Illustration: Matt Golding The known facts suggested an inside job. The perpetrator had a staff card and intimate knowledge of where the exams were stored and the university's security procedures when he or she slipped onto the campus late last year. Documents from a confidential university investigation and disciplinary process earlier this year raise more disturbing details, including claims that the practice was widespread among some students. A report written by Deputy Dean of Melbourne University's Business and Economic Faculty, Professor Nilss Olekalns​, says the student revealed "there were independent institutions outside the University of Melbourne that could, for a fee, arrange to alter marks." "When asked when he had first heard of this ability to alter marks, [he] stated that he had heard about this 'tradition' [of changing marks] when he first started at the University of Melbourne."

The student "also stated, on several occasions throughout the disciplinary hearings, that he had heard about the ability to change marks from other students. In particular, another student in his Intermediate Financial Accounting tutorial and a student studying at Monash." "[He] had several conversations with students, on separate occasions, about how assessment marks could be changed." Four exam papers belonging to the same student were altered in other offices across Melbourne University's Parkville campus The case, while extremely unusual, does not surprise Associate Professor Tracey Bretag​, who directs academic integrity at the University of South Australia's business school. Bretag has launched the first nationwide study into academic fraud and warns of a "perfect storm" in Australia which is threatening the integrity and reputations of the higher education sector. As tertiary education becomes increasingly commercialised and the sector is faced with an uncertain funding future, universities have become addicted to the revenue provided by overseas students. This can lead to intense pressure on staff to support underperforming students.

One Sydney University senior lecturer who spoke confidentially to Fairfax Media said that 20 per cent of his student cohort this semester lacked the English skills to meet their study requirements, yet he felt he still had to pass them. "It's terrible, but the sector needs the money to survive" he said, in comments that have been privately echoed by other academics in Melbourne and Sydney. Melbourne University Provost Margaret Sheil describes the exam tampering it as a "freakish" singular event and says the elite university's high-performing students and academics are far less exposed to the integrity pressures faced by other education providers. Sheil also cautions that claims in the sector of pressure to pass underperforming foreign students are overblown and may "be used as a proxy" to shield lecturers who don't want to "work a bit harder" to better educate their students. Last year, the NSW Independent Commission Against Corruption issued its own warning about the problem.

"Academics can feel pressure to forsake their role in enforcing compliance with academic standards for the financial good of the faculty in the competitive environment of the international student market," ICAC said in a research paper. Struggling students - especially those from overseas who need to pass to retain their visas - are also increasingly looking for ways to avoid failing, including paying for others to write their essays and finding innovate means to game the system. Bretag warns that cheating is at risk of being normalised because students feel it an appropriate response to a university system that, in some cases, is more focused on spitting out graduates than teaching them. "It is a huge problem. I find it is disingenuous when academics throw their hands in the air and say it is all too commercial. We all need to stand up and start to recognise this serious threat," she says. The Melbourne University case would have remained a secret if it wasn't from a source who leaked internal documents to Fairfax Media because of their concerns about the same issues raised by Bretag.

When the student whose exams results were altered was first interviewed by two senior Melbourne University academics, they claimed that a "friend" had approached them and said they "could arrange for an exam mark to be increased in exchange for cash." "This could [also] be done for students studying at Monash and RMIT," the student claimed. A person who wanted their exam marks tweaked would then have to leave a "small star" on the corner of their exam paper, the student explained. This would alert the exam tamperer that the marks needed changing. Asked who was behind the scheme, the student suggested a university tutor may be involved along with a Melbourne-based company employing several university tutors. The firm, which Fairfax Media is not naming, denied the allegations. It is part of a burgeoning industry aimed at helping foreign students, including those struggling to pass.

Bretag says the strong demand for this extra-curricular help suggests inappropriate retention of some international and home-grown students by some universities. "A large number of students who are ill-equipped, under-prepared, or don't have the requisite English skills are still getting through," she says. The Melbourne University student whose exam results were tampered with was initially found guilty of academic misconduct. But on appeal, the university found that while it was proven a sophisticated case of exam tampering had occurred, it "was unable to establish who had actually done the alleged tampering." In a statement to Fairfax Media, the university also said they had found no evidence that any other students exams had been tampered with but had moved to "further strengthen the security of exam marking."

"I have commissioned a fairly decent piece of work with an external party to ensure this doesn't happen again and to identify if there are any other ways this could happen," says Provost Margaret Sheil. But those safeguards won't help identify the original culprit. The intruder who breached the university's security has gotten away with it.