Keeping the bastards honest

Evening all,

Like many students starting out on an assignment, I've struggled to find that nub of an idea that would set off this piece. Unlike many students, however, I just waited for inspiration to come by using my brain, rather than "brainstorming" (*eyeroll emoji*) with Claude or ChatGPT. Often my inspiration comes via the title first, and so it was today. For background, those of a certain vintage in Australia will remember a political party called the Australian Democrats. A small political party, their first leader, Don Chipp, promised to "keep the bastards honest." The bastards, in that case, were the major political parties.

In the case of education, I think it's less a case of keeping individual "bastards" honest (although I'm sure we know there are plenty of them), so much as being honest with ourselves. That is something we can control, something in our wheelhouse.

To start here, I was struck by the reaction among higher ed folks to this article which contained a line which warmed my heart: "In the three years since ChatGPT was released we have arrived at a point in which all of Australia’s universities are committing widespread, industrial-scale fraud." The reactions by higher ed folks to this, and other similar-ish, articles in the recent past often consist of claims that the articles are missing the "nuance", or are ignorantly attacking higher education. Anything but self-reflection. Here's a true classic of the genre from the Pravda of Australian higher education, Tim Winkler, who rather than engaging with the content of the article wheels out his personal hobby horse, those naughty academics who apparently should not be able to make comment on what they see in front of them. Worse, he appears to attribute "perceptions" of the sector to public comment by academics, rather than the bonfire of the Chancelleries.

From my point of view, there's not a lot of "nuance" to be missed. Of course there is nuance, there is detail, but to focus on this is missing the point entirely. I can only agree, based on the expertise and knowledge I've developed through a decade of seeing students graduate without their learning being assured, without a notable systemic response from the sector, that higher ed has indeed become a "widespread, industrial-scale fraud."

Bearing in mind that what happens in university Chancelleries is well beyond my sphere of control, or even my sphere of influence, I'll pose a question : "If we accept that Australia’s universities are committing widespread, industrial-scale fraud, what is the order of priorities that we (you and I) can act on to stop it?" Now, before I go on, you may disagree that it is a fraud, but you'd be wrong. A minimum of 10% of all students, by their own admission, were paying third parties to have their work done for them prior to November 2022. Anyone who doesn't think that the proportion of students using LLMs to create the facade of learning, to avoid the work of learning, has expanded massively, you have no place in this conversation. You are a fool who is aiding the fraud. So, back to the question, what do we do?

Recently Jason Lodge gave a very interesting talk for CRADLE, which I recommend you spend an hour watching. He talked about a number of things including what he called the "acute" problem and the "chronic" problem we're facing. When I first watched it, I thought his discussion of the acute problem, which pointed to the media highlighting student cheating, missed the point. Nope, I missed the point, kinda. In a subsequent conversation Jason clarified for me that another way to think about it (coincidentally one that made a lot of sense to me) is that the immediate and acute problem is the assurance of learning bit, and the "chronic" problem is essentially the question of what we do once we staunch the bleeding from the acute issue. Now I'm not one to say I told you so, but Laurine Hurley (who I would like to thank for planting the seed to write this, and for encouraging me to do so), reminded me of something I wrote over 3 years ago on this blog. I can fall prey to imposter syndrome as readily as anyone, feeling like I have nothing to add or things have moved beyond me, but rereading that post was instructive. Aside from the fact that I start sentences with "so" a lot, I basically sketched out a plan to start staunching the bleeding, summed up by this: "So, I'm suggesting that we need to start making short, medium and long term plans to move to a radically different form of learning and teaching. Pretend and extend will only go on so long." But here we are, 3 years later, and we're still bleeding, with almost no first aid having been applied. When Jason talked about the "acute" problem, he's talking about the exact same problem we had back then. Except now the public have noticed, and don't believe the bullshit about a "small minority" of students cheating. Although the media and the public may not use the terminology, what we are witnessing is not so much mass cheating (a term I rarely use anymore) but rather a mass failure of assurance of learning. Massive breaches of the Higher Education Standards Framework, at least here in Australia.

And this leads me to wonder why that is. Of course, we can all blame senior execs, we can blame governance failure. But when senior execs can use the arguments and research of academics and researchers for their own ends, those arguments and that work is diminished. For example, let's take exams. For many this is a hateful word, one that embodies all manner of bias and inequity, one that fails on validity, etc etc etc. Every time they are suggested, counterarguments fly in from all corners. But you know what exams and similar forms of invigilated assessment are? More secure than any of the alternatives, the ones that are currently bleeding out. Hurdle invigilated assessment will staunch the bleeding, whether you want to believe that or not. This paper is worth a read, especially insofar as the 50% mark threshold is simply meaningless in 2026. It's all of those other forms of assessment that are the acute problem. Students aren't the problem, those assessments and the structure of grades which allow students to pass without ever having to demonstrate their learning, that's the problem. If a student can pass

their degree without ever truly being evaluated for their own skills and knowledge, that's a problem. And that is also the fact of the matter, across large swathes of the sector.

This post could have been titled "How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Exam", but I wouldn't go that far. If the argument is cost, exams are cheaper than marking multiple forms of unverified assessment, and cheaper than having to investigate massed cases of misconduct. What I fear the main objection is among many senior execs, and indeed many academics, is that secure assessment will result in skyrocketing fail rates. For the former "retention" (future enrolments) is the sole issue. For academics, I might take a guess and think that high fail rates might undermine their professional identity, or undermine their conception of who their students are and their relationship with them. Nonetheless, neither of these are good reasons, in my view, to fail to provide first aid to a patient who is dying. And all of those articles we have all seen, continue to see, are a new laceration that isn't being treated.

Lastly, aside from Laurine, I'd like to thank everyone who messaged or commented or called after my last post. It helped. At a certain point, being sad about something you will miss forever can only be ameliorated by seeking the closest possible thing and loving him as we would have loved Yogi. Yogi died on our wedding anniversary, so there's no chance we'll ever forget him, but Paddy has arrived to help with both acute and chronic problems.

Until next time, which I hope is sooner than the last break,

Kane