According to the latest data from the Universities and College Admissions Service (UCAS), British universities have witnessed an increase in the number of students plagiarising statements of purpose over the past two years. Most cases involved detecting plagiarism in the applications of three out of five international students.
Since the launch of ChatGPT, there has been a 15 percent increase in plagiarism cases. In 2023, a total of 7,300 personal statements were detected for plagiarism by UCAS, the organisation processing undergraduate student applications.
When taking into consideration the data from two years ago, there was an increase of 105 percent in the cases of plagiarism. Two years ago, the number of plagiarised personal statements was reported to be 3,559.
Further, the reports indicate that the United Kingdom, India, Nigeria, Romania, and China accounted for the majority of plagiarism cases detected at the undergraduate level. The universities where most of the student applications were found were Manchester Metropolitan University (MMU), Birmingham City University, and the University of Greenwich.
The UCAS uses a similar plagiarism detection system as earlier, namely Copycatch, and a committed Verification Team is responsible for detecting fraud in applications and personal statements. The UK Parliament released a report stating that UCAS received a total of 757,000 full-time undergraduate applications. Around 550,000 out of the total 757,000 applications were accepted by the university. Before the launch of ChatGPT, the number of plagiarised applications was as low as 10,000.
A considerable shift has been seen in plagiarised applications since the launch of ChatGPT.
