Australian quality agency contacts v-cs on Chegg ‘concerns’

Australia’s higher education regulator has asked vice-chancellors for their views on US-based academic assistance service Chegg, after fielding “concerns” that the website could be used by students to cheat.

In a letter to university and college heads, the Tertiary Education Quality and Standards Agency (Teqsa) said it was worried that Chegg’s homework help service was being used by Australian students to outsource their assignments.

Chief commissioner Peter Coaldrake writes that Teqsa is concerned Chegg “may be used by Australian students to receive solutions to assessment tasks that they are required to personally undertake”.

“We…would be grateful for your advice of any concerns and if so any examples of Chegg’s services being used in this way,” he adds.

A Chegg spokesperson said the company "remains deeply committed to academic integrity and takes any attempts to misuse our platform extremely seriously. We invest heavily in services that prevent misuse on our site, such as Honor Shield, our industry-first tool that empowers faculty and institutions to protect exam integrity. We are also committed to addressing the concerns raised by Teqsa, meeting the needs of higher education institutions, individual faculty members, and the contemporary needs of students.

“Chegg believes that no matter who you are, or where you come from, every student deserves access to high quality, affordable academic support to help them reach their education goals.”  

The letter has emerged amid news that Teqsa recently jammed access to 100 of what it deemed academic cheating websites, under protocols negotiated with internet service providers, having obstructed another 150 sites late last year.

“Blocking these websites seriously disrupts the operations of the criminals behind them,” said federal education minister Jason Clare. He said that after Teqsa began using the protocols last August, Australian web traffic to illegal cheating services had been 50 per cent lower than in the equivalent period of 2021.

Deakin University assessment expert Phillip Dawson said that if similar action were taken against Chegg, the impact could dwarf Teqsa’s recent efforts. “The scope of student interactions with Chegg is likely bigger than all of the 100-odd other services put together,” he said.

“They’re a multibillion-dollar company, a totally different sort of entity to these little contract cheating sites that can be built incredibly quickly off templates and then be gone tomorrow.”

Professor Dawson said any action would depend on what “body of evidence” could be built against an organisation that – unlike many of the blocked sites – was not “blatantly marketed” as a contract cheating service and had originally rented out textbooks.

“I’m very careful not to label Chegg a cheating company,” he said. “They are trying hard to position themselves as a legitimate educational technology company. But it’s not even an open secret that a hell of a lot of students use Chegg to cheat.”

Recent years have been a roller-coaster ride for Chegg. Its share price soared 345 per cent after the US imposed Covid-19 lockdowns, raising its estimated value to more than $12 billion (£9.6 billion).

But artificial intelligence (AI) threatens to torpedo its business model. Chegg shares reportedly lost almost half their value on 2 May, closing at $9.08 – down from over $100 in early 2021.

The plunge occurred a day after the company announced a $9 million decline in its quarterly profit, with net revenue down 7 per cent and general expenses up 26 per cent. CEO Dan Rosensweig said a “significant spike” in students’ use of ChatGPT was affecting customer growth.

Chegg has hedged its bets by joining forces with its disruptor. In mid-April Mr Rosensweig teamed up with Sam Altman, chief executive of ChatGPT creator OpenAI, to announce a new AI-enhanced learning service called CheggMate. 

The service combines Chegg’s enormous database – billions of pieces of “unique learning content” crafted by 150,000 subject matter experts, according to Mr Rosensweig – with the text synthesising power of GPT-4, OpenAI’s most advanced system.

john.ross@timeshighereducation.com