How college students outsource homework

Websites Now Let People In Developing Nations Bid For And Complete Assignments Of Pupils In US, UK & Oz

Tuition was due. The rent was, too. So Mary Mbugua, a university student in Nyeri, Kenya, went out in search of a job. At first, she tried selling insurance policies, but that only paid on commission and she never sold one. Then she sat behind the reception desk at a hotel, but it ran into financial trouble. Finally, a friend offered to help her break into “academic writing,” a lucrative industry in Kenya that involves doing school assignments online for college students in the US, Britain and Australia. Mbugua felt conflicted. “This is cheating,” she said. “But we have to make money to make a living.” Cheating in college is nothing new, but the internet now makes it possible on a global, industrial scale. Sleek websites have sprung up that allow people in developing countries to bid on and complete American homework assignments. The essay-for-hire industry has expanded significantly in developing countries with many English speakers, fast internet connections and more college graduates than jobs, especially Kenya, India and Ukraine. A Facebook group for academic writers in Kenya has over 50,000 members. It is not clear how widely sites for paid-to-order essays, known as “contract cheating” in higher education circles, are used. A 2005 study of students in North America found that 7% of undergraduates admitted to turning in papers written by someone else, while 3% admitted to obtaining essays from essay mills. Cath Ellis, a leading researcher on the topic, said millions of essays are ordered online every year worldwide. “It’s a huge problem,” said Tricia Bertram Gallant, director of the academic integrity office at the University of California, San Diego. “If we don’t do anything about it, we will turn every accredited university into a diploma mill.” In an email, EssayShark’s public relations department said the company did not consider its services to be cheating, and that it warned students the essays are for “research and reference purposes only” and are not to be passed off as a student’s own work. Contract cheating is illegal in 17 states, but punishment tends to be light and enforcement rare. Experts said that no federal law in the US, or in Kenya, forbids the purchase or sale of academic papers. Contract cheating is harder to detect than plagiarism because ghostwritten essays will not be flagged when compared with a database of previously submitted essays; they are generally original works — simply written by the wrong person. In Kenya, a country with a per capita annual income of about $1,700, successful writers can earn as much as $2,000 a month, according to Roynorris Ndiritu, who said he has thrived while writing academic essays for others. As for Mbugua, she said she never felt right about the writing she did in the names of American students and others. But adds: “People say the education system in the US, UK is on a top notch. I wouldn’t say those students are better than us. We have studied. We have done the assignments.” NYT

Source: Times of India, 9/09/2019