Editing Herzing Issues: Academic Integrity (section)

=== HU-106: External actors actively targeting Herzing students with paid exam-answer sales ===
{| class="wikitable" style="width:100%"
! style="width:14em" | Severity
| High
! style="width:14em" | Status
| CONFIRMED
|-
! Issue type
| External Exam-Answer Sales Targeting Program Students
! Date added
| 2026-05-05
|-
! Owner
| colspan="3" | Academic Integrity Office / Dean of Nursing / IT Security
|}
'''Finding.''' Student AC documented two distinct forms of external exam-answer solicitation targeting Herzing MSN-DE students on October 19, 2024: direct messaging from fake profiles offering to sell exam answers, and open offers in student forums of exam answers for two hundred dollars. This documents that external commercial actors have identified Herzing's MSN-DE student community as a target market for paid academic dishonesty services, indicating the program's exam content and student community are sufficiently known to outside actors to make targeted solicitation viable. No institutional response to this documented solicitation is recorded in the Facebook archive.

'''Evidence.''' Posts appeared in the Herzing Direct Entry MSN Facebook group on October 19, 2024 and received no documented institutional response or warning to students. Source Group: Herzing Direct Entry MSN Facebook Group Export (Dec 2022 to May 2026), Exhaustive Line-by-Line Review, 34,887 lines, 1,350 posts, 14,112 comments, 8 passes (Volume 7).

'''Reported statement.''' Student AC said fake profiles had messaged her claiming to sell exam answers, and that she had seen someone offering to sell exam answers for two hundred dollars.

'''Standards.''' 34 CFR §668.14 (administrative capability): institutions must maintain academic integrity and protect the security of assessment instruments. ACEN Standard 4: assessments must be secure and validly measure student competency. The existence of a commercial market for Herzing exam answers at two hundred dollars per exam indicates that exam content has leaked sufficiently to enable paid resale, a direct exam security failure. The absence of any documented institutional response to the reported solicitation (no warning email to students, no investigation, no security review of exam content) compounds the original breach. HESI exam security: the Herzing-Elsevier contract requires protection of HESI content; external resale of HESI exam answers may constitute a contract breach and an Elsevier IP violation.

'''Impact.''' Students who purchase exam answers gain an unfair advantage over students who do not, undermining the validity of the program's academic assessments. If HESI exam answers are commercially available, the HESI's function as a meaningful measure of clinical competency is compromised, which in turn undermines the validity of Herzing's NCLEX pass rate data. The two-hundred-dollar price point suggests a functioning market, not an isolated incident. The combination of this finding with {{HU|HU-078}} (systematic third-party HESI content sharing in the Facebook group), {{HU|HU-026}} (HESI answers posted to Notion), {{HU|HU-037}} (in-cohort exam sharing), and {{HU|HU-051}} (cross-cohort exam sharing) establishes a comprehensive academic integrity failure across multiple channels.

'''Notes.''' This is distinct from {{HU|HU-078}} (student-to-student sharing within the cohort community): {{HU|HU-106}} documents external commercial actors targeting the program's students. Together they form a complete picture: HESI content escapes the program, enters student-sharing networks, and eventually reaches commercial resale markets. Cross-reference: {{HU|HU-078}} (systematic third-party sharing), {{HU|HU-026}} (Notion HESI posting), {{HU|HU-037}} (in-cohort sharing), {{HU|HU-051}} (cross-cohort sharing), {{HU|HU-027}} (AI cheating). Verification recommended: institutional records of any academic integrity investigation triggered by the reported solicitations.

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