DD paid £130 to get an assignment done for her.

[Piggie90]

DD went away this long weekend and completely ignored her college research project before she went away. Cut a very long story short, she used some of her birthday money (18th) to pay a company (didn't even know they existed) to write a 2500 word project for her.

AIBU to never lend her a penny again? I'm actually fuming.

This happens all the time teacher Mothers several including my own doing their kids A level essays. Mothers doing their daughter nursing essays I hear my clients tell me. It's definitely goes on a lot.

My son's online tutor from another country runs a business doing students university work for what he calls "lazy students", he advertises on secret groups on Facebook. He's a really bright guy but a bit of a low level criminal, such as selling pirated books.

It’s an ethical issue, isn’t it. Less about the money and more that she has the capability to cheat. A lot of people would never cross that line, no matter what the circumstances.

She should pull an all-nighter to redo the work, admit fault, promise never to do it again, mean it, and hope tutor/lecturer is sympathetic, although be prepared to be kicked off the course.

She won't get caught.

I work in a university and we can spot these. The essay usually a correct interpretation of the assignment but not the interpretation that would have been made by someone who attended class. They will use unusual references, etc.

We are discouraged from instigating investigation because it is so hard to prove. The students' double down and insist it is their work and it takes a great deal of effort to prove they cheated. Universities (like everywhere) are understaffed and underfunded.

As a result we are weighting more towards exams again. This is a huge problem.

£130 ,I wouldn't expect buys anything of quality.
I contract at a college where it's touted that students pay 8K for dissertations

£8k eh?

I find this so baffling. I did very essay based subjects at A level, undergrad and postgrad and I just cannot imagine how anyone else could have written my essays for me in a remotely convincing way? I feel like it must be so obvious that the writer hasn’t attended any of the course lectures! Maybe I’m naive.

Also, I enjoy essay writing but you’d have to pay me way more than £130 to write one and make it half way decent! I can’t imagine what kind of quality she must have got for that money.

I wouldn’t turn her in (no pun intended) but I would be very, very serious about this. ‘I’m not angry, I’m disappointed’ turned up to a million!

Rezie Wed 24-Apr-19 06:10:03

I did my post grad last year. As a mature student I was shocked to find out how openly the students talked about hiring either friends or a company to write their essays. Especially thesis. If the company is reputable (can it really be?) Turnitin doesn't recognize the work since it is still original. My supervisor said that he knows when they are bought, but it is a big accusation to make if it is not flagged by programmes.

This is very puzzling to me.

Wayyyyy back when I did my thesis (in the days of shoeboxes and 6x4 notecards) we were required to produce drafts at regular intervals, and to have discussions of our progress, our sources, miscellaneous issues or progress with contacts (if more recent historical topic).

Are you describing a situation where a supervisor only sees a finished product, with no drafts?

Even my own DCs in high school in the US dong AP history courses (American History, and European History) were required to turn in progress updates and drafts of their papers (four 2,500 papers every year).

I am surprised that a 6th form college doesn't require drafts of term/significant essays.

@swimmerforlife sorry didn’t make it clear. This is what’s illegal:

Why would we expect things to be different in New Zealand universities? Despite being an offence under the Section 292E of the New Zealand Education Act (1989) to “provide or advertise cheating services”,10 a quick web search comes up with tens of ‘essay writing’ or ‘help’ websites. We also recently saw social media commentators being paid to promote the EduBirdie cheating site. New Zealand students are as exposed as other students to contract cheating sites.

A LOT of students did this on both my undergraduate and masters degrees, all got away with it. Many of them were international students who couldn’t write a full sentence without errors in class yet submitted perfect essays and were never questioned.

I am genuinely surprised by how many posters on this thread seem to regard this as at worst a fairly minor infringement of meaninglessly bureaucratic rules and at best ingenious use of initiative.

If my DS did this, I would be gutted that he was a lazy, unethical cheat who thought it was OK to lie/buy his way out of trouble instead of facing the consequences of his poor decision-making. I'd certainly lose a lot of respect for him.

Hopefully, your DD will get caught and learn her lesson.

I wrote an essay on St Augustine of Hippo for a fellow student many years ago. £25. It was big money in those days. And it wasn’t even my subject!

It was for an American student who just treated it like any other business transaction. I was shocked, and inflicted about it but I was very poor....

Yes that’s true. DS at Uni had to turn in his dissertation proposal and present and discuss his progress with his supervisor at intervals throughout his final year. No way could he have got away with producing something at the last minute.

DD, currently at uni, has to do a thing now where she decides what she wants to write about, does some research and finds some references, and that’s it. Does not have to write the actual essay. Mind blown. I would have loved that.

She should pull an all-nighter to redo the work, admit fault, promise never to do it again, mean it, and hope tutor/lecturer is sympathetic, although be prepared to be kicked off the course.

As anyone would do it.

Wayyyyy back when I did my thesis (in the days of shoeboxes and 6x4 notecards) we were required to produce drafts at regular intervals, and to have discussions of our progress, our sources, miscellaneous issues or progress with contacts (if more recent historical topic).

Same now. You have to show what you're working on.

To be honest I think I’d expect her to tell or I would. It’s not about the money, for me it’s about earning the right to hold whatever qualification you say you’ve earned. If the essay isn’t an important one, she’ll get a telling off and if it is important she shouldn’t get credit for work she hasn’t done. For me it’s a basic question of honesty and ethics, if it’s ok to get someone else to do your work then I’m sure the college won’t mind. I suspect they will and at 18, at the start of her academic career it’s not ok to think you can buy your way through.

I’d be deeply disappointed that she cheated and would want to know why, and would want to support her academically but not st the cost of her (and my) integrity.

That is what is puzzling, Itssosunny. How can university level teachers end up looking at some paper or even a thesis that they have never seen before?

An article on cheating at top UK universities
www.theguardian.com/education/2018/apr/29/cheating-at-top-uk-universities-soars-by-30-per-cent

Another article:
"A whistleblowing professor has lifted the lid on what he brands the "corrupt" exam system at universities in which lecturers are being pressured to pass underperforming students"

www.independent.co.uk/news/education/education-news/university-lecturers-pressured-to-make-sure-nobody-failed-exams-7834908.html

@Decormad38 oh I have got you now! Yeah I don't think any country is alone now, although I never heard of it when I was Uni in NZ back in the early 2000s but I guess with the rise of the internet and the like.

I was about to say my mum got done for plagiarism back in the 80s

Well exactly. The kids are cheating but the unis are cheating too. Some of them are basically giving good degrees away.

40% of kids at Salford got a first last year. Yes that’s right, 40% of kids at a low ranking uni, with very low entrance requirements, were good enough to get a first.

Please excuse me if I am a tad sceptical about this one.

@TinklyLittleLaugh bloody hell! 40%
National average is 25% and even that raises massive questions.
I always thought first is for like top 15.

mathanxiety, it's easier to pay for the essays as you don't normally show them to the lecturer. Not sure how you can get away with the thesis especially when it's checked by the internal and an external examiner.

. Sorry, sorry typo. 30% firsts at Salford. Which is surprising enough.

When I was essay marking back in the early 2000s I was told that whereas lecturers used to mark to the 2:2/ 2:2 borderline they were starting to mark to the 2:1/ first borderline and it was a concern then. I think it's got worse since students have started paying fees because there's an expectation that somehow you should get what you pay for.

Re. not having seen a dissertation before, you could just send the freelancer doing the work the sketch plans you've shown your tutor. It's not impossible. Second markers and external markers would only generally see a finished product and would not know how the student generally wrote. It would only really be if suspicions were raised and it went before a panel that they might dig around further.