And he wants all HE providers to brief their boards

In a brief to university/college heads Chief Commissioner Peter Coaldrake warns, “it is almost impossible to overstate the potential threat to the integrity of the higher education sector which is posed by industrial-scale cheating targeting students and indeed staff. ”

Professor Coaldrake points to agency successes, notably “productive relationships” with Meta brands Facebook, Instagram and WhatsApp, plus LinkedIn and Gumtree, which are all, ““taking action to remove pages and promotions for commercial academic cheating services.”

But he warns of increasing threats, including AI paraphrasing and text-generating tools that produce written work.

Professor Coaldrake also calls on all providers to recognise that cheating “goes to the core of good governance.”

But while some CEOs and VCs are “sharing the challenge with their governing bodies, this is not the case in all places. It needs to be,” he added.