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.

It is a 2500 word essay so hardly her dissertation. She would be better off just failing too hand it in.

I have taught at Unis and I don't think they would catch it if it is custom written. It won't come up on turnitin unless parts of the text have been used before. A tutor who knows your DD personally might notice that the level doesn't match her comments in class (if she is making them). I'm not aware of style match checkers that get run automatically on all the pairs of submitted works students turn in - though this might exist, I suppose.

Is there good money in this?

Not really. OP's daughter paid £130 for 2,500 words. Writer will be getting (probably) less than half of that. Say £60. Obviously depends what the topic is but you'd have to put in the effort of reading up on the subject and creating a decent essay of Uni standard. At least 4 hours, £15 an hour. More than minimum wage, but not megaloads.

There are hundreds of these companies and they are blatant about what they do. Some will say that they offer specimen answers, or model essays, and that students can then go off and use that as a base for their own original work. Yeah right. They are well aware that work bought as an "example" will be handed in as the student's own work.

I've reported someone for this too. Had an email through a freelancing platform - not an essay mill site - asking if I'd write a dissertation for a student. He said he was very local to me and it would be handy to pass over notes. His subject topic was very niche and it just so happens that one of the mums I know through school lectures in a similar topic. So I texted her. She knew exactly who he was and I forwarded all emails to her. He was hauled up in front of the University court or whatever, but said he was just asking for a model answer to base his work on. They didn't really believe him but because he'd not got as far as actually turning in my work as his own, he stayed on his course. AFAIK though he had to attend a Viva to defend his dissertation against three of the staff, which is exceptionally unusual for an undergrad. Because they knew he was a cheat.

@Mindy - I said 'audience' as I see it has morphed into a business. Would you rather I said clients?

FWIW we were given 15k words worth of assignments with 3 exams to be handed in within 3 weeks. More than the dissertation! The jump from y1 to y2 was for us huge and whereas in y1 you had a "summary" class at the end of each topic which roughly spelled out the essay for you (making those of us who had bothered to work hard on it in advance feel cheated) this didn't happen in y2, so when we (the hard workers) had all been told to "calm down or burn out" and began to wait for this 'summary' they stopped doing it. I honestly think Uni's don't always work well for their students - we had a huge cohort of parents but the lack of organisation meant we were often penalised because of it.

My best friend’s daughter got caught for “auto-plagiarism” - she used parts of one of her own assignments (that had been through turnitin) for another assignment, but failed to list it in her references, even though it was her own work. It was touch and go while they investigated, and eventually deducted 15% of her marks for that assignment, which took it down a grade. She was lucky and I’ve been telling all the uni students I know about it since, as none of them were aware of auto-plagiarism

That’s utterly ridiculous! 15% for using her OWN work. Madness.

OP. I can’t believe your biggest issue here is the money. I’d be focusing on the more important things like honesty & integrity. Pride in EARNING her qualification not buying it...

First page poster, it's not illegal for plagiarism in NZ (as someone who went to Uni in NZ)

Anyway, don't dob her in, it could have huge consequences for your relationship. At the end of the day it is not medicine, engineering or law, otherwise I would have a very different opinion.

If she gets caught (and likely she will) she will have a learnt a very valuable lesson in life. It also may mean she comes to the conclusion that she does / or does not want to continue with the course.

OP. I can’t believe your biggest issue here is the money. I’d be focusing on the more important things like honesty & integrity. Pride in EARNING her qualification not buying it...

Yeah this, I would feel so disgusted at the premeditated intention to cheat in favour of going away for the weekend. It's pathetic. She knew about the assignment for how long? Why is she even doing the course?

I work at a university and they would expel her if they found this. The software check is only part of it, the tutor should be able to spot it's not her work. Sorry to say she could be in real trouble for this.

This is a new one on me and yes I would be beyond furious.

Of course the issue is that this is wrong rather than the money, of course it's not fair to other students, but the question is why did she do it? PPs can't jump on high horses about laziness and dishonesty when we don't know why, I suspect there are ongoing issues rather than a totally out of character one off.

I wouldn’t lend her or give her money for a long time.

And everyone can get off their high horse about plagiarism. Good bought essays are personally written Bloody hell! Really? You really think that just because someone personally wrote a piece it is OK?

That’s utterly ridiculous! 15% for using her OWN work. Madness. Not really. You have to turn in 100% original work. If you submit your own work more than once you are effectively asking to be let off some of it. It is double dipping, cheating! Think of it as asking your boss to accept work you did on Monday as work you did on Tuesday and then taking Tuesday afternoon off!.

