9 Misrepresentation: Contract Cheating

The most severe form of misrepresentation of something as your own is called Contract Cheating, which happens every time a person completes an assignment for a student, and the student then submits it as their own. It will have the most severe consequences. Contract cheating includes:

• submitting a paper from a so-called “tutoring” service or “essay mill” as your own, for which you paid
• submitting a paper that someone else wrote for you (for example, a friend or a family member) as your own, no matter if you paid for it or not
• swapping papers with another student, and submitting each other’s papers as your own, even if you made some changes
• producing a work for a fellow student (with or without being paid), and they submit it as their own. In this case, you are deliberately aiding another student to behave fraudulently, and both of you will be subject to disciplinary actions
• submitting work entirely generated by AI (such as ChatGPT, Claude, or other AI tools) as your own without any disclosure
• paying for or using AI services specifically designed to complete assignments, then submitting the output as your own work

Using AI to complete entire assignments without authorization represents a form of contract cheating because you are essentially having the AI “complete” the work for you. Examples include:

• Asking AI to write an entire essay and submitting it unchanged
• Having AI solve all math problems in a homework set
• Using AI to generate code for a programming assignment when students are expected to write their own
• Having AI create presentations, reports, or projects in their entirety