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UK clamps down on academic fraud with ‘essay mills’ ban

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Companies that help university and college students to cheat by ghostwriting essays are to be criminalised under new government proposals.

Running so-called “essay mills”, businesses that provide, arrange or advertise paid-for assessment-writing services will be banned in England, the Department for Education announced on Tuesday.

Alex Burghart, the newly-appointed minister for skills, said: “Essay mills are completely unethical and profit by undermining the hard work most students do. We are taking steps to ban these cheating services.”

The measures will be added to the Skills and post-16 Education bill that is currently making its way through parliament, a sign of continued concerns about the rise of academic fraud across the country.

The Quality Assurance Agency for Higher Education, the body tasked with upholding academic standards in universities, has identified more than 900 websites offering cheating services, up from 635 in 2018.

Some of essay mill companies rely on writers in Africa and the Middle East to produce works of plagiarism, while others boast that their writers attended elite UK institutions. Ministers have lobbied online payment and advertising platforms to ban such services from their sites.

On Tuesday, one website advertised that a mediocre 1,000-word undergraduate history essay would cost £124 at seven days notice. They also offered financing, allowing students to pay the cost over a year.

Another advertised that it would provide a 15,000-word piece of masters degree coursework in 60 days for £4,000. On its website, it also said that their service is not cheating and students should “use our custom essays as a guide to direct [their] studies”.

Former universities minister Chris Skidmore in February introduced a bill to implement a ban, calling essay mills a “rot that infects the very discipline of learning”.

Skidmore added that his bill “would not seek to criminalise students themselves” for using such services. He noted that other countries, particularly Australia, provide a model for the government as it seeks to crack down on the practice.

Officials told the FT that some companies have even blackmailed students, threatening to expose their customers’ cheating to their institutions if they do not pay up.

Universities UK, which represents vice-chancellors, welcomed the news. “While the use of essay mills by students is rare, all universities have codes of conduct that include severe penalties for students found to be submitting work that is not their own,” it said.

The National Union of Students said the companies “prey on students’ vulnerabilities and insecurities to make money through exploitation” and urged universities to roll out academic and pastoral support to stop the lure of such companies.

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Students warned against using 'essay mill' sites to write dissertations

Sites offering written-to-order essays may deliver poor work or none at all, say experts – and students risk failing their degrees

Students are being warned that using quick-fix “essay mill” websites puts them at risk of being scammed out of hundreds of pounds, as well as failing their degree if they are caught cheating.

Experts have warned of a spike in websites taking students’ money in exchange for bespoke essays and then disappearing, not delivering work on time, or providing poor quality papers. The National Union of Students (NUS) said they prey on the vulnerabilities and anxieties of students to make money.

There are more than 100 essay-mill websites in operation in the UK, according to a report from the independent university regulator, the Quality Assurance Agency (QAA). They offer written-to-order essays, charging varying amounts from hundreds to thousands of pounds based on deadline, topic and length.

Sorana Vieru, the NUS vice-president for higher education, said they homed in on “students’ fears that their academic English and their referencing may not be good enough”. She added: “We would urge those who are struggling to seek support through their unions and universities rather than looking to a quick fix, and be aware that using these websites could cost not only money but jeopardise their qualifications.”

The NUS added that it was easy for these sites to “con” students.

Prof Thomas Lancaster, an associate dean at Staffordshire University and one of the UK’s leading experts on cheating, echoed these concerns. “There are horror stories out there about students who have paid for dissertations and essays that haven’t arrived, so they have nothing to hand in,” he said.

Lancaster added: “There are plenty of scams operating in the academic writing space and I’m sure that some people just set up essay writing services with the intention of closing them down without sending an order as soon as the money comes in.”

It comes as hundreds of thousands of students hand in final dissertations and essay projects this month. In the lead up to these deadlines many who have fallen victim to these fake sites have made desperate appeals online.

One student claimed their dissertation was due at the end of the month and the website that had promised to write it had been deactivated. “I had a dissertation purchase and I have lost all my information. The website doesn’t seem to exist and I am on a tough deadline to submit my work by end of this month,” they wrote on an essay scam website .

They added: “The websites are not accessible, neither are the email links they sent going through. I called PayPal, [and] they claim the account still exists. The telephone contact they have as well as what was sent to me as part of their email never goes through. Have these guys rebranded? Or have [I] been banned? Nothing seems to be coming out clear.”

Another student claimed the person they had paid £150 to write a 3,000-word essay for them had disappeared, leaving them with a tight deadline . They asked if any one else could help them, offering £200 but only when the work had been done. “Please contact me ASAP if you think you can help or if you have an offer,” they wrote.

These websites are now in their busiest period, with students handing in final-year projects and dissertations. The Guardian was able to access several dissertation-writing websites, many of which reported seasonal “price surges”. One website, which describes itself as a dissertation-writing service, said a dissertation would cost more this month and offered discounts in June and July. Another global website said it increased prices by 20% in April, but they had now fallen.

