The University of East Anglia insisted tonight its students were no less honest than any others – despite high levels of academic misconduct.

The results of a Freedom of Information request sent to the 30 top universities in the country, and responded to by 20 of them, found UEA had one of the highest number of instances of misconduct.

Last year, students were found to have cheated on 167 occasions - most related to plagiarism.

Only Lancaster and Bath universities responded to a national paper with higher numbers.

But UEA said its figures reflected its strict stance on cheating and not an unusually high number of dishonest students.

A spokesman said: 'As a university we take cheating very seriously and work hard to identify instances of academic misconduct – such as plagiarism in coursework or taking notes into exams.

'We very much doubt that our students are any less honest than those in other institutions. But we see it as vital to the integrity of the university that we identify and record such incidents thoroughly, and discipline any students involved.

'All this demonstrates is that we are alert to what is obviously a national issue – and that we deal with cases when we detect them.'

This academic year there have been 21 incidents of misconduct, while 175 were recorded in 2009/20 and 209 in 2008/09.

Consequences ranged from re-submitting work to permanent exclusion.