Dr. Reda Cimmperman: 12,000 Students Receive Offers to Buy Academic Papers Every Year. I Blind Spot #31
PODCAST
6/10/20261 min read
As the academic year was coming to an end, I sat down with Dr. Reda Cimmperman, Lithuania’s Ombudsperson for Academic Ethics and Procedures, to discuss what is happening in the country’s higher education institutions and why academic integrity cannot be taken for granted.
What do the numbers tell us? Every year, around 12,000 students receive offers from people willing to write academic papers for them. At any given time, up to 300 active advertisements for such services can be found online. Yet, last year, as many as 81% of Lithuania’s research and higher education institutions reported not a single case of academic work written by someone other than the student. How is that possible?
In our conversation, we explore the “culture of silence”, in which half of all students would not report a fellow student for cheating. We also discuss the ridiculously low fines (€100–200 for a student, while a purchased bachelor’s thesis can cost €2,000–4,000) and how other countries, such as Australia, take a much tougher approach to tackling academic dishonesty.
And, of course, we address the elephant in the room: artificial intelligence. It is already here, AI-generated content is becoming increasingly difficult to detect, and its rapid development is forcing us to rethink the very rules of the game.
The question is no longer “Will students use AI?” but rather “How do we agree on the rules for using it and ensure academic integrity?”