British institutions are currently free to set their own plagiarism policies. But the QAA recommended new laws to make it illegal to help students “commit acts of academic dishonesty for financial gain”. They suggested those in breach of this could be punishable with fines of up to £5,000.

Ministers announced a crackdown earlier this year, saying they constituted cheating. But three months on an amendment to the higher education bill to make selling essays illegal did not go through.

The Department for Education was unable to comment due to general election purdah rules . However, they sent a link to a statement released in February demanding universities and students create new sector guidance. They said this was expected to be made available for the beginning of the 2017-18 teaching year.

Simon Bullock of the QAA said: “The QAA is working with universities and student representatives on measures to identify and discourage the use of essay mills.”

Lancaster said students buying essays online were putting themselves in a risky situation as these sites “skirt around the law”. He added that people had “no comeback if what they pay for isn’t delivered or is of poor quality”.

He said he had also heard cases of students purchasing work and being blackmailed by sites. “They have been asked to send more money to avoid having their names handed over to their university.”

A spokesperson for the University of Bristol said: “To avoid any disciplinary procedures or being conned by fake sites, we urge students to seek support from lecturers, personal tutors and wellbeing services if they begin to feel overwhelmed. As a university we work with our students to guide them through the examination period and ensure they leave with the qualifications they have worked so hard towards.”

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https://educationhub.blog.gov.uk/2022/04/28/essay-mills-are-now-illegal-skills-minister-calls-on-internet-service-providers-to-crack-down-on-advertising/

Essay mills are now illegal - Skills Minister calls on internet service platforms to crack down on advertising

Skills Minister Alex Burghart has written to internet service platforms to make sure they know that essay mills - which facilitate cheating by helping academic writing, often by appearing to be legitimate - have been made illegal and to call on their support in making sure they can no longer advertise online. Here you can read that letter.

The Skills and Post-16 Education Bill has become law. Through this act, the Government has legislated for landmark reforms that will transform post-16 education and skills, including criminalising essay mills.

As you may know, Essay Mills are online platforms that facilitate contract cheating. Contract cheating happens when a third party completes work for a student which is passed off by the student as their own work. Many essay mill companies use marketing techniques which indicate they are offering ‘legitimate’ academic writing support for students. Reports also indicate that some essay mills seek to blackmail students who use these services. It is right that we have legislated against these insidious crimes.

It is now a criminal offence to provide or arrange for another person to provide contract cheating services for financial gain to students taking a qualification at a post-16 institution or sixth form in England, enrolled at a higher education provider in England and any other person over compulsory school age who has been entered for a regulated qualification at a place in England.

Similarly, it is now an offence for a person to make arrangements for an advertisement in which that person offers, or is described as being available or competent, to provide or arrange for another person to provide a cheating service. Importantly, the offence centres around the act of advertising to students, and for the offence to be committed it does not need to be seen by its target demographic.

There is now a strengthened, collaborative effort across the sector to tackle essay mills and we want you to be part of this campaign. Platforms such as yourself play an integral role in helping us to make the most effective use of the legislation; marketing and advertising are the lifeblood of any successful industry. We are aware that high numbers of essay mills have used your platform to promote their services to students in the past, paying for advertising to promote their companies. Essay mills are now illegal entities, and you should not carry their advertising. It is no longer a moral question; you will be facilitating an illegal activity. I ask you to do everything in your power to prevent the advertising these unscrupulous practices.

Removing essay mill access to online marketing will seriously hamper their efforts to target vulnerable students and I implore you to do so following the introduction of this legislation. We must now all work together to capitalise on it.

I hope that in writing to you today I have underlined the urgency of this issue and the important role that companies like yours play in stamping out essay mills once and for all and am sure I can be confident in your support.

Thank you for your support with this important matter.

Tags: cheating , essay mills , internet service platforms

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Buying College Essays Is Now Easier Than Ever. But Buyer Beware

Tovia Smith

Concern is growing about a burgeoning online market for essays that students can buy and turn in as their own work. And schools are trying new tools to catch it. Angela Hsieh/NPR hide caption

Concern is growing about a burgeoning online market for essays that students can buy and turn in as their own work. And schools are trying new tools to catch it.

As the recent college admissions scandal is shedding light on how parents are cheating and bribing their children's way into college, schools are also focusing on how some students may be cheating their way through college. Concern is growing about a burgeoning online market that makes it easier than ever for students to buy essays written by others to turn in as their own work. And schools are trying new tools to catch it.

It's not hard to understand the temptation for students. The pressure is enormous, the stakes are high and, for some, writing at a college level is a huge leap.

