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.

To the people praising her - how many of you would be happy with a nurse who'd cheated their way through their course? Would you want to be on the receiving end of their care

Or if you were trying to hire someone to do a job for you and paying good money for a service from a second rate cheater with their sketchy degree

Cheating finds its way through to a person's work and causes problems for the employer and lowers standards if enough people do it

I didn't praise her but I think people are overreacting. And so are you. Nurses have to undergo personal practical assessments as well as exams in controlled conditions. They can't buy their assessments from elsewhere.

I also think there is a difference between cheating on an essay and cheating on an assignment that counts towards the final grade. Cheating on the essay isn't big or clever but it's irrelevant in the scheme of things. Cheating on an assessment that counts towards the final grade is more serious and I would expect repercussions for that, but perhaps not being thrown off the course but certainly not having that count towards the final grade so you miss out. However I also would not expect an 18 year old's life to be ruined forever because of one silly mistake.

So yes, I do think a lot of you are being sanctimonious and holier than thou and as I said in my previous post I bet some of you copied from classmates at school or vice versa so glasshouses and stones come to mind.

Some supervisors manage to publish (in order to go up the paying scale you often need to show publications) without writing anything. All work is done by their students

Yes because obviously the students they're supervising are so clever they didn't need the actual expert supervision at all did they...? Or in fact are the supervisors the experts, who teaching has meant the students have learnt something and thus enabled them to be published with their supervisor co-authoring (perfectly normal and acceptable btw)

Why don't you read the thread on here about it? If international students can't speak English but turn in perfect essays then you do the maths.

Firstly, no one is saying that cheating doesn't go on. It does. The suggestion that universities turn a blind eye is the claim you cannot substantiate.

When marking an essay, it is done anonymously so a marker will have no idea who has written the essay, so impeccable English at the marking stage. We only find out who's written what adterwards, so

Secondly , certain south east Asian countries tend to prioritise grammar and formal written English over spoken English or informal writing, so it isn't surprising that students may have better writing than speaking skills.

Cheating on the essay isn't big or clever but it's irrelevant in the scheme of things. Cheating on an assessment that counts towards the final grade is more serious and I would expect repercussions for that, but perhaps not being thrown off the course but certainly not having that count towards the final grade so you miss out.

Did I miss that the essay wasn't being marked? Our students wouldn't be doing an essay and the academics wouldn't be marking it for nothing. All assignments count towards the module mark and all modules count towards the degree. This is exactly the same as cheating in an exam.

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

I find that quite difficult to believe.

Yes occasionally, or vice versa. But in my day most assessment was via exam, although I was the first year of GCSEs so we did have some coursework element (I prefer exams). And of course some people had help from their parents for their coursework (I didn't). I wonder how much "help" they had and how much "help" was actually doing it for them. I'm not at all surprised that the pendulum has swung back more to exams and controlled assessments.

Not sure why paying for help is dreadful but getting your parents to help isn't. Either it's your own work or it isn't.

Did I miss that the essay wasn't being marked? Our students wouldn't be doing an essay and the academics wouldn't be marking it for nothing. All assignments count towards the module mark and all modules count towards the degree

I don't know. When I was doing my A levels I wrote lots of essays that were marked but they didn't count towards the final result. Same at university, I wrote several essays a term but all assessment was via exams at the end of each year.

I wonder if this was the EPQ in which case it does count for something.

Whether you believe it or not is irrelevant, havingto. I guess those who cheat tend to justify it to themselves by believing that everyone is at it, but that really isn't the case.

Ahoy, it did exist in 2008.

I was working at a major university then and in March 2009 we had a student upload an assignment with a 91% (IIRC) match to a website called echeat.com.

It was someone doing his masters and the umbrage he took when we mentioned this "discrepancy" was obscene. I think the words he used were "my team would not use such a site", therefore confirming it wasnt his own work.

It might not have been around when you started your degree, but it would have been by the end.

I don't know. When I was doing my A levels I wrote lots of essays that were marked but they didn't count towards the final result.

If it wasn't an assessed piece, why would a cash strapped a level student spend 130quid on getting someone to write this for them. Surely they'd just dash something off and hamd it in?

titchy, I know one person whose supervisor hardly contributed to the work yet his name was first on the list of authors not even in the alphabetical order. Well, it's perfectly normal and acceptable but doesn't mean it's always ethical. There are dodgy students and there are dodgy lecturers.

I remember essay writing sites popping up on my online web searches in 2004, when I was genuinely looking for samples of work in order to compare and contrast my own essays' quality!

And no, I didn't buy any! Nor did I ever copy my mates' homework, or get help from my parents.

Can they actually write high quality essays?

