Contracting During COVID-19: Why Academic Integrity Issues Spread with the Pandemic?

The COVID-19 pandemic, which started compromising education in March 2020, precipitated the most extreme educational disruption in over a century. For over 2 years, all levels of education shuttered in-person educational delivery and instituted online education. Many faculty members were teaching online for the first time and thus were distracted by the stress of switching instructional modalities. Students found themselves in a panic-filled transition in which they had little guidance for how to engage with online education as their faculty struggled. One of the residual impacts of this abrupt shift was the explosion in contract cheating, in which students pay a third party to complete homework assignments, take exams, and compose papers. The contract cheating issue is a global problem, with institutions reporting double- and triple-digit spikes in online cheating as the pandemic ensued. Additionally, some of the literature confirms that contract cheating does not meet cheaters’ objectives, given the substandard and tardy work that is often produced. Therefore, this chapter will not only examine the proliferation of contract cheating during the pandemic but other critical elements that result in unfortunate residuals. Plagiarism, academic misconduct, and online cheating, including colleges and universities revoking degrees, led to legal actions. Further, while affluent students and their parents may seek out and purchase ghost students’ services, students with less money find themselves unwittingly competing in inequitable conditions.