The Intensifying Moral Regulation of Student Plagiarism at Australian Universities: A Genealogical Discourse Analysis

This project critiques institutional claims that plagiarism by Australian university students is so widespread and self-evidently dishonest that it was necessary to introduce punitive anti-cheating laws in 2020. The students and teachers I interviewed largely agreed that cheating is endemic, but many argued that such behaviours are not inherently immoral. Instead, there was a tendency to identify cheating behaviours as a rational response to the pressures placed on students by the overt promotion of competition and degree commodification. The value of this project therefore lies in its challenge to institutional assumptions that justifications for the new laws are axiomatic.