Inquiry Found ‘Gross Academic Fraud’ by Students and Employees at U. of Texas at Brownsville

Student workers and other employees at the University of Texas at Brownsville and Texas Southmost College committed “gross academic fraud” by misusing the institutions’ Blackboard course-management system to steal test answers, The Brownsville Herald reported on Saturday, citing a university police report from an investigation last year.

Former student employees of the Office of Distance Education, which manages Blackboard, confessed to a police investigator that they had used the online system to obtain test answers for themselves or to give or sell to other students, the newspaper reported. The system allows professors to post tests and other course materials online.

The two-month investigation, conducted in May and June 2008, determined that the university and college, which share a campus, did not have sufficient safeguards in place at the time to prevent misuse of the system. The police report found that 20 people had engaged in academic fraud—the six university and student employees who misused the system and 14 students who benefited from the materials they obtained.

The university did not press criminal charges against any students or nonstudent employees involved in the case. The employees no longer work for the Office of Distance Education, officials said, and the student cases were handled through internal procedures for dealing with academic misconduct.

“It’s the job of institutions of higher education to preserve and honor academic integrity,” the university’s president, Juliet V. Garcia, said in a written statement. She added: “The policies and procedures in place at the university provide the means for the campus to investigate and make informed decisions on courses of action appropriate for each case.”

The dean of students, Mari Fuentes-Martin, told the newspaper that the university seeks to rehabilitate those who violate the code of student conduct, rather than demoralize them. Exposing students who cheat to public scrutiny would undermine the university’s mission, she said.