"We didn't really have a format to follow, so I was kind of lost on what to do," says one college freshman, who struggled recently with an English assignment. One night, when she was feeling particularly overwhelmed, she tweeted her frustration.

"It was like, 'Someone, please help me write my essay!' " she recalls. She ended her tweet with a crying emoji. Within a few minutes, she had a half-dozen offers of help.

"I can write it for you," they tweeted back. "Send us the prompt!"

The student, who asked that her name not be used for fear of repercussions at school, chose one that asked for $10 per page, and she breathed a sigh of relief.

"For me, it was just that the work was piling up," she explains. "As soon as I finish some big assignment, I get assigned more things, more homework for math, more homework for English. Some papers have to be six or 10 pages long. ... And even though I do my best to manage, the deadlines come closer and closer, and it's just ... the pressure."

In the cat-and-mouse game of academic cheating, students these days know that if they plagiarize, they're likely to get caught by computer programs that automatically compare essays against a massive database of other writings. So now, buying an original essay can seem like a good workaround.

"Technically, I don't think it's cheating," the student says. "Because you're paying someone to write an essay, which they don't plagiarize, and they write everything on their own."

Her logic, of course, ignores the question of whether she's plagiarizing. When pressed, she begins to stammer.

"That's just a difficult question to answer," she says. "I don't know how to feel about that. It's kind of like a gray area. It's maybe on the edge, kind of?"

Besides she adds, she probably won't use all of it.

Other students justify essay buying as the only way to keep up. They figure that everyone is doing it one way or another — whether they're purchasing help online or getting it from family or friends.

"Oh yeah, collaboration at its finest," cracks Boston University freshman Grace Saathoff. While she says she would never do it herself, she's not really fazed by others doing it. She agrees with her friends that it has pretty much become socially acceptable.

"I have a friend who writes essays and sells them," says Danielle Delafuente, another Boston University freshman. "And my other friend buys them. He's just like, 'I can't handle it. I have five papers at once. I need her to do two of them, and I'll do the other three.' It's a time management thing."

The war on contract cheating

"It breaks my heart that this is where we're at," sighs Ashley Finley, senior adviser to the president for the Association of American Colleges and Universities. She says campuses are abuzz about how to curb the rise in what they call contract cheating. Obviously, students buying essays is not new, but Finley says that what used to be mostly limited to small-scale side hustles has mushroomed on the internet to become a global industry of so-called essay mills. Hard numbers are difficult to come by, but research suggests that up to 16 percent of students have paid someone to do their work and that the number is rising.

"Definitely, this is really getting more and more serious," Finley says. "It's part of the brave new world for sure."

The essay mills market aggressively online, with slickly produced videos inviting students to "Get instant help with your assignment" and imploring them: "Don't lag behind," "Join the majority" and "Don't worry, be happy."

"They're very crafty," says Tricia Bertram Gallant, director of the Academic Integrity Office at the University of California in San Diego and a board member of the International Center for Academic Integrity.

The companies are equally brazen offline — leafleting on campuses, posting flyers in toilet stalls and flying banners over Florida beaches during spring break. Companies have also been known to bait students with emails that look like they're from official college help centers. And they pay social media influencers to sing the praises of their services, and they post testimonials from people they say are happy customers.

"I hired a service to write my paper and I got a 90 on it!" gloats one. "Save your time, and have extra time to party!" advises another.

"It's very much a seduction," says Bertram Gallant. "So you can maybe see why students could get drawn into the contract cheating world."

YouTube has been cracking down on essay mills; it says it has pulled thousands of videos that violate its policies against promoting dishonest behavior.

But new videos constantly pop up, and their hard sell flies in the face of their small-print warnings that their essays should be used only as a guide, not a final product.

Several essay mills declined or didn't respond to requests to be interviewed by NPR. But one answered questions by email and offered up one of its writers to explain her role in the company, called EduBirdie.

"Yes, just like the little birdie that's there to help you in your education," explains April Short, a former grade school teacher from Australia who's now based in Philadelphia. She has been writing for a year and a half for the company, which bills itself as a "professional essay writing service for students who can't even."

Some students just want some "foundational research" to get started or a little "polish" to finish up, Short says. But the idea that many others may be taking a paper written completely by her and turning it in as their own doesn't keep her up at night.

"These kids are so time poor," she says, and they're "missing out on opportunities of travel and internships because they're studying and writing papers." Relieving students of some of that burden, she figures, allows them to become more "well-rounded."

"I don't necessarily think that being able to create an essay is going to be a defining factor in a very long career, so it's not something that bothers me," says Short. Indeed, she thinks students who hire writers are demonstrating resourcefulness and creativity. "I actually applaud students that look for options to get the job done and get it done well," she says.

"This just shows you the extent of our ability to rationalize all kinds of bad things we do," sighs Dan Ariely, professor of psychology and behavioral economics at Duke University. The rise in contract cheating is especially worrisome, he says, because when it comes to dishonest behavior, more begets more. As he puts it, it's not just about "a few bad apples."

