Book reveals agents of exam cheating in universities

By OBOTE AKOKO

Some of its perpetrators and beneficiaries are so daring that they would stop at nothing to achieve their goals. Cheating in university examinations has assumed such monumental proportions that it has become a way of life; a cancerous culture!

Concerned that examination cheats and their collaborators could possibly erode the credibility of university degrees, Prof MS Mukras collected data on the nature and dimensions of the problem. After meticulous gathering, synthesis and critical analysis of data gathered on the malady for over 30 years, the verdict is out in the form of a book that is already generating so much heat around campuses.

The don at Maseno University, then authored the book, Examination Cheating and Credibility of University Degrees: Won’t Continued Cheating Ultimately Undermine the Credibility of University Degrees? This is the book that traditional publishers of Mukras’ academic books could not touch for undisclosed reasons. They simply shied away from such an explosive expose’.

The author who is a professor of Economics introduces readers to the book by stating that the phenomenon of cheating in examinations has been with us for many years but ‘conspicuously came to the surface about one decade ago when it attracted the attention of scholars, relevant authorities and the public.’

To drive home the nature and dimensions of the problem, the author highlights some of the cheating cases as witnessed or narrated by outsiders, university students and staff. One case involved three undergraduate students whose links with an agent lasted from second to fourth year before their examination cheating partnership was busted. They used to exchange examination scripts each semester, especially to help the weakest one of them.

 Suspicion only emerged at the end of their third year. A strategy was arrived at in the fourth year. Handwriting experts, grilling through a disciplinary committee and evidence provided by the Criminal Investigations Department finally proved the three were professional cheats.

About 90 per cent of the examinations for one of the students had been done by the two classmates! The university took appropriate action.

   Mind-boggling question

The most mind-boggling of the cases, as readers will come to learn, is where the outsider (agent) would procure examination question papers and duly stamped answer books or scripts in advance, and go ahead to arrange for his clients (students) to sit for the same examination at an unauthorised location within the university at the very time the rest of the examinees took the same examination at the official/designated examination hall.

The contracted agent would later sneak his clients’ (answer) scripts into the heap of scripts from the official examination centre with military precision! How such agents managed to acquire exam question papers in advance, set up illegal examination rooms (such as library at which the cheating students consulted each other, their lecture notes and relevant textbooks) and stealthily delivered fully stamped examination answer scripts to invigilators without anyone raising the alarm denotes the daredevil nature of the cheating ‘industry players’.

The book delves into why students cheat, decries the enabling environment that fuels it, bemoans the ineffective measures taken to stamp out the malaise and makes recommendations which, when implemented, could hopefully save our universities in parts of Africa.

The book sums it up thus: cheating in universities is driven by pecuniary motive. Stressful situations bred by the attitude of incompetent, lazy or abusive lecturers; overcrowding in campuses that impede proper invigilation (with up to 700-800 examinees crammed into halls at times) and poor academic and physical infrastructure in the rapidly expanding universities are some of the drivers of rampant exam cheating.