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Universities urged to ban 'essay mills'

Cheating is not looking up the answer on the internet.

Cheating is not getting someone else to do the work.

Cheating is pretending you understand when you don't.

That's when you're cheating yourself.

Reply 21

abc:)

22

I don't understand all the comments saying that they aren't morally against this. Why? How?

Reply 22

Allie4

20

definitely got tempted once

never had the money to do it though

Reply 23

Ninja_R

20

Oops, I misinterpreted this poll as "Have you ever paid for artwork?" so I was like 'Flip yeah! I like to support artists and all', and answered Yes. Then I click the discussion and see that it's about paying for essays. :'D Who even has the money to pay for essays as a student? Don't they charge ridiculous amounts per page or something?

Original post by AAJacobs

i thought this meant like comissions from an artist :laugh:

Haha ME TOO! :'D

Reply 24

ANM775

20

I know someone who writes essays for a fee, they made over 2 grand doing it last I heard.......

Reply 25

amiintrouble

4

Original post by JohnGreek

Who cares

You don't have to worry about getting a First if you put in the work yourself :wink:

(the clever way to use essay mills is to take the essay and re-arrange the arguments along with some of your own (new) ideas, but a lot of idiots apparently submit the essay as they bought it)

I agree. Thats the smart way to do it. You never get caught. My ex-wrote all my assignments and none of the professors suspected anything. And this at one of the best universities in the world. Only issue now, is, my ex said at a time that they should award him the degree and he'd write to them about it .. so not a very happy ending if he does end up doing it. I doubt that the universities would entertain him in any case cause its more than 5 years ago. But not so sure .. the headache i feel now is not worth it .. shouldve done at least a few assignments myself lol

Reply 26

amiintrouble

4

Original post by ANM775

I know someone who writes essays for a fee, they made over 2 grand doing it last I heard.......

I paid 300 pounds for each essay I had written. But it was top notch stuff. Got really good grades

Reply 27

Retrodiction

19

Original post by amiintrouble

I agree. Thats the smart way to do it. You never get caught. My ex-wrote all my assignments and none of the professors suspected anything. And this at one of the best universities in the world. Only issue now, is, my ex said at a time that they should award him the degree and he'd write to them about it .. so not a very happy ending if he does end up doing it. I doubt that the universities would entertain him in any case cause its more than 5 years ago. But not so sure .. the headache i feel now is not worth it .. shouldve done at least a few assignments myself lol

Out of curiosity, how learned do you feel in your subject area relative to the students you graduated with who completed the assignments by themselves? Do you feel disadvantaged in conversations about the subject with the other students?

Reply 28

user2221

2

I once paid myself to do my own work :smile:

Reply 29

ScienceTony

1

Original post by discobish

Stories in the news today on the BBC and Guardian are showing that universities are clamping down on cheat companies which, for a fee, will write essays for students to pass off as their own.

Universities say essay cheating is unacceptable. What do you think?

Have you ever paid for an essay? And if so, what caused you to do so?

Cheating is never worth it.

Reply 30

amiintrouble

4

Original post by Retrodiction

Out of curiosity, how learned do you feel in your subject area relative to the students you graduated with who completed the assignments by themselves? Do you feel disadvantaged in conversations about the subject with the other students?

Disadvantaged? Sometimes, the thing is, it doesn't matter in the real world. I think as it is with most things, anyone that is given a specific task at work does it well because the focus is very narrow. Not everyone is or can be Elon Musk or Steve Jobs and companies don't care about that kind of talent. So I don't feel I missed out on anything. Don't Get me wrong, you have to be well read at the very least to pull this off. The Universities will never be able to catch diploma mills with students that go about it in a smart way.

Reply 31

FloralHybrid

21

Original post by discobish

Stories in the news today on the BBC and Guardian are showing that universities are clamping down on cheat companies which, for a fee, will write essays for students to pass off as their own.

Universities say essay cheating is unacceptable. What do you think?

Have you ever paid for an essay? And if so, what caused you to do so?

Strangely enough, I don't think this is that bad either. I totally get why universities would ban it, but I mean, how can they really tell? I guess just enforce punishments more regularly to those who are caught.

But youre paying for your degree. As odd as it sounds, it's not that weird of a thing. My cousin's friend spent £135 on a single essay that saved her about 40 hours of writing, only to have likely come to the end result. I get that some may say "Well if you can get to that same end result then prove it"
But as someone above said, if you can find a way of doing it (or, not doing it) more efficiently with nobody getting hurt, why not?

