In contrast, Lancaster and Clarke are computer scientists who found evidence of students systematically outsourcing coding assignments.
[13] There is debate about which subjects are most susceptible to contract cheating, but an overall consensus by several scholars, including Curtis & Clare (2017),[9] Bretag (2017),[14] Lancaster & Clarke (2015)[15] and Eaton (2019),[16] indicates that the following disciplines have the highest incidence: The commercial aspects of contract cheating were examined in a paper given at the 2013 Conference on Innovation and Technology in Computer Science Education.
[32] In addition, some institutions have taken pro-active measures to block access to contract cheating companies websites from campus users.
[20][25][43][44][45] It has been proposed that existing assignment and invigilated assessment data can be systematically analyzed in order to detect patterns of students' performance that may be indicative of contract cheating.
[46] At the 2015 Plagiarism Across Europe and Beyond conference, it was demonstrated how collecting analytical data at the time of writing can help in identifying cases of contract cheating.
[47][48] Although text-matching software is unlikely to detect contract cheating, such tools have shown some success in identifying the source of assignments found on auction sites.
The UK[50] and Australia[51][52] have developed some of the world's most systematic approaches to addressing contract cheating through policies, quality assurance guidance, and corresponding penalties for students.
Meanwhile, research and advocacy are underway in countries such as Canada,[53][22] to promote better understanding of how universities and colleges can address the issue through policy measures.
[67] Scholars have noted that such laws have created a situation where generative AI and large language model providers may be caught within the scope of these criminal offences, particularly in England and Wales and in Australia.
[63] More broadly, despite the apparent potential of a legal challenge to contract cheating companies, prosecutions are currently rare, largely because of the limitations of existing laws.
In addition, the simple act of outlawing a service would not necessarily reduce demand for it; the aforementioned research studies all call for a holistic, multi-pronged approach to tackling contract cheating.