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A “study support” business has been fined $500,000 for providing cheating services to Australian university students, in a landmark victory for the regulator.
But while the decision, handed down in March, puts academic integrity at the forefront of higher education, there is growing evidence students’ use of contract cheating companies to complete assessments has been replaced by reliance on AI.
Last year, this masthead revealed the Tertiary Education Quality and Standards Agency (TEQSA) would take study support business Chegg to the Federal Court over allegations that its “expert Q&A service”, run by the company’s wholly owned subsidiary, Chegg India, had violated Australia’s strict anti-cheating laws.
TEQSA argued at the time that contract cheating services threatened the hard-won reputation of Australia’s universities and had the potential to significantly impact the economy with further “significant public consequences” if students of engineering or medicine lacked the requisite skills for these professions on graduation.
Last month, Justice Craig Lenehan found Chegg and Chegg India had violated Australia’s anti-cheating laws three times in 2021 and 2022 by providing prepared answers to IT and water engineering assessments from Monash University.
Lenehan’s March judgment found experts had prepared and uploaded answers to three questions in these assessments – the Water Surface Profiles Answer, the Programming Answer and the Databases Answer – onto the Chegg website.
“Students submitted their responses to the assessment tasks … with minimal, if any, substantive edits to the Water Surface Profiles Answer, the Programming Answer and the Databases Answer as uploaded to the Chegg website,” Lenehan found.
“As such, Chegg provided, or arranged for a third party to provide, an academic cheating service.”
CEO of TEQSA Dr Mary Russell welcomed the decision.
“Academic integrity is fundamental to the quality and reputation of Australia’s higher education sector and the academic success and experiences of students,” she said.
“TEQSA will act decisively to address allegations of academic cheating services being provided or offered to Australian higher education students.”
The $500,000 penalty – plus an order to pay the regulator’s legal fees – comes as Chegg’s business model faces an existential threat from AI.
When AI technologies emerged in 2023, most universities banned them. However, institutions have gradually loosened restrictions and most now allow use of AI in some contexts but not others.
Data from universities suggests misuse is of AI is on the rise, while proven cases of contract cheating have fallen.
UNSW had a 219 per cent rise in “unauthorised use” of generative AI in 2024 compared to the previous year, while proven cases of contract cheating decreased from 232 in 2023 to 132 in 2024.
Chegg’s subscribers declined from 8.1 million in 2022 to 2.87 million last year.
In February 2025, Chegg launched legal action against Google for loss of traffic to its website due to the search engine’s AI summaries and, in October, it shed 45 per cent of its workforce.
Macquarie University head of complaints, appeals and misconduct Kane Murdoch told this masthead in February: “Chegg is dead.”
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