To begin with; cheating of every kind in higher education is wholly unacceptable. Cheating means that the University is deceived, students may receive credits for knowledge which they do not have and those cheating gain an advantage over fellow students which they do not merit. Cheating is therefore extremely serious and the University and its senior management team takes this work to combat cheating, both preventative and reactive, extremely seriously.
It is also important that we have a procedure for dealing with disciplinary matters which guarantees that the rule of law is followed. The major increase in the number of disciplinary cases, which has been exacerbated during the current Covid epidemic, where the number of cases has risen from around 170 per year before the pandemic (2019) to well over 300 this year, has placed major demands on the departments as well as on the Office of the President and the disciplinary committee and its members. Processing times are unfortunately long when there are many cases, but everyone involved is making a great effort to deal with the cases with the same level of quality as previously. I would like to thank all of you who are taking part in this work!
Does the large number of disciplinary cases impact on the trust that the students and the outside world have in education and universities? The answer lies, of course, in the eyes of the beholder, but I would like to stress that this should not be the case. The resources we are allocating to this issue and the care we devote to each case demonstrate how the University is taking the problem extremely seriously. We do not tolerate cheating and we have a system for detecting it. Moreover, the number of cases should be seen in relation to the overall size of the educational programme. Over 300 disciplinary cases in one year is obviously a lot, but on the other hand every year a very large number of examinations are held. If we say that every student carries out at least one examination task per 7.5 HEC period, the number of individual examinations at the University each year totals several hundred thousand. In relation to that number, the cheating that we are aware of is not widespread.
That being said, it is of course still of the utmost importance to continue both the proactive work, with information directed at the students and training about, for example, reference management and plagiarism, and the reactive work, for example, checking submitted written assignments for plagiarism. By setting a high level for these measures, together we can work to keep our university free from cheating.
This article is written by Clas Hättestrand, Vice President. It appears in the section ”Words from the University’s senior management team”, where different members of the management team take turns to write about topical issues. Words from the University’s senior management team appears in every edition of News for staff which is distributed to the entirety of the University staff.