Many students push off writing their papers and doing their assignments until they cannot avoid it any longer. Then they get discouraged when they only have a couple days, or sometimes hours, left to finish a long and menacing paper, so they look for someone who will write it for them.
There are many online services that write papers for students. Depending on the website the writers charge the student based on the amount of time they are allotted to complete the assignment and/or how many pages the paper has to be. These online writers help students ranging from high school students to students working on getting their Ph.D. The prices typically differ by grade level as well. The price for a paper can reach up to a couple of hundred dollars.
With their services, these writers promise to complete the assignment on time with great quality, sometimes even if the paper is due in as little as three hours. They usually have a 24 hour customer service hotline for those late nights where students try to do their homework last minute, but decide they just can’t do it. The writers that write the papers for students are typically college graduates themselves, and have experience writing academic papers.
Ethically what these writers are doing is wrong, but it is not unlawful. The students that reach out to these writers are cheating and plagiarizing and could be punished. The writers are making money off of students who do not want to do what it takes earn their diploma, degree, or Ph.D. They are trying to cheat the system by paying to have someone else do their work for them. Sometimes this slips by the teacher without being noticed; however, most of the time, the teacher will notice the change in the students’ writing style and catch the student using someone else’s work. The punishment for a plagiarized paper could be a zero for the paper or could ultimately lead to expulsion especially if the student has more than one plagiarism offense. Another way the student could get caught plagiarizing is by the content of the paper they turn in. If the content and the writing are done too well, and there are ideas included in the paper that were not discussed in class, the teacher may suspect foul play.
However, what many students don’t know is that these ghostwriters can turn in the papers they write and give the students to things like turnitin.com and when the student submits the paper, it will say 100% plagiarized. The writer of the paper has the right to claim it as their own even though they are giving it to someone else for payment.
According to The Atlantic, online cheating doesn’t stop here. There are also websites that will go as far as to login in under a student’s name to take an online final exam for them, promising to ace the test. There is also at least one website that will take an entire online course for a student under their name and pass the class with flying colors.
With students able to access this kind of next level cheating, how will employers know if a potential employee’s degree was well earned? The interview process may have to change so an employer knows if their potential employee knows how to do their job effectively.