Felicity Huffman And 12 Other Parents To Plead Guilty In College Cheating Scandal

"Instead, what we have is a lot ... of blemished apples, and we take our cues for our behavior from the social world around us," he says. "We know officially what is right and what's wrong. But really what's driving our behavior is what we see others around us doing" or, Ariely adds, what we perceive them to be doing. So even the proliferation of advertising for essays mills can have a pernicious effect, he says, by fueling the perception that "everyone's doing it."

A few nations have recently proposed or passed laws outlawing essay mills, and more than a dozen U.S. states have laws on the books against them. But prosecuting essay mills, which are often based overseas in Pakistan, Kenya and Ukraine, for example, is complicated. And most educators are loath to criminalize students' behavior.

"Yes, they're serious mistakes. They're egregious mistakes," says Cath Ellis, an associate dean and integrity officer at the University of New South Wales, where students were among the hundreds alleged to have bought essays in a massive scandal in Australia in 2014.

"But we're educational institutions," she adds. "We've got to give students the opportunity to learn from these mistakes. That's our responsibility. And that's better in our hands than in the hands of the police and the courts."

Staying one step ahead

In the war on contract cheating, some schools see new technology as their best weapon and their best shot to stay one step ahead of unscrupulous students. The company that makes the Turnitin plagiarism detection software has just upped its game with a new program called Authorship Investigate.

The software first inspects a document's metadata, like when it was created, by whom it was created and how many times it was reopened and re-edited. Turnitin's vice president for product management, Bill Loller, says sometimes it's as simple as looking at the document's name. Essay mills typically name their documents something like "Order Number 123," and students have been known to actually submit it that way. "You would be amazed at how frequently that happens," says Loller.

Using cutting-edge linguistic forensics, the software also evaluates the level of writing and its style.

"Think of it as a writing fingerprint," Loller says. The software looks at hundreds of telltale characteristics of an essay, like whether the author double spaces after a period or writes with Oxford commas or semicolons. It all gets instantly compared against a student's other work, and, Loller says, suspicions can be confirmed — or alleviated — in minutes.

"At the end of the day, you get to a really good determination on whether the student wrote what they submitted or not," he says, "and you get it really quickly."

Coventry University in the U.K. has been testing out a beta version of the software, and Irene Glendinning, the school's academic manager for student experience, agrees that the software has the potential to give schools a leg up on cheating students. After the software is officially adopted, "we'll see a spike in the number of cases we find, and we'll have a very hard few years," she says. "But then the message will get through to students that we've got the tools now to find these things out." Then, Glendinning hopes, students might consider contract cheating to be as risky as plagiarizing.

In the meantime, schools are trying to spread the word that buying essays is risky in other ways as well.

Professor Ariely says that when he posed as a student and ordered papers from several companies, much of it was "gibberish" and about a third of it was actually plagiarized.

Even worse, when he complained to the company and demanded his money back, they resorted to blackmail. Still believing him to be a student, the company threatened to tell his school he was cheating. Others say companies have also attempted to shake down students for more money, threatening to rat them out if they didn't pay up.

The lesson, Ariely says, is "buyer beware."

But ultimately, experts say, many desperate students may not be deterred by the risks — whether from shady businesses or from new technology.

Bertram Gallant, of UC San Diego, says the right way to dissuade students from buying essays is to remind them why it's wrong.

"If we engage in a technological arms race with the students, we won't win," she says. "What are we going to do when Google glasses start to look like regular glasses and a student wears them into an exam? Are we going to tell them they can't wear their glasses because we're afraid they might be sending the exam out to someone else who is sending them back the answers?"

The solution, Bertram Gallant says, has to be about "creating a culture where integrity and ethics matter" and where education is valued more than grades. Only then will students believe that cheating on essays is only cheating themselves.

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Essay companies try to blackmail students by threatening to expose cheating, watchdog warns

The government has launched a series of measures to 'beat the cheats' on campus, article bookmarked.

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Essay-writing companies are trying to blackmail students by threatening to expose their cheating unless they hand over large sums of money, a university watchdog has warned.

The Quality Assurance Agency (QAA), which monitors standards in higher education institutions, has said that students who cheat by using “essay mills” put their careers and reputations “at risk”.

And some cheating students are being asked to pay even more to essay companies or risk being exposed to their institution for malpractice, Douglas Blackstock, chief executive of QAA, has said.

The warnings come as the education secretary launched a series of measures to "beat the cheats" using essay writing services at university, saying he has not ruled out making them illegal.

Online giants such as PayPal must stop processing transactions for essay mills as it is their “moral duty” to prevent practices which exploit young people, Damian Hinds has said.

