Unpacking Academic Corruption in Zambia’s Higher Education: Forms, Causes and Mitigation Measures

Abstract

Globally, Academic corruption is a superfluous issue that is largely jeopardizing the academic integrity of higher learning institutions. This research paper therefore sought to investigate the forms, causes and mitigation measures of academic corruption in a selected higher learning institution in Zambia. This paper employed an embedded mixed method design in which a questionnaire was administered to 400 students and interviews were conducted with 20 lecturers and administrators. Simple random sampling technique was used for students and typical case purposive sampling for lecturers and administrators. The findings do suggest that despite employing various mitigation measures, cases of academic corruption seem to be prevalent. Results showed that there was a higher prevalence of academic corruption among students, in particular, with respect to plagiarism and cheating which were notably cited as the two commonest forms of academic corruption among students. Among lecturers, professional misconduct, biased marking or grading were cited as the commonest forms of academic corruption. The findings further suggest that academic corruption is triggered by various causes such as peer pressure, performance anxiety and many others. As regards the mitigation measures, the research established that there are numerous measures that are employed to curtail academic corruption. Suspension, dismissal and expulsion were prominently cited as the most common measures that are employed to mitigate academic corruption. The study recommends among others the initialization of a policy on mandatory usage of plagiarism detection software, such as Safe Assign, Turnitin and Plagiarism Detect to curb the most common form of academic corruption among students.