Growing online trade in essays
An investigation by BBC Radio 4 has discovered that an increasing number of students are purchasing their essays online.
Speaking to the documentary "Brains for Sale", Dorit Chomer, who runs one of the main sites that write original essays for students, admitted that the work she undertakes "belittles the whole education system". According to Ms Chomer, she on average sells somewhere between 200 and 1,000 essays each week at prices starting at £50, mainly to students from overseas studying in the UK. According to Ms Chomer they can need "professional help" in order to compete with their British counterparts.
Dorit Chomer believes that her service benefits students to the extent that she does the writing so that "they (students) can sit in the bar and use whatever faculty they want to use".
Many academic institutions are reporting ever-growing problems with plagiarism. Plagiarism prevention expert Jude Carroll from Oxford Brookes University said that a study in America found that 43% of all students had at some point copied unaccredited material from the internet, and suspects that the figure is likely to be similar for the UK. Likewise, an administrator at London's Queen Mary University, Steven Rose, said that over the last three years he has seen a doubling in the number of cases of serious plagiarism.
Tackling the problem is a high priority for British universities, with many using software designed to seek out sections of essays and assignments which have been directly copied from academic journals or internet sites. However, this does not address the problems of sites such as Ms Chomer's which offers to write original pieces of work for students.
As part of the BBC documentary, a reporter posing as a student rang a rival firm, Elizabeth Hall Associates, asking whether she could submit an essay bought from them as her own work. "Technically we ask you to sign a declaration that it's a model, and we expect you to customise it," she was told. "But I can't see any reason why you can't be able just to hand it in to be honest." Having been challenged by the makers of the Radio 4 investigation, the firm simply stated that they were not prepared to cooperate with the programme.
The trade in essays is not limited to professional companies: we searched eBay and found several essays for sale at various levels on subjects including nursing and social work. Each carried a warning that it should only be used as a model.
What is perhaps most alarming is that despite such plagiarism being detected, action does not necessarily follow. Speaking to the documentary anonymously, a university lecturer told the BBC that he was aware of a student who had copied almost his entire 12,000-word thesis for his MSc and was given six months to resubmit the work. Substantial sections of the second piece had also been plagiarised, but the examination board decided that the student should pass anyway, allowing him to be awarded his degree.
Earlier this year we reported on research that found that over half of tutors had ignored suspected cheating. The reasons are likely to be financial ones – if more current students fail fewer new students are likely to apply.
Vice-chancellors organisation Universities UK told the BBC that they weren't keen on plagiarism. "Universities UK strongly disapproves of plagiarism. Plagiarism devalues the efforts of students who work hard to achieve their degrees. It also damages the student who commits plagiarism as they will not benefit from the research and learning experience."
Speaking to the BBC's Breakfast programme, the outgoing NUS Vice-President (Education), Hannah Essex, said that with the financial pressures students face it was understandable why some felt it necessary to plagiarise.
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