Student news in pictures

Mr Hinds is calling on universities to get tougher on cheating and to consider the introduction of "honour codes" which would see students pledge not to use essay-writing services for assignments.

Students who know peers are cheating should also become whistleblowers, he said. “Nobody likes the idea of telling on your friends but there should be a culture which says it is not okay to cheat.”

Mr Hinds admitted that honour codes are unlikely to solve the issue on their own, but they could be used alongside more anti-cheating software and less dependency on essays to assess students.

The government action comes after YouTube deleted thousands of videos promoting academic cheating and Google removed hundreds of adverts for essay-writing services.

Mr Hinds said: "It is simply unethical for these companies to profit from this dishonest business which is exploiting young people and it is time to stamp them out of our world-class higher-education sector.

"I am determined to beat the cheats who threaten the integrity of our system and am calling on online giants, such as PayPal, to block payments or end the advertisement of these services – it is their moral duty to do so.”

The minister said the internet has seen “a black market in essay writing services spring up”, and he added that it is “likely” that the incidents of cheating has increased.

• 'Essay mills' should be made illegal, university bosses say

A recent study by Swansea University revealed a 15.7 per cent rise in the number of students around the world who admitted paying someone else to undertake their work between 2014 and 2018.

In 2016, the QAA found approximately 17,000 instances of academic offences per year in the UK. But the number of students using essay-writing services is thought to be much higher.

Mr Blackstock said: “Companies that try to entice students to buy so-called plagiarism-free essays pose a real threat to the academic integrity of our higher education.”

The watchdog chief called for the “unscrupulous operators” to be stopped in their tracks.

He added: “More worryingly, we have recently heard stories of essay companies attempting to blackmail students by threatening to expose them unless they hand over greater sums of money.”

Nicola Dandridge, chief executive of the Office for Students, the regulator, said: “The essay mills industry constitutes a cynical attempt to normalise cheating and it has no place in universities.

“Their operations can never be justified, are detrimental to the studies of those using them, and deeply unfair on the vast majority of students who complete their own work.”

Amatey Doku, from the National Union of Students (NUS), said: “[Essay mills] are exploitative organisations, which explicitly play on students’ vulnerabilities to make money.

“NUS is keen to explore what best practice can be developed to prevent students feeling like they are in a position where using such a service is their only choice.”

In September last year, university leaders called for essay mills to be made illegal in the UK.

The Department for Education has not ruled out legislation to ban these companies, Mr Hinds said.

Chris Hale, director of policy at Universities UK (UUK), said: “All universities have codes of conduct that include severe penalties for students found to be submitting work that is not their own.

“Such academic misconduct is a breach of an institution's disciplinary regulations and can result in students, in serious cases, being expelled from the university.

“Universities have become increasingly experienced at dealing with such issues and are engaging with students from day-one to underline the implications of cheating and how it can be avoided.”

A spokesman for PayPal confirmed the company was already reviewing the issue.

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Chris Stokel-Walker Hongen Zeng

UK students are being hit by a wave of essay-writing scammers

As students start their courses at universities across the country this month, they’ll log into their university-provided email accounts for the first time. It won’t take long before they are bombarded with a deluge of emails enticing them to hoodwink their tutors.

More than half a million emails, encouraging students to cheat on their essays by outsourcing them to essay writing services, were delivered directly to university inboxes over the last twelve months.

“We know companies are spamming students, but the whole scale of it does surprise me. Over 500,000 emails is a massive number,” says Thomas Lancaster, a senior teaching fellow at Imperial College London, and a leading researcher in the field of academic fraud. “It should be something that's on universities' radar, because it's encouraging students to cheat.”

The inbox of one Chinese student hints at the scale of the issue. Over the past year, one inbox received 97 emails from 55 different fraudulent essay writing services. Freedom of information requests submitted to every UK university show that since September 2017 a total of 528,000 emails from those 55 email addresses had been delivered to inboxes they control. Only 84 per cent of universities responded, and only 55 specific email addresses known to be behind such services were surveyed, so the real total is likely to be higher.

“These websites are a black market for students and undermine the quality of our degrees,” says Sam Gyimah, the universities minister “They are normalising cheating, potentially on an industrial scale, and I have been very clear that social media sites have a moral responsibility to take action against the promotion of these companies.”

“I expect universities to take steps to tackle this issue and to make it clear to students that taking short cuts only hurts them in the long run. Alongside the Office for Students, we will use every lever at our disposal to stamp out this harmful practice.”

By Joel Khalili

By Reece Rogers

By Celia Ford

By Brian Barrett

Read more: These are the best laptops for students in 2021

The half a million emails were targeted on the 115,740 students from China , Hong Kong and Taiwan studying at British universities. Chinese students make up the largest proportion of foreign students at UK universities, overtaking the number of students from all EU countries combined five years ago.

