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.

Sorry, but how is it different to getting an essay written? Of course it's cheating.

And no, my mates and I didn't ever copy each other's homework. Did you?

For goodness sake, you're not a cheat for life because you do something silly in your teens!

Perhaps not, but mud sticks. If she's caught cheating chances are she will have it hanging over her for any future assignments, as people will expect her to do it again.

I used to earn a living my writing legal essays for people in the years below me! It's not great no but, if people still pass its great.

" couple of examples from marking health and social care assignments, one that started telling me about the spy shop in London, the essay was on 'health surveillance' so things like the film badges worn by radiographers, the other one was supposed to be an essay on the human respiratory system but included building regulations because the writer misunderstood, 'ventilation'."

So the students hadn't even read them through??!!

God I would be furious. How sneaky, lazy and unfair. YANBU to never give her another penny since she clearly can’t be trusted not to be a cheat. Hopefully the Uni will identify that she cheated and teach her a sharp lesson.

I was offered a job doing this. I initially thought it was proofreading, correction type stuff- it was regarding work done in my field. I don’t have a problem with students writing a draft and paying to help someone polish it.

When i found out it was writing the essay from scratch, including doing all the research, i declined immediately. To start it’s wrong, secondly for all that work the pay doesn’t look so great.

or let their friends copy theirs In my 3rd year of a degree I noticed that a newly handed back assignment had been taken from my bag whilst I was in the library. I assumed it had been photocopied and told my supervisor and the lecturer on that module. I was surprised as the content of the assignment was quite unique to me, wasn't really something that could be passed off.

But it must have been passed round a lot (it did get a very high mark) as the lecturer stood at the next hand in and asked quiet a few people if they would prefer a late demerit rather than expulsion for plagiarism!

I had no qualms about alerting the staff. I was pissed off at the theft!

It’s a massive industry and unlikely she’ll be caught.
IWould be stingy with her in the future though.

@CuriousaboutSamphire that's really shit yet a massive compliment at the same time😮
Your writing skills must have been famous!

Have you sat down with her and discussed why she felt the need to do this?

She ran out of time because she went away for the weekend.

Our children will always disappoint us if we set unreasonable standards for them.

It's hardly an unreasonable standard to expect someone to do a college course without cheating, I mean - you're supposed to be learning and you can't if you just buy the assignments.

I was a mature student Inspector

I wouldn't mind but I often shared stuff, just not whole assignments.

I suspect she has a very good chance of being caught. And if caught may well be kicked off her course. You are right to be disappointed in her.

She’s a cheat and a liar. I’d wait to see if the college picks it up, and if it doesn’t seem to have, I would inform them. This needs stopping now. She needs to earn her qualifications.

This is awful. My DS is currently working hard to complete an assignment (not university level though) and he has hit a wall. I spent last night trying to help him and I did worry it was some form of cheating. It hardly compares to this sort of thing!

The copying thing is interesting.

When I did my degree over 30 years ago, we all did the same dozen or so lab sessions on rotation. A small group of us basically shared out the background reading and research and the resulting write ups between us and swapped them with each other changing the wording slightly and using our own results as much as possible.

I don’t think any of us particularly considered it cheating, but it obviously was. The most moral outrage I felt was when someone who had got 6 for a lab wanted to swap it for one of my 9s.

Maybe the future will be more exam-based stuff.

@CuriousaboutSamphire I am now too. You must have been fuming! Glad the lecturers acted. It could end up really badly if they didn't kr you wouldn't tell them.

Luckily my grammar is famous for being bit off😂 Though I make up for it with a context (getting 70+ in assignments). I would be asking for people who stole mine to be given a fail tbh. They would be easy to track due to my odd syntax😂

Well, basically she's a cheat and totally irresponsible. YANBU to march her to her college to confess what she's done, and discuss what happens next with her college tutor.

She needs to learn about taking responsibility, and personal ethical integrity.

Actually, IMO, pupils & students who cheat like this should be expelled. Short sharp lesson.

But in the long run, she's mainly cheating herself. future, no employer will care about her results for tis assignment or the module. However, they will care about what she actually knows - and she won't know this material and if she keeps up with this stupid short-sighted attitude to her life education, she'll get stuck.

@Rosesaredead Are you joking? 'Good for her' 'Using her initiative' ?!

Imagine if OP's daughters degree was something like medicine, she could end up practicing NOT KNOWING her degree at all and potentially putting peoples lives at risk.

OP If caught, and she very likely will be as I've watched a documentary recently on these 'cash for essays' and £130/$ often means low quality work that ISN'T original, she will be expelled and as far as I know that's every university's policy.

I would be ashamed and as a student myself I would be PISSED if I found out a friend had done so and managed to get away with it. She doesn't deserve her degree.

Maybe she should stop pissing about on holidays when she has work to do? She could have knocked an essay of that size out within 3 days (including revision and prep!)
Lazy cow.

My best friend at uni did this with her final dissertation, this is back in 1995. After almost 3 years of doing well, she caught the ‘fuck it’ gene in our last year and paid someone to write her final essay. I don’t think she even read it before submitting it. Of course, she was caught and was utterly devastated and sadly didn’t graduate with us all. The frustrating thing is, she was really clever, but prioritised raving over studying, and paid the ultimate price. She was allowed to rewrite her dissertation in the following academic year and only just scraped through with a lower class third which really affected the beginning of her work career. Please show her this. It’s just not worth it.

@Bowchicawowow I hit the wall few times. Once I just deleted 1000 words and started all again. It worked. Another time, I took a day off and then when I came back I disected the question again and from a different angle.
Don't wprry. Getting help when you hit the writing block like discussing it with someone so maybe the different perspective helps is not cheating if the other person doesn't write it for you imho.
Hope he got over it now. It's really frustrating

Quite aside from the cheating aspect, I highly doubt this essay was set on the Thursday before the long weekend with a deadline for midnight on Bank holiday Monday! I suspect she’d had a fair bit longer to produce it. In fact given the OP describes it as a research thing im damn sure there would have been longer. And 2500 words really isn’t very much. I would question whether she’s up to doing the course. A long weekend away wouldn’t prevent a reasonably able student from completing such a project

If that were my DD, I would tell the college.

She needs to learn a lesson now, rather than later. She is much too young to think the rules can be ignored with impunity.

I know what you mean Bow. DD chatted to me about her A level and even degree essay ideas, and I talk about things like looking at books from a feminist slant, or even just giving her more mature ideas to consider, and I’ve been a bit worried when she’s incorporated them into an essay.

She got a first once, researching and writing up something that was basically my original idea. I’ve never even studied the subject so was just chatting shit to her.

I always wonder if this is how some of the international students with very poor English manage to pass their courses ...