Consider a representative university student who decides how much time to spend on study. Let us call this student Bruno, who has been using academic cheating websites for a year in order to ‘boost’ his performance. Somehow, he has not been caught once. Now consider Angela, another representative university student who also decides how much time to spend on studying. She has been a study group which helps her to keep up with the study material as well as improve her time management and note-taking skills. A year ago, both students studied 35 hours per week and achieved 65%. Currently, they study 32 hours per week and achieve 75%. Assume i) the two students faced the same feasible frontier a year ago, and ii) they have the same preference. Do the following:

• Illustrate the effect of cheating on Bruno’s feasible frontier and his optimal decision using a fully labeled diagram where i) the horizontal axis represents the hours of free time per week, and ii) the vertical axis represents academic performance (measured out of 100).

• Illustrate the effect of using a study group on Angela’s feasible frontier and her optimal decision using another fully labeled diagram with the same axes as the previous diagram.

• Explain the key information of your diagrams. Obviously, let us assume that Bruno’s and Angela’s preferences are represented by indifference curves that satisfy the usual properties.

PART B

In recent years, the Australian government has allocated extra resources to police academic cheating at universities. In June 2020, a federally funded Higher Education Integrity Unit was established within the Tertiary Education Quality and Standards Agency (TEQSA). In July 2021, the unit successfully obtained federal court injunctions against academic cheating websites.1 The unit recently has reported that it is working with social media companies to remove pages and promotions for commercial cheating websites, as well as has developed additional anti-cheating resources such as below: Discuss how a policy effort such as what is described above would affect Bruno’s and Angela’s lives (current, not a year ago). Your discussion must:

• Refer to the diagrams you prepared for part A

• Address the effect of this policy effort on i) Angela’s and Bruno’s feasible frontiers, ii) their optimal choice of free time and academic performance, and iii) their utility levels.

PART C

Discuss why one should not cheat on academic assessments based on what you wrote for part A and B. You may refer to this interview article to enrich your discussion. • Nickisch, Curt. “Industrial Espionage Is More Effective Than R&D”. Harvard Business Review. November 20162

PART D

Ponder upon the discussions you have made for part A-C. Discuss whether your reasoning behind why one should not cheat (which you discussed for part C) can be categorized as a consequentialist or deontological approach. Optionally, check out the supplementary videos, located under this document on iLearn, to assist your discussion.

Answer rating: 100% (QA)

PART A The following diagram illustrates the effect of cheating on Brunos feasible frontier and his optimal decision The horizontal axis represents the hours of free time per week and the vertical axi... View the full answer