The emails – written in Mandarin – are direct and to the point. “The legendary paper writer to help you stay in school,” one company markets itself. They also offer a “no plagiarism guarantee” that the essay will make it through Turnitin, a plagiarism detection program many universities employ to prevent students copying sections of their work from the internet. The emails also boast of 100 per cent pass rates, and achieving a 2:1 standard 83 per cent of the time.

The standard charge for a 5,000 word essay is around 5,000 renminbi (£566), with discounts offered for longer pieces of work.

Most alarming is the blatant way they’re advertised. Many of the email addresses could be easily blocked by a simple spam filter as they contain Chinese phrases such as “lunwenuk” (essays UK) and “ukbestlunwen” (UK best essays).

“It’s fairly obvious from the types of emails they’re targeting certain types of students – perhaps those who might be vulnerable and willing to buy coursework,” Lancaster says. “The companies know that: they’re using languages that might not be picked up by spam filters, and phrases that the students would know.”

In an answer to the FOI request, Imperial College London – where Thomas Lancaster is based – says that none of its students received emails from the essay mills' accounts.

Newcastle University – from where the original corpus of 55 emails was obtained – received the most emails encouraging students to cheat. In all, 61,112 emails from the contentious email addresses arrived into student inboxes over the course of the year.

“Like many large organisations, we are plagued by spam emails. Just because a student receives an email does not mean they will act on it,” a spokesperson says.

“As a result of our robust essay checking service, seven students have been disciplined for using these services in the last six years. We stress the importance of academic integrity to all new students at induction.”

Second and third in the list weren’t too far behind. The University of Glasgow received 8,652 emails in the last three months, while the University of Nottingham received more than 34,000 emails in the last year.

Spokespeople for both universities say they have either banned or discouraged students using essay writing services, penalising and sanctioning students who use them. Both universities say the use of such services is rare, and condemn their use as cheating.

This is a comprehensive problem affecting most UK universities. Twenty three universities reported receiving more than 10,000 emails from the offending addresses in the last year, while only a third of universities that responded said they received no emails at all.

A spokesperson for Universities UK , an advocacy group for higher education, says: “Universities take plagiarism and cheating extremely seriously. Submitting work written by someone else is cheating and devalues the efforts of students who work hard to achieve their degrees.” The spokesperson declined to comment specifically on whether universities should be doing more to prevent these emails reaching students’ inboxes in the first place.

Read more: The sorry saga of the British school that innovated itself to death

But who is writing the essays some students are paying for? One man connected with an essay writing service advertised through the emails, who asked not to be named, says he started writing essays five years ago when he was a student in the UK.

“I’m an essay dealer,” he says. “You know car dealers, drug dealers? I’m an essay dealer.”

He claims to oversee 80 essay writers operating in the UK and abroad, who overall earn £226,000 a year. “We have many types of advertising methods,” he says. As well as emailing university student’s inboxes directly, companies also advertise their services through Chinese social networks including WeChat, Tencent and QQ.

The essay writer explains that he posts signs in Mandarin advertising his services in shops, Chinese restaurants, and even on university property, confident that they will not be understood by western academic staff.

“It’s one of these areas within the whole contract cheating industry that’s not being discussed,” says Lancaster. “I’ve heard of companies starting to call students on the phone. We already know advertising targets students on social media, and business cards are handed out. Spam email is one area they’re clearly having success with.”

“There’s no consequence for people like us,” the essay writer says. “The students have risks, if the tutors find out those assignments were written by someone else. But for people like us, there are no risks.”

He even claims that the business is beneficial to the UK. “We have many UK writers that write for us,” he says. “Some of them can’t find a good job. They want to sit at home and just write some essays and this way can help them afford their expenses. People like me provide the employment opportunity for them.”

Updated 21.09.18, 12:25: Imperial College London's statement about its students not receiving any email from essay-writing services was provided as an answer to an FOI request, not through a spokesperson.

This article was originally published by WIRED UK

Joel Khalili

Andy Greenberg

Reece Rogers

Amanda Hoover

Paresh Dave

Brendan I. Koerner

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How should universities handle cases of blackmail by essay mills?

Author 1 's' : '')>, daniel sokol.

Daniel Sokol is the founder of Alpha Academic Appeals

• Academic Integrity
• Essay Mills
• generative ai

Samir (not his real name) was an international student on a postgraduate degree at a UK university.

He had returned to university after years in employment and, unaccustomed to academic work and with imperfect English, he struggled with an essay.

He lived alone, away from his family, and had few friends.

In desperation, he searched the Internet for help and approached an essay-writing company.

A helping hand

At first, the relationship between Samir and the essay-writer, B, was pleasant.

B responded quickly to Samir’s queries, offering guidance, feedback and reassurance. He helped with Samir’s data analysis and wrote sections of text for him.

A week after their first interaction, B asked Samir for money to renew a subscription to software apparently necessary for Samir’s essay. Samir refused to pay the full cost but offered to contribute £50, which B accepted.

