Crime or Failure of Integrity: What is the Problem of Contract Cheating Represented to be in Australia?

Contract cheating is a complex, growing, and now criminalised phenomenon, engendering debate and scholarship across academia, politics, law enforcement, and the community. Using Carol Bacchi’s (2012) “What’s the problem represented to be?” framework, this paper interrogates whether cheating is characterised in social, academic, and policy discourses as a problem of individual students’ academic integrity or reveals a more concerning, systematic crisis for international higher education and criminal justice, linked to traditional conceptions of crime and its associated harms. While often perceived as another product of intergenerational or cultural decay, we argue the criminalisation of cheating must be viewed within the context of socio-political debate about higher education. Knowing what the problem is, and how and/or why it is represented is crucial to finding comprehensive and long-lasting solutions, where the lessons learned from the Australian context can inform the next steps for international higher education.