A record number of university students are being busted cheating on their exams, according to Metroxpress newspaper.
At Denmark’s second-largest university, 209 students were caught cheating on their exams, compared to just 55 in 2010 and 110 in 2012.
Peder Østergaard, the associate dean of Aarhus University, explains that much of the explanation is down to the use of an IT program that analyses whether parts of the text are copied from the internet or from other tests.
“But it’s still a problem and a far too high number,” Østergaard told Metroxpress. “The university has as recently as last week earmarked 200,000 kroner for an information campaign addressing the problem to students. Many are unaware that they can’t take text from the net without accreditation.”
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Nationwide issue
Other Danish universities have also experienced an increase in cheating students.
Copenhagen Business School caught 47 students cheating in 2011, but that figure rose to 168 last year, of which 69 were busted thanks to a IT program they began using last year.
The University of Copenhagen, Roskilde University and the Technical University of Denmark are also experiencing more cheaters being nabbed.
“It’s worrying that there seems to be an increase in cases involving exam cheating,” Steen Hundborg, a leading examiner in Denmark, said. “I urge the institutions to speak openly about this issue.”