Samir then submitted the work.

Two weeks later, Samir received an e-mail from B. B explained that he had lost his job and was in dire need of money.

He described Samir as a friend, reminded him of the help he offered in Samir’s hour of crisis, and asked for £1,000.

Samir, who had already spent a similar sum on B’s services, told B he had little money himself and declined to pay. B asked for a lesser amount and observed that he held incriminating evidence about Samir.

Still, Samir declined and asked B to stop threatening him.

B eventually gave Samir an ultimatum of 2 hours, failing which he would inform the university of Samir’s cheating.

Samir believed B was bluffing.

B continued his countdown: “30 minutes to disclosure”. To show Samir he knew who to contact, he sent him a screenshot of the person in charge of research integrity at the university.

Samir ignored the threat.

That evening, B e-mailed the university, explained how Samir had cheated on his essay, and disclosed dozens of e-mail exchanges and draft documents.

Consequences

Following an academic misconduct process, during which Samir became so depressed that he required the support of a psychiatrist, Samir was expelled.

Under orders by the UK Visas and Immigration, he had to leave the UK. He was also required by his sponsor, who had funded his studies, to pay back £45,000. It was only then that Samir sought legal help.

This case differs from other cases of blackmail I have handled in two ways.

First, B made an initial request for payment of “software renewal”. That is a novel reason. The sum requested was small but its significance may lie in gauging the victim’s susceptibility to further demands for payment. I have had other cases where the essay mill sought payment for spurious reasons, such as “closing down the account”, but for higher sums.

Second, the blackmailer acted on his threat to inform the university. When I asked Samir about this, he said “I honestly thought he was bluffing, and so I just ignored him. I was so shocked when I found out he told the university. Had I known, I would have paid him.”

A proposal for universities

However challenging his personal circumstances, Samir was wrong to use an essay-writing service. Although he did not appreciate the gravity of using the service, Samir was aware that it constituted a breach of academic integrity. Yet, his error pales in comparison to the lamentable conduct of B who, in this case, achieved his spiteful goal of getting Samir expelled.

The incidence of blackmail may increase in the coming months. The rise of ChatGPT and other AI modules, which can produce essays in minutes at no or little cost, may reduce demand for essay mills and lead struggling writers to rely more on dirty tactics to boost income.

To discourage blackmail, universities should refuse “tip offs” of cheating without proof of identity by the reporter and if there is evidence of unconscionable conduct, such as threats and blackmail, directed at the student. Essay mill writers tend to work in the shadows and are reluctant to give away personal details.

This rule should apply to most cases but allow for exceptions. For example, it would be irresponsible to ignore the possible cheating of a final-year medical student as this could pose a danger to the public.

The rule should appear in the university’s regulations or guidance on academic misconduct and be accessible to students and the public. This is not inconsistent, in my view, with a commitment to high standards of academic integrity and a robust stance on cheating, nor is it condoning contract cheating. Universities should explain the perils of using essay-writing services, including the real risk of detection, immediate expulsion from the university without a degree, and damage to one’s employment prospects, but also convey its strong disapproval of any potentially criminal conduct by these companies and the institution’s refusal to become an accessory to extortion or blackmail.

Adopting this approach may well mean that some students will get away with cheating. It may even encourage a few misguided students, comforted by the university’s refusal to investigate anonymous or exploitative “tip offs”, to use essay mills. This is deeply regrettable but, in my view, the benefits outweigh the harms. The key benefit is that the approach should deter essay mills from engaging in flagrantly immoral, possibly criminal, conduct that can cause enormous distress to students, some of whom will already be vulnerable. Without change, it is only a matter of time before a student, mentally fragile and unable to withstand the pressure of blackmail, comes to serious harm.

The author thanks “Samir” for permission to use his story so that others may learn from it. Some other details have been modified slightly to maintain anonymity.

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Post list latest articles latest articles -->, is protest “free speech” or damaging to democracy, making horizon europe’s successor work for uk research, designing good charts to communicate higher education data, postgraduate quality will not be taken seriously until there is a national pg taught survey, a manifesto for unlocking pgt potential, home pgt numbers are falling and it is not clear why, taught masters degrees are one award but with many rules, lack of diversity in professional services leadership continues to be a problem, modelling the financial impact of recruitment variation, higher education postcard: encaenia, 5 responses to “ how should universities handle cases of blackmail by essay mills ”.

Anonymous disclosures aren’t new – we’ve had them for all of the 10+ years I’ve been involved in academic misconduct cases – though I agree essay mills pose an increasing welfare challenge.

However, I struggle to see how we can adopt a position of protecting students from potential blackmail by committing to turn a blind eye to cheating.

Education on the (real) risks has to be the way forward.

