As Fairfax Media revealed this week, the phenomenon is now wreaking havoc on Australia's universities, with a single online business based in Sydney producing up to 1000 essays this year alone for students at 16 universities. The MyMaster website capitalised on a vulnerable and burgeoning market, pocketing more than $160,000 from Chinese international students, who academics say are routinely welcomed into Australian universities despite some being "functionally illiterate". Funding-starved universities have become so addicted to the international student dollar that they appear willing to jeopardise their academic integrity to protect the $15 billion market, which ranks third to iron ore and coal among Australia's biggest export earners. "This is where they get their money for research and it compensates for any downturn in commonwealth funding," Grattan Institute's higher education program director Andrew Norton said. "So it really is their key profit-making business."

It's a vicious cycle. The money universities reap from international students funds their marquee research programs, boosting their international rankings, which entices international students. When Fairfax Media asked Christopher Pyne's office on Wednesday if the education minister thought universities' reliance on international student fees was problematic, a spokesman said the government wanted more students to come to Australia. "We want to encourage it not just because of the revenue international students bring to universities and our wider economy when they live and study in Australia, but also the networks established with other students and institutions that benefit our country throughout our region and the rest of the world," he said. And there is little incentive for the federal government to intervene and raise language requirements, according to Dr Bob Birrell from Monash University's Centre for Population and Urban Research.

"The government is desperate to find some new industries that will take up the slack as the resources boom goes on the wane and the export of education services is right at the top as a potential option, so they're in the same bind," he said. This codependency has left many academics feeling as though the very foundation of their profession - academic freedom - has become polluted by corporate priorities. A former lecturer from a top Sydney university recalls a meeting where the dean of his faculty reminded staff of the institution's cornerstone policy- to increase international enrolments- and to "bear that in mind when teaching". "Teachers who managed to attract international students were rewarded and others were rebuked," he said. "As a result of this policy class sizes exploded. In one case I taught a class of about 600 students." Another academic at a sandstone institution says she has been directed not to fail international students.

"Of course it's never put into emails," she said. "But my various bosses at various universities will bend over backwards to make sure international students won't fail despite the fact that their work is sometimes just so bad." When Fairfax Media asked universities about the cheating scandal this week, they insisted plagiarism was taken very seriously. Professor Iain Martin, the deputy vice-chancellor (academic) at the University of NSW, was adamant his staff were not under pressure to pass international students. "I have received no evidence of such practices and if evidence were provided we would take the strongest possible action," he said. Though more than 50 whistleblowing academics came forward to share their experiences, very few of them were prepared to speak on the record for fear of retribution from their employers.

The problems surrounding the international student industry are not just the aired grievances of disgruntled academics. It was identified as a systemic issue plaguing Victoria's higher education system by the state's ombudsman in 2011. The investigation found desperate international students were resorting to plagiarism or bribery as a result of poor language skills. Many of the academics who contacted Fairfax Media in the wake of the MyMaster revelations identified an increasing reliance on group assignments or online tests in course assessment as a key part of the problem. This move away from traditional examination-based assessment models was confirmed in a 2006 Monash University report, which found universities often coped with the poor language skills of students from overseas by "setting up group assignments in which the students with better English help out". Ghostwriting services have exposed the limitations of plagiarism detection software because the essays have been written to commission rather than copied from a template or reproduced from another source.

Despite the challenge, there are ways to curb the cheating, according to Zena O'Connor, an academic who lectures at the University of Sydney and has authored a soon-to-be-published paper on "extreme plagiarism". Her report recommends forms of assessment such as student presentations, participation components and in-class tests, as well as changing essay questions each semester. The University of Technology, Sydney, says it is well on its way to more innovative and sophisticated forms of assessment. "Academics are increasingly changing lectures in favour of a new learning model which engages students in what we call high-touch face-to-face learning experiences," deputy vice-chancellor of education and students Professor Shirley Alexander said. "This is a move towards a more authentic assessment of the development of student skills where an essay becomes merely one small component of a more systematic assessment system, designed to provide a more holistic assessment of an individual's capabilities." There is little doubt universities are concerned about plagiarism and are making ambitious efforts to address it. But, while international students continue to be accepted with inadequate English levels, the demand for essay writing services such as MyMaster will thrive.

And, because universities rely so heavily on international student fees, there is little incentive to tighten the entry standards. Doing so would only put them at a significant competitive disadvantage in the international student market.