Image via Flickr User Rachel Johnson
It’s drilled into your head during O Week—don’t cheat or plagiarise anything. If you do you’ll be caught, expelled, and you’ll end up working at McDonald’s, forever.
Despite this warning untold numbers of students find ways to cheat every year. In 2015 Sydney’s Macquarie University revoked the degrees of two students and prevented 10 from graduating when it was found they’d paid an online service to complete their assignments. Actually, after I asked a few universities about the more common methods to wrought the system, a few mentioned ghostwriting services.
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To find out more I got in contact with the owner of such a site. He only agreed to talk if I wouldn’t disclose his name or website, so I’ll call him Todd and say only that he’s based in Canada.
Cheating Isn’t Expensive
Clients start by sending in their assignment requirements. Todd will then allocate someone on his team to write the paper and send it back. Pretty simple. Todd tells me the people who write for his site are found through regular job vacancy sites including Gumtree and Craigslist.
Like with everything, the price depends on how quickly the service is needed. Obviously a paper due in six hours will cost considerably more than one needed in a week. The cost also differs depending on pages and length, but on average a regular three-page essay will cost between AU$80 and $200.
Not Getting Busted Is on the Student
Todd told me it’s not his responsibility to provide “completed work.” Instead he provides students with a guideline, and if they don’t make alterations it’s their fault if they’re caught. “We provide research guides,” he told me. “We tell all our clients to not hand in word for word what we provide them, but the ultimate decision is up to them.”
Todd knows the majority of students don’t follow this. “I would say 90 percent of our clients don’t amend or alter the work we provide,” he said. “Handing in work written by someone else does infringe university policies and can be considered a form of plagiarism.”
But Getting Caught Is Rare
As Todd pointed out students are probably suspected of cheating all the time, but “the burden of proof is on the school itself.” He says that most of the time they can’t prove whether someone else wrote a paper because “everything we do is 100 percent original written from scratch.” As mentioned before, the only times Todd knows his student have been caught is when they hand in something above their English skills.
It’s All About Hooking Clients
For me, the only part of Todd’s business that crosses into unethical territory is the way he relies on students becoming hooked. Changing tone between university papers arouses suspicion, Todd says, so a lot of students stick to his papers long term. “I would say our retention rate is around 70-80 percent,” he admits. On top of this students are only too happy to tell others about the service. “Success in our business is based on referrals and repeat clients.”
Scarily enough Todd admits that some clients who have used his services throughout their entire degrees. “They key is getting the client in first year and turning that want into a need,” he says.
But Maybe Todd Isn’t the Bad Guy
As a student himself Todd struggled with essay writing, which is part of the reason he claims to operate the website. Another reason for the site’s existence is that he believes his services are giving a lot of students the fair chance that universities aren’t. “The majority of our clients are international students predominantly from the Middle East and China. Universities are accepting a record number of international students who pay three to five times what a native student is paying.” Given that they’re hampered only by language and not ability, Todd says he has no qualms helping them out.
“Universities also understand that the majority of students who they accept do not speak English and are destined to fail when they begin school, it can be impossible for someone who doesn’t even know the language to pass.”
It’s Just Business
According to Todd, he’s just trying to help out in a bad system. “Universities know that we exist and in a way need services like us to continue to profit off international students,” he says. “In the end it’s all about money and governments and universities will willingly allow students to use services like ours to make money.”
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