Assignment outsourcing is an intractable challenge for higher education. While various academic and legislative approaches have sought to explain/respond to this problem, recent media, community, and government concerns suggest students are increasingly outsourcing assessments. This paper reports on the qualitative findings of an international…

The extent and reach of commercial cheating opportunities is ever present; thousands of websites promote differing business models offering assignments in multiple languages and currencies. In addition to commercial companies, students are known to outsource their assignments from friends and family. Assignment outsourcing and contract cheating…

Research on contract cheating usually considers most forms of outsourcing combined, although studies have found that students more commonly obtain work from those known to them, rather than from commercial sites; yet little research exists which explores which variables and motivators may be associated with this type of outsourcing. Strategies…

Increasing pressure is being placed on governments and legislators in different countries to take action against assignment outsourcing in higher education. Global discussions focus on prohibiting commercial outsourcing providers, such as contract cheating services. Despite evidence to suggest that outsourcing behaviours by students are…

The outsourcing of education services has been widely adopted across international contexts as a 'tested solution' or panacea to meet various educational problems including school management, curriculum design, teaching and student discipline. Contracting third-party providers, it is argued, enhances organisational goals such as efficiency,…

This paper investigates beginning BSc Physical Education (PE) students' views and experiences of the outsourcing of PE in the UK. Outsourcing involves the provision of PE by external providers such as sports coaches. PE in the UK (and other neoliberal Western contexts) is a site in which outsourcing has become increasingly normalised. I…

Prevalence of contract cheating and outsourcing through organised methods has received interest in research studies aiming to determine the most suitable strategies to reduce the problem. Few studies have presented an international approach or tested which variables could be correlated with contract cheating. As a result, strategies to reduce…

GlobePort, a nationwide adult-care business, offers its employees health insurance benefits using a variety of vendors. Each vendor has different medical/dental/life insurance plans with different application formalities. Two years back, GlobePort found it difficult to support all of these variations and decided to pursue business process…

Outsourcing is a business strategy to cut costs by relocating jobs from high-cost countries, like the USA, to low-cost ones, like India. The practice involves moving the jobs and transferring knowledge, technologies, and capabilities. Outsourcing has been growing in scale and scope in science, technology, engineering, and math (STEM) occupations,…

In this paper, I (re)define outsourcing in a way that reflects the nature of the practice in education. While business and management definitions of outsourcing have been generative to this point, they are relatively broad and place wide boundaries on the practice. Moreover, they do not acknowledge the interpretation and enactment of outsourcing…

This paper provides an account of programmes in schools developed by the Mindfulness in Schools Project (MISP) as an example of the outsourcing of Health and Physical Education. The purpose of the paper is to show that outsourcing, is complex and does not match some of the expectations associated with this neoliberal practice. Responding to the…

This policy memo examines some fundamental shifts, along with their real-world implications, within the past 60 years of Supreme Court jurisprudence, up to and including the current "Carson v. Makin" case. The Supreme Court is just a few small steps away from transforming every charter school law in the U.S. into a private-school voucher…

How have public sector austerity and the outsourcing of school provision under the Academies programme affected the state school workforce in England? Existing research claims that teachers are being substituted by cheaper support staff and that schools are becoming increasingly dominated by managers. However, these claims focus on the period…

Pennsylvania's public schools employ tens of thousands of support professionals -- bus drivers, cafeteria workers, custodians, maintenance workers, secretaries, paraprofessionals, and others. Due to fiscal challenges that many local districts face, school administrators often look to achieve savings and flexibility by outsourcing the provision of…

Outsourcing or privatising services in higher education is a common practice, but what do we really know about it? Is outsourcing effective? It is imperative that these questions be addressed since outsourcing is becoming a norm in higher education institutions. Scholars, institutional administrators and policymakers need to understand the…