Satanic Essay Mills

“Completely unethical” essay writing mills are to be made illegal in England. Good news for academic standards but with many of these services shifting offshore, catching them may prove more difficult.#AcademicFraud #Universities #DigitalEthics
https://t.co/EjXdXxQCP4

— Claudia Pagliari (@EeHRN) October 6, 2021

 

The phrase completely unethical is a quote from the skills minister, Alex Burghart. While I have no love for the essay mills, having tangled with them previously on this blog, I also wonder whether the university system should share some responsibility for the emergence of this market.

If academic success depends on delivering certain items of coursework, as evidence that a student has achieved the course objectives, and yet those items of coursework are so standardized that they can be successfully churned out by someone who hasn't participated in the course, then perhaps the course objectives and coursework assignments haven't been thought through properly.

Another contributing factor is the amount of time the university staff will have spent with each student, and the amount of time to mark each essay. If this is insufficient, then the marker will have no way of knowing whether the authorship of a given essay is credible.

In summary, academic standards depend on a number of factors, including well-designed courses and proper engagement with students. If the universities try to cut costs by skimping on these elements of education, maybe it isn't so surprising that some students are tempted to cheat as well.

 

Essay mills: Contract cheating to be made illegal in England (BBC News 6 October 2021) HT @EeHRN

How students turn to essay mills to help them cheat (BBC Worklife, 29 March 2019)

More posts on essay mills

Essay Fraud 3

[Update] Corrections to this post have been made for legal reasons. Comments have now been switched off.

Sorry to go on about Essay Fraud, but someone called Nancy posted some interesting links in a comment to my previous post, which I wanted to follow-up.

• Hiram Hover
• FreelanceWriting.com Discussion Forum

1. I agree with Hiram's point, that students who try to cheat deserve to be ripped off. In my post on Cheating 2, I asserted the converse - that it is precisely when students are trying to cheat that they may be most vulnerable to being ripped off.

2. I find it amusing that EssayFraud (self-appointed champion of English-speaking essay writers) describes itself as a profitless organization. Here's an English lesson for you guys - profitless means useless. I think the term you're looking for is not-for-profit.

2. [correction] I find it amusing that EssayFraud (self-appointed champion of "professional, native English-speaking writers") once described itself as a profitless organization. In Much Ado About Nothing, Leonato says

"I pray thee cease thy counsel,
Which falls into mine ears as profitless

As water in a sieve."

3. Someone on the FreelanceWriting discussion makes the following point: "If you are an American company based in the US how come you speak Russian?" There are plenty of people in Russia and Ukraine who speak reasonable (if occasionally unidiomatic) English. But this person doesn't expect native-born Americans to speak any Russian. Doesn't this just tell us volumes about the American education system? In which case, would you really want an American to do your Latin translation or write your geography essay for you?

See more by Hiram Hover on Plagiarism

Related Posts

Cheating 1 (May 2006) Cheating 2 (June 2006)
Essay Fraud 1 (June 2006) Essay Fraud 2 (June 2006)

Essay Fraud 2

[Update] This post prompted a fierce discussion between multiple parties, which you can find in the comments. Comments are now closed.

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Following my posts on Essay Fraud and Cheating 2, I have received an email from Essay Fraud which reads as follows.

"You have blatantly libeled our organization. We do not sell any papers! As such, we have no 'competitors'! We will grant you 72 hours to remove this libelous post. Rest assured, your little misunderstanding will earn you quite the heap of legal problems if you do not comply."

I am always happy to receive comments from readers, including corrections. Accordingly, I have altered the wording of my post Cheating 2, and I am happy to adopt Essay Fraud's own description of itself as a watchdog organization. I note that Essay Fraud invites applications for membership from organizations satisfying certain criteria although I was unable to find any members named on its website. I was also unable to find a US address on its website.

Meanwhile, what are we to make of the threatening email? Quite the heap of punctuation, wouldn't you say? I can't quite place the idiomatic use of English ...

So I'm puzzled about the true purpose of Essay Fraud. It provides hundreds of names of what it claims are foreign sites, and no names of bona-fide American sites. So it could be used as a directory of the sites it claims to deprecate. Meanwhile, by complaining about the scandal of foreign papers, it effectively draws attention to the wider scandal of an outsourcing market in term papers. It identifies certain risks for students who wish to buy essays, and may have the effect of encouraging some students to write their own essays instead. And it exposes some systemic risks in the American education system, which educational institutions may wish to consider.

So the web presence of Essay Fraud has certain effects. I accept that by giving publicity to Essay Fraud, I may be helping to amplify some of these effects. So be it.

Essay Fraud

What is the purpose of EssayFraud.org? According to the organization website, its members provide freelance research and composition services to students, and it expects students to use these services responsibly.

If a consumer contracts a freelance writer to research and compose an example document from which the consumer intends to glean unique insights/viewpoints on a given topic, the consumer must properly cite that writer and/or that writer's employing Web site when writing his/her own paper.

Yeah, right.

Some people might think that the best clue about the purpose of EssayFraud.org is contained in the name of the organization. See my posts on Cheating 1 and 2.

Essay Fraud is currently engaged in a campaign to encourage students to buy American essays (sorry, I should have said research insights) rather than cheaper services from Pakistan or Ukraine.

The wider effect of the Essay Fraud phenomenon is that essay outsourcing undermines the supposed purposes of the American education system. If Americans are paying Pakistanis and Ukrainians to write their essays, it won't be long before Americans have to pay Pakistanis and Ukrainians to run their companies.

Whoops! According to some software industry leaders, this is already starting to happen. See my post on the Globally Integrated Enterprise.

Who is being clever here, and who is being stupid? (In a later post, Jack van Hoof calls this Paying to Stay Dumb.)

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Comments to this post have now been switched off.

Cheating (Essay Fraud)

Apparently there are two ways for American students to pay someone else to write their college assignments. The all-American way recommended by an outfit called EssayFraud.org, and the cheap foreign imports allegedly offered by other organizations.

EssayFraud suggests that essay-writers in other countries will not be as knowledgeable or literate as Americans, and may not be as scrupulous in respecting copyright. (Yeah, right.)

Daniel Nexon, on the Duck of Minerva blog, sees this as part of the FightBack Against Outsourcing. Of course, it's still outsourcing if you get a fellow-American to do the essay for you - even your Mom - but the real issue here is apparently off-shore outsourcing ("off-shoring").

Obviously EssayFraud doesn't explicitly encourage students to pass off outsourced essays as their own work. However, it is difficult to see why any students would be willing to pay anyone for "research" unless they were intending to commit some kind of fraud. (Is there a clue in the name of the company?)

And it is perhaps when people are intending to commit untrustworthy acts themselves that they are most vulnerable to being ripped off by others.


Related posts: Cheating, Essay Fraud, Essay Fraud 2, Essay Fraud 3

Previously posted at https://demandingchange.blogspot.com/2006/06/cheating-2.html

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Legal Disclaimer: I should have made clear that Essay Fraud is a watchdog organization, which invites membership applications from bona fide American research organizations. Essay Fraud does not itself sell services to American students or have foreign competitors, but it appears to represent the interests of companies that do so. I apologize to Essay Fraud and its members for any misunderstanding in earlier versions of this post, which I hope I have now corrected.