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One major issue lies in the deluge of foreign students entering Canadian universities and colleges whose credentials or examination results may sometimes be unreliable.

In 2018, Niagara College in Ontario flagged concerns that foreign students who allegedly passed English tests in India to qualify for admission lacked the necessary skills. As a result, 400 students in India were told to retake the language test.

Admission fraud is one issue, but there is also the matter of other forms of student misconduct — foreign and domestic students included — from plagiarism to something known as “contract cheating.”

This year, CityNews published an excellent article on “contract cheating” in Canada.

Journalists followed up on posters scattered around the University of Toronto campus that advertised a website offering essays and assignments for students in return for a fee of $165. The journalists hired the service and interviewed one of the contractors, in Kenya, who said he had written hundreds of assignments for at least 50 students in the past year from the University of Toronto, York University, University of Ottawa and Simon Fraser University. There’s a proliferation of such websites online, wrote CityNews.

Students may also cheat on exams by bringing study notes or a cell phone with them. A report from the University of Toronto documented 600 cases of students sanctioned for such “unauthorized aid” in 2017-2018.