, it is.
IRIS: It is. One of my friends, who came from China - we did a foundation study, so we are really used to it, but he just came straight here, straightaway here and he says he has a headache in English.
JOSIE: That depends on which kind of Chinese they are. If you meet some Chinese, they just play with Chinese. They will never improve their English forever.
LINTON BESSER: In fact, in the beginning, Iris and Josie could not speak or write in English well enough to get entry to their degrees.
But like thousands of others, the university still offered them a place, as long as they completed a one-year bridging program, which involves a 10- to 20-week language course.
Students who complete these pathway or foundation programs are never then subjected to another IELTS exam and are funnelled into the first or even second year of their degree program.
ALEX BARTHEL: Of course it's a loophole, because some of them fail and some of them don't fail. And that's, that's, that's the shocking thing, as far as I'm concerned: is those students who come into second year or even the first year, with a very, very low language proficiency, er, level, ah, who manage to pass through their courses.
ZENA O'CONNOR: Often their emails and their essays are almost impossible to decipher. Um, that's in a very small proportion of cases but that does beg the question: have these students passed the basic, ah, test for university entry in terms of written, written English?
LINTON BESSER: And some of these are students that are at the end of their degree?
ZENA O'CONNOR: And some of these students are at the end of their degree. It's horrifying. I don't know what to say about that.
LINTON BESSER: Two months ago, Dr Zena O'Connor invited Four Corners into the life of a modern academic.
She teaches units for the design and architecture faculty and, as one of a rising number of casuals, O'Connor teaches online from home and with little faculty support.
It's an isolating experience but it's a big money spinner for the University of Sydney.
ZENA O'CONNOR: I teach one subject bringing in between $250,000 and $450,000. It's one elective. There are hundreds of other electives. There are hundreds of other core subjects. Each of these are bringing in similar amounts o- of money. The, the income stream, particularly from international students, is huge. Make no mistake: it is huge.
LINTON BESSER: At Sydney University, international students now make up a quarter of all enrolments. At other universities like RMIT in Melbourne, they're almost 50 per cent of the cohort.
With thousands of students often struggling with English, the pressure to pass is helping to fuel a black market.
ZENA O'CONNOR: I'm, I'm staggered by the increase in plagiarism. Ah, to start with: in my experience, it was a very small proportion - you know, maybe two, three, four per cent. I would peg it now at being much, much higher: well over 50 per cent.
Ah, and some of the cases of extreme plagiarism, where a student has plagiarised at least 80 per cent if not up to 100 per cent of their paper: that proportion is growing and that level of extreme plagiarism I didn't see five, 10 years ago.
The students handed in their first assignments. Ah, the deadline was last Friday so I'm just finishing off the marking of those now.
LINTON BESSER: We caught up again with O'Connor recently to see how her class is performing. Of the 53 papers she had marked, half had earned a fail.
ZENA O'CONNOR: As you can see from this list, all of the students who've been highlighted: they've got very bad marks and the reason for that predominantly is they've either plagiarised or cut and pasted to such an extent that, um, they've earned themselves a fail mark.
As you see from some of the marks - 10, 15, 18 - those students have plagiarised probably more than 80 per cent...
LINTON BESSER: Wow.
ZENA O'CONNOR: ... in their assignments. Yep.
LINTON BESSER: The results are indicative of the pattern she has seen for years.
She hasn't instituted formal proceedings against any students for plagiarism because, she says, she was told to do all she could to pass them.
ZENA O'CONNOR: The response would be: thank you for your feedback. And that has been the same response every time I bring it to the attention of anyone at, at university. And that seems to be the end of it. It doesn't, it's not investigated.