French farce

More than fifty per cent of French university students cheat in examinations according to an award-winning study by a sociology undergraduate at the University of Versailles-Saint-Quentin. Anne Guardiola uncovered the extent of the fraud when she researched her degree thesis. She sent a questionnaire to students at 28 centres of learning; it which featured a direct question asking whether they had ever cheated in an exam amongst more prosaic enquiries about their lives and habits at college. She was astounded when 54 per cent admitted to occasional cheating and nine per cent claimed they did so often. Ms Guardiola followed up the initial study by sending observers into examinations with the task of reporting on any dubious activity. They noted instances of cheating in 29 of the 50 exams. She also discovered that better students were persuaded, sometimes paid, to take exams by those weak in a subject, an activity which took place with the full knowledge and therefore tacit collusion of the rest of the class. Mobile phones were also used to transmit answers to fellow candidates waiting to take the same test and the classic lavatory break ploy was widely exploited as a means of sharing and pooling knowledge. Until the story broke in the French press, universities had shown little enthusiasm for tackling the problem but stricter supervision is now to be introduced.