They can be as turnitin friendly as they possibly can, but!
I've seen bought assignments... Firstly, the teacher will know...
Secondly. They are usually shit. Pass, merit at the very best.

If they find out, she might very well get kicked out of the course.

And if she paid £130 for 2500 words, she is getting that pass quality...

Yikes. She won’t go far in life if she does this! What a cheat. Perhaps the work/course is too hard for her and she isn’t good enough? Either way - shell will get expelled if found out and rightly so. Sorry op, I would feel the same if I were you.

Secondly. They are usually shit. Pass, merit at the very best

How can they NOT be rubbish? I'm a good writer. I make money doing it. But I know nothing about quantum physics, or mechanics, or 17th century Russian literature, or the economy of Malawi, or a whole host of other subjects. If you paid for an essay on one of those topics you'd get a grammatically correct essay with good spelling, sentence structure and punctuation.

But the content would show a lack of basic understanding - because for £60 or even £130 the writer isn't going to do enough reading to develop an in-depth understanding of the subject matter.

Wow, there are some shocking comments on here. It's no wonder some people cheat, given that their parents don't appear to have any morals either.

It isn't remotely sanctimonious to say that cheating is wrong! Would you want your dc's teachers to have obtained their qualifications in this way? Your doctor?

I'd be heartily ashamed if my dd did anything like this. However, I know it's common, and not just among international students. Unless Turnitin can be developed to check reliably for differences in style as well as plagiarism, I think the only way is for universities and colleges to switch most of their assessment back to exams and to do vivas on any dissertations etc. I know it would be incredibly resource-intensive to do vivas for all undergraduates and master's students, but otherwise, degrees will cease to be worth the paper that the certificates are printed on. Is that really what we want?

My dp did some work around the agencies that offer essay/thesis writing once. Apparently they get a lot of work from scientists who don’t have the language skills to present their work-either because they aren’t native speakers or they are native speakers but have poor literacy. It was £5000 and up for a PhD thesis in those days. Individually written by someone in the field. Often actual academics.........

I’m interested to know how you found out. Did she tell you? Could it be a sort of cry for help?

That’s utterly ridiculous! 15% for using her OWN work. Madness.

If she'd included it in her references it would have been fine, apparently.

I'm so shocked at the casual attitude people have to this. It utterly devalues university degrees and qualifications if they're being handed out to people who can barely string a sentence together, and for professional qualifications like medicine, is downright dangerous. Buying qualifications is what happens in fucked up corrupt countries - it's part of what keeps them fucked up

That’s utterly ridiculous! 15% for using her OWN work. Madness

Ludicrous. Why would you reinvent the wheel? This thread does indicate why it's better to use exams to assess students, though.

It isn't remotely sanctimonious to say that cheating is wrong! Would you want your dc's teachers to have obtained their qualifications in this way? Your doctor

Somewhat different to getting an essay written. I wonder how many of the holier than thou posters on this thread copied their friends' homework at school or let their friends copy theirs (which is also cheating, by the way).

If she'd included it in her references it would have been fine, apparently. Only sort of. I think that is a misinterpetation of what she was told, possbly to lessen the scale of the offence when explaining to her mum!

Has she just included a finding, a thought, an interesting line or two, and referenced it she would have been OK.

Had she just C+Pd a tranche of it then that is self plagiarism!

Perhaps the work/course is too hard for her and she isn’t good enough

Maybe she's 18, not very mature and didn't think straight? For goodness sake, you're not a cheat for life because you do something silly in your teens! And I really don't believe that you're all so whiter than white on this thread. Take your sanctimonious nonsense elsewhere.

(When I studied in Germany you had to show ID when you took university exams that counted for the final result)

It’s not the style of writing of a mediocre 18 year old. That raises suspicion.

Essay cheat companies are common and can be big business. They will only employ graduates who have graduated in that subject. You can actually order a 2:2 essay, if that's the grade you're expected to get. However, they insist that grammar and spelling are spot on, which is odd because one of the things that distinguishes a 2:2 is the grammatical mistakes. So anything that looks word perfect but appears to be artificially dumbed down is likely to be from them.

The frightening ones that I see ask for PhD chapters. An UG essay is bad enough but stuff that's supposed to be original research? I do wonder how this will affect unis in the long term. What happens when those who can write this stuff become much rarer and all you're left with is the cheats?