NSW universities are in damage control following a Fairfax Media investigation that revealed hundreds of students across the state, including Wollongong, were engaging the services of an online essay writing business.

On Wednesday, the Herald exposed an online business called MyMaster, run out of Sydney's Chinatown, that had provided more than 900 assignments to students from almost every university in NSW, turning over at least $160,000 in 2014.

A number of universities were holding emergency meetings when Fairfax Media called for comment this morning and most have declined requests for an interview.

Professor Andrew Parfitt, the deputy vice-chancellor of the University of Newcastle, said the institution was "disappointed" but denied the cheating was systemic and said that there were mechanisms in place to catch offending individuals.

"I can't guarantee we can identify individual cases all the time. But we can identify across the course of a full course somebody who is systematically doing this sort of thing," he said, speaking on ABC Newcastle radio on Wednesday morning.

The MyMaster website received at least $26,410 from students at the University of Newcastle who submitted 123 requests for ghost written assignments - the second-highest number of requests from the 16 universities affected.

At least six students from the University of Newcastle repeatedly used MyMaster services, with several using the website for different assessments within the same course, suggesting that their cheating went undetected by the university.

One from the University of Newcastle returned to MyMaster five times during 2014, paying at least $1594 for the ghost-written assignments.

Macquarie University, whose students logged the highest number of requests for work from MyMaster, denied Fairfax Media's request for an interview but provided a written statement via a spokesman.

"Macquarie University is concerned by today's newspaper reports and takes allegations of academic dishonesty very seriously," the statement said.

"Universities are aware that a small number of students will be tempted to cheat, and go to great efforts to prevent it in the first instance through education and codes of conduct, to detect it via a variety of methods, and to punish it where it is detected.

"The MyMaster payments represent less than 1 per cent of international students at Macquarie University. It's unfortunate that their actions sully the reputations of the vast majority of honest and hardworking international students."

Fairfax Media is awaiting responses from other universities. The MyMaster website was taken down after the Herald interviewed MyMaster director Yingying Dou at her office on Monday.

smh.com.au