Breaches in student academic integrity include, but are not exclusive to, acts such as cheating, plagiarism, and others which gain an unfair advantage over other students. Previously, the problem was persistent but manageable for the academic world. However, emerging technologies like Artificial Intelligence, Machine Learning, and sophisticated search algorithms have now revolutionised the way students gather information and complete assignments. These tools can significantly enhance learning experiences but they also make academic dishonesty more accessible and more attractive.
The threats from such emerging technologies stretch beyond solely the academic conduct issue. Most UK HEIs do not yet use nascent or ‘unproven’ plagiarism checker tools that may detect AI-generated text. However, academics are generally able to identify the use of AI-generated text due to their subject knowledge, the difference in the tone of the text and the distinctive feel of AI-generated discourse. The suspicion of misconduct without support and reinforcement from approved AI detection software often ultimately requires an oral examination or ‘viva’ to gather evidence on the originality of the work. This absorbs significant time from both academic and administrative staff. The recent exponential increase in academic integrity breaches due to the use of generative AI has resulted in rampant, unnoticed costs.
We are currently conducting a longitudinal study going back to 2019 on academic misconduct and the circumstances surrounding occurrences. Our study suggests there are direct and indirect costs associated with processing, preparing, investigating, recording, and reporting a single misconduct case that requires viva. The direct cost is based on our examination of 2075 cases of academic dishonesty since 2019 and results show it costs 56 minutes of academic time and 106 minutes of administrative time per student per case. These figures include an academic identifying the case, reporting it to the Academic Integrity Officer (AIO) (or equivalent), AIO then processing it and potentially inviting students for a viva, conducting the viva and completing post-viva reporting. Usually, a viva is 30 minutes long and requires the presence of an academic, an AIO as chair, an administrator for recording the proceedings, a Student Union representative and the student. Previously the cost of academic and administrative time, in this context, was neither calculated nor recorded within HEIs due to the infrequency of these occurrences.
However, since the public launch of generative AI, breaches have increased. For instance, Abertay University experienced a 411% increase, as breaches of academic integrity jumped from 72 cases in 2020/21 to 368 cases in 2022/23. Similarly, the breaches of academic integrity within TNE and online provision of Herriot Watt University increased from 323 cases in 2020/21 to 901 cases in 2021/22. In 2022/23 out of 952 breaches that were investigated, 825 necessitated viva examination, which required attendance of a minimum of 4 staff members (academic and admin). Similar is the situation in other UK HEIs as Glasgow Caledonian University had 422 cases in 20/21, which increased to 742 in 21/22 and 711 in 22/23, while at Edinburgh Napier University the Business School alone has had 1395 cases in the last two years. Over the same two years, the University of Stirling had 1477 cases and the University of Edinburgh has recorded 1552 cases of academic dishonesty. Most Universities do not record the specific data of academic dishonesty due to the use of generative AI nor on the number of viva examinations conducted to investigate the breaches.
This increase coincides with the growing availability of AI tools: OpenAI’s GPT-2 was launched in 2019, GPT-3 in 2020, and Jasper AI in 2021. Other available tools included QuillBot, Article Forge and Scribendi, which were specifically designed either as paraphrasing tools, essay-generating tools or both. The trends were accelerated with the launch of ChatGPT in November 2022 and Google Bard, now Google Gemini, in February 2023. Though we cannot be confident that AI is fully responsible for the increase, the sharp rise just as AI tools are made available suggest it is a significant factor.
The total number of breaches within a HEI is correlated to the size of the student population. For example, a university experiencing 1000 cases a year which must be investigated through a viva examination will cost the University 933 hrs in academic time and 1764hrs in administrative time (2697hrs in total). This translates to a total annual cost of £95,181.06, which includes £38,644.86 of academic time and £56,536.2 of administrative staff time. We calculated it using the gross hourly rate cost to HEI under Scottish PayScale (£41.42 per hour of academic time and £32.05 of admin time). If we generalise this cost over all the public universities in the UK it costs £12.4 million per year to the British economy and $196 million per year to the US economy. In the UK context it equates to 951 postgraduate scholarships per year, the cost of 33,715 ambulance trips to A&E, 294,608 GP appointments or the cost of creating 1658 more places at primary schools.
The majority of UK HEIs are investigating the use of generative AI. However, their focus is currently on the use of AI by students and academics to improve learning, teaching and assessment, or on the official policies on the ethical use of AI in pedagogy and/or research. The purpose of this report is to highlight to the policymakers that it is vital for HEIs to collect thorough data on the breaches of academic conduct due to AI and the cost related to it. It may also be useful to link assessment design with the breaches to explore the types of assessment questions, word count limits, and scope of assessments that result in high numbers of academic dishonesty cases.
