At least 1,500 students at Irish universities have been reported for exam cheating, plagiarism, or the use of so-called “essay mills” over the past three years.
TU Dublin said it had dealt with 568 cases where students were deemed to have breached exam regulations or plagiarised material.
In the most recent academic year, there were 33 cases of suspected exam cheating and 138 cases where a student plagiarised work for their assignments. Two students were expelled as a result of such cases during the past three years.
Trinity College Dublin said it had 445 cases of suspected cheating between 2019 and 2021 but that figures for last year were not yet available. For the academic year 2020-2021, it reported 143 cases of plagiarism and another 154 cases of cheating, records released under FOI show. No students were expelled during that period.
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The University of Galway reported more than 110 cases of academic cheating over the past three years, with 12 of those cases subsequently overturned on appeal.
Maynooth University said it had just more than 200 cases of academic cheating over the past three years. There were 186 cases in total of plagiarism with the university saying no students had been suspended or expelled, as a “first offence” was not dealt with in that way.
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Dublin City University said it had 99 cases of plagiarism, exam regulations breaches or other suspected cheating between 2019 and 2021. Of those, 73 were upheld with four students prevented from re-registering for further studies at the university during the three years. DCU said figures were not available as yet for 2022.
The University of Limerick said it had dealt with 65 cases of cheating by various means during the past three academic years.
University College Dublin said it could not provide figures for cheating for the past two academic years but that 117 cases had been reported in the 2019-2020 year. Just one case of plagiarism was reported at University College Cork in the academic year of 2019-2020.