Morally it may be wrong. But practically if you're willing to pay it does make sense.

I get how it could be considered improper though.

Reply 32

DavidaH

4

I know a student who wrote an essay for someone else because he had been taking too much MDNA ,or some other chems and was too spaced out to get his act together and submit anything. I'm sure this happens across the UK unofficially , more often than one would imagine. At the end of the day though , you have to live with your conscience.

Reply 33

discobish

OP

19

Original post by Ninja_R

Oops, I misinterpreted this poll as "Have you ever paid for artwork?" so I was like 'Flip yeah! I like to support artists and all', and answered Yes. Then I click the discussion and see that it's about paying for essays. :'D Who even has the money to pay for essays as a student? Don't they charge ridiculous amounts per page or something?

Whoops

maybe I should have made it more clear... your answer made me laugh though!

Reply 34

Smidge32!

13

When you click yes like "of course I've paid for work, how else do you e.g. get your hair done or artwork" ... It meant as in SCHOOL work... . so for the record, No I haven't. Im' such an idiot, running off 20 minutes of sleep and A-levels is just affecting my brains :yawn:

Reply 35

-Eirlys-

Debate & Current Affairs Helper

21

I wouldn't do this for a variety of reasons:

1. The essays that you pay for are usually absolutely ****. I saw an essay online and it had not at all been proof read with no citations. These people writing them don't care about plagiarism as long as they get the money so the essay would be flagged very quickly. The person who usually marks your work could also see it's not written by you.

2. If you want something to be high quality, then you'll do a much better job than anyone else anyway. Continuing on from the first point, the quality will not be as good as if you did it, because you're the only one who cares about your own grades.

3. I could not apply for a degree level job knowing that part of the degree wasn't even done by me and I may have not actually learned every single part of it so I would feel like I didn't deserve it!

3.1 I couldn't look my own family in the eye when they're celebrating my achievement, whilst in the back of my mind, I knew I cheated. It would bring nothing but bad thoughts when thinking about my degree. You will have positive thoughts of it if you know you worked and have done it all yourself.

Reply 36

Light Venom

15

I think they should just make it full exams then. Works for me cause I hate essays

Reply 37

Retrodiction

19

Original post by amiintrouble

Disadvantaged? Sometimes, the thing is, it doesn't matter in the real world. I think as it is with most things, anyone that is given a specific task at work does it well because the focus is very narrow. Not everyone is or can be Elon Musk or Steve Jobs and companies don't care about that kind of talent. So I don't feel I missed out on anything. Don't Get me wrong, you have to be well read at the very least to pull this off. The Universities will never be able to catch diploma mills with students that go about it in a smart way.

I pretty much agree. A lot of the people on this forum (not myself - I graduated three years ago) will be trying to justify to themselves the huge financial burden they've placed on their future selves by choosing to go university. Naturally they'll jump on a post like this to reinforce the sense of value they're trying to ascribe to their degree.

The truth is that the vast majority of jobs don't require any hard skills developed at university, and the majority of degrees don't teach any hard skills. Many students see the thousands of jobs out there that require a degree on paper, but really an applicant straight out of high school would be just as well equipped.

So in summary, no, I don't think you're the devil for doing what you did. Depending on the subject I might suggest you cheated yourself somewhat, but there really isn't anything taught in university that can't be learned by cracking open a book at your own leisure.

Reply 38

The Uniqueness

15

Original post by discobish

Stories in the news today on the BBC and Guardian are showing that universities are clamping down on cheat companies which, for a fee, will write essays for students to pass off as their own.

Universities say essay cheating is unacceptable. What do you think?

Have you ever paid for an essay? And if so, what caused you to do so?

Honestly, why would anyone want to waste their time and debt in university if they are going to feed themselves with other people’s effort?

That’s like studying for a degree that would have no beneficial use to a person , because that person does not understand what it is about, how it works and the essential tools needed to secure the job they want.

I know someone who told me that their friend paid someone to write their essays thoughout the three years, got a 1st class and is currently struggling to keep a job because his previous employers see that this person does not have the competency nor knowledge or understanding to do the job role effectively. So that degree is completely useless to him.

Plus, these writing companies know how to make coins from these people. These companies don’t care about your circumstances. Their goal is to make money, whether the essay fails or not.