I do think that higher consideration should be given for exams than written work. If a student fails every exam, is known not to show up to most lectures but somehow gets 60-70% in every essay as a lecturer I'd be suspicious. It is incredibly frustrating to see people who (quite clearly when you ask a simple question) don't understand the content of any of the modules graduate with the same grade as people who worked hard all the way through, never missed a lecture and can at the very least hold a decent discussion on every module they took.

My degree was 95% exam based, i came out with A high first, but even the day before the exams I couldn't have had a coherent conversation about any of my modules. My 2.1 standard coursework is a much better measure of my understanding.

2500 words? I would be p@ssed off that she can't manage that few words in the break and paid that much. If she gets caught she's out on her ear, does she realise that? OUT entirely, because there is absolutely no defence - she knows it's wrong, everyone knows it's wrong, the kids are warned what will happen to them as this is an epidemic.
Oh, and I know someone who paid for an essay to be done, was blackmailed by the essay writer AND THEN got pulled in by the tutor and booted off the course.

Some supervisors manage to publish (in order to go up the paying scale you often need to show publications) without writing anything. All work is done by their students

I was one of the students in this situation and I can assure you the supervisor has a massively important part in it. They don't want to publish a badly written paper full of useless work. They will have been providing supervision about the direction of the research, they probably came up with the idea for the project in the first place and they will have carefully proof read and edited the work. It would be a massive embarrassment to have their name associated with a second rate paper produced solely by an inexperienced grad student.

HomeMadeMadness, I do understand what you say. The other lady wasn't happy with her supervisor. Although he had supervised the work on the paper it looked as he was the one doing it and they just assisted. Well, as I remember, she was massively unhappy with him and doesn't keep in touch with him since. Things happen. I think she wanted on the paper to be at least equal but it didn't look like. Something like that. Obviously it touched her ego but if you put so much hard work into the paper then of course you want to be rewarded for it.

If she hasn’t handed it in, I would get her to redo it, with your help if available/necessary. Handing in work like this could get her expelled.

Can they actually write high quality essays?

Ive never actually seen one for definite , but academic standards officer at my last place assured me that they were generally awful.

I'm a history lecturer and have a PhD, MA in the subject and a BA in a closely related one. I could probably write a passable essay for most modern British history topics, but beyond that I'd be stumped. To do a decent job, properly researched and referenced - say 2:1 level - it would probably take me two days minimum. The op's daughter paid £130 quid and say the writer is getting 60 quid, they're earning under 4 quid an hour. To make it anyway worthwhile the essay writers are going to be taking essays outside their specialism and knocking them out at a fair rate of knots, knowing nothing of the course or the wider context.

Students are much better handing in something half arsed and getting a poor mark than paying for something dreadful and risking plagarism.

I know one person whose supervisor hardly contributed to the work yet his name was first on the list of authors

I suspect the person you know isn't being entirely honest about how much input the supervisor had, or they don;t appreciate the input given. Maybe this person should have a go at submitting something all by themselves and see how far they get.

Supervisors do not have a good publication record solely due to getting their students to do the work.

She was a PhD student so maybe things worked differently. I don't know.

I work at a university - it will probably get picked up by complex software!

I work at a university - it will probably get picked up by complex software!

Cut n' paste essays plagiarised essays yes, bought origunal essays aee far harder to detect, I've had suspicions on occasions but had no way of proving mispractice.

Also, where i wotk now, stuff is only run through plagarism software if the marker raises concerns as they won't pay for a full licence for turnitin. Sadly, i think there's a good chance she'll get away with it.

@Itssosunny doubt it as they must take loads of essay jobs and nobody can know everything about every subject! Most of it's probably copy and pasted anyway.

I don't think exams should be taken into higher consideration, yes they're important but I suffer from really bad anxiety and panic attacks and tend to perform worse in exams due to the strict nature of it, I've had panic attacks in them before and had to leave the room. (Really embarrassing)

I work really well doing assignments (and would never consider cheating in any way) as I can take my time and do it in a relaxing atmosphere with no strict time limit.

Is the OP's daughter at college then, not uni? If so, there's no reason to bloody cheat and college level, it's easy!!

I am an academic and I found a completed paper written by one of my students on an online cheat site (one where students share their papers rather than order papers) in the early 2000s.
Sadly for any students tempted to buy this paper, my questions were set anew each year and relied on criticising a particular research article; I chose new research articles each year, so last year's question would never come up again.
I know this doesn't help with papers that are written to order but this was pre-software that would check. I did, also, find two students' answers VERY similar in another assignment.
I've pulled up students for answers that either involve way too many quotes (not knowing how to cite/paraphrase) or wildly inconsistent writing style (easier to spot within a paper - maybe they had bought an essay but customised it - but also not that hard to spot between papers, especially where one is in very poor English and another isn't).