Washington Monthly reported on a particular issue related to contract cheating, where you can hire someone to take all your classes for you.
This is an interesting discussion about the small ad classified websites which make it very easy to advertise contract cheating style services.
In this case, cheating is facilitated since these qualifications are taken online, showing that the value of an online degree tends to be very low. There is a suggestion that some services may have IP address scanning mechanisms, however how foolproof these technical solutions are is open to question.
The figures quoted to have someone take most modules, even where continued involvement with online discussions was needed, were low, running to just a few hundred dollars. That would make it seem like having someone else participate would be a good investment, particularly if the same person was involved throughout an entire degree course to not throw up any stylometric red flags.
This is certainly another high tech cheating area worthy of further investigation and as the news article comments suggest, more innovative styles of assessments for these online courses need urgent development.
