to think you shouldn't sell/buy essays for your degree on eBay...

[alwaysinamuckingfuddle]

Just saw this.

Was a little bit .

Is he/she desperate for money or something?!!!

I don't see anything wrong with obtaining other peoples essays or thesis, no different than reading a book or journal IMO, for reference purposes.of curse I do not advocate plagerism, but using the essay to guide you, or te books tattle writer has used, I don't see a problem

The 'for research purposes' comment is bullshit, commonly used on essay mill sites. So don't even bother asking what's wrong with people reading others' work. If they genuinely want to read around the subject they can read peer-reviewed journal articles and textbooks for free via their university library. The only reason people buy something like this is to plagiarise.

Should say book references

Not necessarily snazzy

I agree with snazzy

There's always plenty of academic
material in print and online with far more credibility than someone's essay
It's usually recommended by your tutor or on your VLE

Yes, piglet. If they prefer to read other people's work bought on the internet for guidance than peer-reviewed research, then the only possible option other than plagiarism is that they are stupid.

If they are going to buy them for reference purposes they will have to reference them in their essay., Does anyone really believe the buyers of these intend to do that? Besides, lecturers tend to provide strict instructions as to what kind of material is admissible for references in your essay.

I catch students every year plagiarising from the adverts of these Buy your essay here- websites, being clearly too stingy to buy the actual essays. You don't need the special software to catch them out: the style is usually quite enough.

It is likely to be against the regulations of the institution that the seller got their degree from. At my former institution it was a disciplinary offence to sell your coursework and I remember one student being disciplined for this. The Open University also considers this to be a breach of their regulations www2.open.ac.uk/students/complaints/common-issues-of-concern.php#q8 and the University of Worcester (along with most institutions IIRC) considers coursework as belonging to the institution and Worcester's regs state that "the material produced by students for assessment (essays, projects, examination scripts, dissertations, artworks, computer disks, etc) is the property of the University".

So, the seller may be opening themselves up for disciplinary action from their institution which could mean being removed from their course of study as the ultimate sanction.

It wouldn't be worth buying one these days as all universities have a computer programme that searches assignments for plagiarism . If the assignment is more than 40% plagiarised its an automatic fail. (even words like 'and, it, when, the' etc all show up as plagiarised words so a direct assignment copy would be a no chance.

If you were buying it just to help get ideas about what is useful to include in an assignment then I don't see the issue tbh. It would be no different to the tutor giving you a past paper and answers to prepare for an exam, which is common practice. If someone didnt get the assignment brief properly and bought an assignment to get a general idea of how to set up and word a decent assignment then I don't think that's wrong.

I wish I only got good enough marks to warrant anyone wanting to spend money on my assignments - kidding!

If they are going to buy them for reference purposes they will have to reference them in their essay.

If they quote it. Not if they don't.

In my uni days we did not ave options like this, but it was always drummed into us not to plagerism, I never did, I don't thinkit hurts to get ideas, or f your at a loss on how to approach an essay title

And if they are stupid enough to plagiarise, they will get caught, and for that I have no sympathy at all.

You should list your sources at the end even if you haven't quoted directly from them.

Yeah, sort ofg, if you reference it. It'd be footnoted for a direct quote, or in the Bibliography if not. Either way, do-able.

wharrgarbl Sat 17-Aug-13 23:19:49
"If they are going to buy them for reference purposes they will have to reference them in their essay.

If they quote it. Not if they don't."

If they use the ideas in it. Taking somebody else's idea and presenting it as your own is plagiarism.

I think it can help to clarify your own thinking if you read what someone else has made of an assignment. One of my old tutors used to give out copies of a past essay during tutorials for this reason (and we really would have been daft to copy them ).
Of course plagiarising is wrong. Anyone caught doing it deserves all they get. I don't see much difference between simply reading a past essay and the tutor reminding you to include certain points in the assignment.

They may be using it to see what a high mark essay looks like.

When I did my Access and BA, we all though that it would be useful to see a well written essay/assignment.

We had all had a poor education, all had a long break from education, so just telling us what was wanted wasn't enough for everyone.

Some people are natural essay writers, yet go on to not be able to do the job that they qualified for. Some people struggle to pass assignments and yet make really good Nurses/Social Workers etc.

Just to add, I wasn't pragmatic enough when I wrote, it really helped me to read the essays of others.

It was the style of writing that I focused on, not the content.

So how on earth would you know that something you buy off the internet, on the seller's say-so, is a high mark essay? You'd have to be seriously stupid trusting.

I'm doing an NVQ L6 atm and for one of the assignment there's an example essay on the resources section of the site. Why would anyone buy something from a
random internet seller?

That essay will set the alarm bells ringing on the turnitin plagiarism software if anybody tries to pass it off as their own. The seller might not be doing anything wrong but it is quite obvious what the purpose of the sale is.

Plagiarism software is unlikely to detect this kind of stuff. The software searches for similarities to work that has been published or submitted as an assignment to other courses using the same software. Custom-written essays are very unlikely to be detected by the software, and much less likely to be detected by the markers who now over-rely on the software.

It's ridiculous. Most universities have a ban on selling your essays or sharing them with other people, if you do so then both parties can be disciplined. Why risk that?
Personally I'd rather have the satisfaction of knowing that I passed because of my efforts and not those of anybody else.

If the essay is from 2008 surely things have changed since then anyway