What is the rationale for collusion detection, and how prevalent is cheating?
The rationale for attempting to identify students who may have engaged in test collusion when taking tests fundamentally lies in the idea that creating a “level playing field” makes testing more fair for all students. If groups of students are cheating on tests and obtaining higher grades than they should, students who do not cheat may be disadvantaged by comparison. Cheating has far-reaching implications for examinees, education centers, businesses, and the public, in that they may be passing/hiring/selecting people who are not properly qualified. Consider, for example, the medical student who is not properly prepared and who by cheating on his/her final certification examination is able to receive her medical degree. The consequences for his/her patients could be significant. This may be an oversimplification of the issue in that one would hope the fate of people’s lives does not lie solely in the results of one examination score, but it does illustrate that the misrepresentation of
