De Marco L¹, Major K¹

¹Commonwealth Ombudsman, Canberra, Australia

Contract cheating. Plagiarism. Collusion. Fabrication. Recycling work. Exam cheating. Use of generative AI. Education providers have their work cut out for them when it comes to educating students about academic dishonesty, creating a culture of integrity, and detecting and punishing misconduct.

Between detection and punishment comes substantiation – a process that includes gathering evidence, weighing the evidence, and giving natural justice to the student. And later, the opportunity for a formal appeal.

The Office of the Commonwealth Ombudsman is seeing an increase in complaints from international students who have been sanctioned for academic misconduct, but who maintain their innocence.

Given the consequences, it’s not surprising that some students would grasp at any potential lifeline, even if they did commit the academic crime. However, we’ve noted that education providers don’t always make robust decisions based on a thorough examination of all the evidence, a procedural fairness step, and consideration of whether the overall picture formed meets the required standard of proof.

This oral presentation will bring together learnings from complaint investigations and share the Office’s expectations of providers’ academic misconduct decision-making processes, including its treatment of students.

Biography:

Klara Major works in the Industry Investigations team at the Office of the Commonwealth Ombudsman. The Commonwealth Ombudsman, who is also the Overseas Students Ombudsman, can consider complaints from international students about problems they are having with private education providers.

Aside from handling complaints, the Ombudsman’s Office also publishes information on trends and systemic issues that it observes in complaints and gives guidance to providers on best practice complaint handling.

Common types of complaint issues that International Students raise to the Ombudsman include the following:

• refunds of fees paid to education providers when students cancel enrolment or withdraw from study
• wishing to transfer to another education provider (during the restricted period)
• being reported for unsatisfactory course progress or attendance
• being unhappy with a grade received and feeling that the provider didn’t follow the correct process when reviewing the grade, and
• being unable to access a provider’s internal complaints and appeals process.