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Cheating list names NE uni

A North East university has been named by The Sun newspaper as “the worst for cheating” in the UK.

The Sun submitted a Freedom of Information request to universities across the UK to discover the most popular forms of cheating, and found that Teesside University expelled 17 of its students for such behaviour in 2009.

The university has said that the figures are evidence of its own dedication towards combatting cheating.

Middlesex University expelled 15 students, followed by Kingston with 10, Sheffield with seven and University College London with six.

However, The Sun’s investigation did not look at the measures used to catch cheating students, so the numbers on their own do not give a clear indication of the levels of cheating in UK universities.

A Teesside University spokesperson said: “Teesside University takes student plagiarism very seriously and has robust procedures in place to deal with this issue. We are rightly proud of the way in which we maintain the standards of our awards.

“Seventeen students were not allowed to continue in their programmes of studies following plagiarism in course work.

“Additionally only one student was found to have cheated in an examination. These numbers are extremely small, coming from a total student population of 28,000.

“The figures quoted are a clear signal of the diligence of the University in these matters.”

Teesside University last year won the Times Higher Education magazine’s ‘University of the Year’ accolade, and has this week been named one of the UK’s top two modern universities in a national student experience survey.

This was posted in Bdaily's Members' News section by Ruth Mitchell .