Cheating 'essay mills' could be criminalised
- Oops!Something went wrong.Please try again later.
Cheating “essay mills” could be criminalised, under plans being considered by the Government which would see perpetrators sent to prison.
Ministers have signalled they would be willing to back a private members’ bill which outlaws plagiarism and punishes those who profit from it.
It comes amid fears that the burgeoning essay mills industry - where students pay private companies to complete their university work for them - is threatening the quality of a British university degree.
The Department for Education (DfE) has now convened an expert group which will advise ministers on how best to tackle the issue of contract cheating, including legislative options.
“The Government is looking favourably on introducing legislation,” a source said. “They are taking this seriously.”
The academic standards watchdog, the Quality Assurance Agency (QAA) has long campaigned for a change in the law. In 2019, Lord Storey, Liberal Democrat education spokesman, submitted a private bill to ban essay mill services.
But Government officials are understood to be concerned that the wording of this bill might lead to students or their family members being criminalised.
Chris Skidmore, a Tory MP and former universities minister, said he has had several meetings with DfE officials to discuss his plans to move a private member’s bill outlawing essay mills.
“Michelle Donelan [the universities minister] agrees this is a real problem. She is looking for a way to do something that doesn't penalise students, they are the victims,” he said.
“We should focus specifically on companies operating for commercial gain and banning adverts. It just shuts off an avenue - by banning these sites online students are simply not able to access them.”
On Wednesday the QAA published a Government-backed “integrity charter” which over 100 British universities have signed up to as a way of signalling their intent to crack down on academic misconduct.
But Gareth Crossman, head of policy at the QAA, admitted that a charter alone will not solve the problem, adding that Government action is needed too.
He said the best indication of how popular essay mills are among students are the comparison sites which list over 900 different companies, with around 15 new ones added each month.
“If you have sites with 963 different essay mills, they add to that every month, about 15 new every month, that shows that the demand is there for that number to be commercially viable,” he said.
“Secondly it shows that this has gone from being underground and surreptitious to being normalised - this is ‘compare the market’ for cheating.”
Whilst universities already use complex anti-plagiarism software to detect the copying of academic texts, the process of contract cheating - students submitting paid-for essays as their own original work - means that examiners and markers are powerless to prevent foul play.
Ms Donelan said: “Degree fraud cheats both learners and employers and has no place at all in our higher education system.
“This Government is committed to tackling academic misconduct, and upholding the hard work of students, especially during this difficult time.”
According to the UK Top Writers site, the top three essay writing services in the UK are ukwritings.com, oxessays.com and stateofwriting.com.
The site says that essay services are “widespread on the web, offering custom written essays for students who are short on time, drowning in assignments, or just plain have too many responsibilities”.
It goes on to say: “When there’s so many to choose from, how can you choose the one who’ll deliver the best quality work? This is where these reviews come in. We’ve scrutinised more than 960 academic writing services that are available online, and ranked them in order of quality here.”