…it would be an interesting twist to the story if Samir now reported “B” to the Police for a clear case of blackmail which is a statutory offence under section 21(1) of the Theft Act 1968.

Thanx for these good suggestions.

I eschew using ‘black’ as a pejorative. In this case I prefer the term ‘extortion’.

Houghton, Frank and Houghton, Sharon (2018) “Blacklists” and “whitelists”: a salutary warning concerning the prevalence of racist language in discussions of predatory publishing, Journal of the Medical Library Association, volume 106, number 4, doi: http://dx.doi.org/10.5195/jmla.2018.490

Still students facing such exploitative services and being blackmailed. I know a student who is going through stress even not using their work. Just dear of sharing the professor details the scammer are blackmailing the student. What should the student do?

I know a student who’s blackmailed too,saying they will inform the university, guys what should this student do please?

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Sat / act prep online guides and tips, getting college essay help: important do's and don’ts.

College Essays

If you grow up to be a professional writer, everything you write will first go through an editor before being published. This is because the process of writing is really a process of re-writing —of rethinking and reexamining your work, usually with the help of someone else. So what does this mean for your student writing? And in particular, what does it mean for very important, but nonprofessional writing like your college essay? Should you ask your parents to look at your essay? Pay for an essay service?

If you are wondering what kind of help you can, and should, get with your personal statement, you've come to the right place! In this article, I'll talk about what kind of writing help is useful, ethical, and even expected for your college admission essay . I'll also point out who would make a good editor, what the differences between editing and proofreading are, what to expect from a good editor, and how to spot and stay away from a bad one.

Table of Contents

What Kind of Help for Your Essay Can You Get?

What's Good Editing?

What should an editor do for you, what kind of editing should you avoid, proofreading, what's good proofreading, what kind of proofreading should you avoid.

What Do Colleges Think Of You Getting Help With Your Essay?

Who Can/Should Help You?

Advice for editors.

Should You Pay Money For Essay Editing?

The Bottom Line

What's next, what kind of help with your essay can you get.

Rather than talking in general terms about "help," let's first clarify the two different ways that someone else can improve your writing . There is editing, which is the more intensive kind of assistance that you can use throughout the whole process. And then there's proofreading, which is the last step of really polishing your final product.

Let me go into some more detail about editing and proofreading, and then explain how good editors and proofreaders can help you."

Editing is helping the author (in this case, you) go from a rough draft to a finished work . Editing is the process of asking questions about what you're saying, how you're saying it, and how you're organizing your ideas. But not all editing is good editing . In fact, it's very easy for an editor to cross the line from supportive to overbearing and over-involved.

Ability to clarify assignments. A good editor is usually a good writer, and certainly has to be a good reader. For example, in this case, a good editor should make sure you understand the actual essay prompt you're supposed to be answering.

Open-endedness. Good editing is all about asking questions about your ideas and work, but without providing answers. It's about letting you stick to your story and message, and doesn't alter your point of view.

Think of an editor as a great travel guide. It can show you the many different places your trip could take you. It should explain any parts of the trip that could derail your trip or confuse the traveler. But it never dictates your path, never forces you to go somewhere you don't want to go, and never ignores your interests so that the trip no longer seems like it's your own. So what should good editors do?

Help Brainstorm Topics

Sometimes it's easier to bounce thoughts off of someone else. This doesn't mean that your editor gets to come up with ideas, but they can certainly respond to the various topic options you've come up with. This way, you're less likely to write about the most boring of your ideas, or to write about something that isn't actually important to you.

If you're wondering how to come up with options for your editor to consider, check out our guide to brainstorming topics for your college essay .

Help Revise Your Drafts

Here, your editor can't upset the delicate balance of not intervening too much or too little. It's tricky, but a great way to think about it is to remember: editing is about asking questions, not giving answers .

Revision questions should point out:

• Places where more detail or more description would help the reader connect with your essay
• Places where structure and logic don't flow, losing the reader's attention
• Places where there aren't transitions between paragraphs, confusing the reader
• Moments where your narrative or the arguments you're making are unclear

But pointing to potential problems is not the same as actually rewriting—editors let authors fix the problems themselves.

Bad editing is usually very heavy-handed editing. Instead of helping you find your best voice and ideas, a bad editor changes your writing into their own vision.

You may be dealing with a bad editor if they:

• Add material (examples, descriptions) that doesn't come from you
• Use a thesaurus to make your college essay sound "more mature"
• Add meaning or insight to the essay that doesn't come from you
• Tell you what to say and how to say it
• Write sentences, phrases, and paragraphs for you
• Change your voice in the essay so it no longer sounds like it was written by a teenager

Colleges can tell the difference between a 17-year-old's writing and a 50-year-old's writing. Not only that, they have access to your SAT or ACT Writing section, so they can compare your essay to something else you wrote. Writing that's a little more polished is great and expected. But a totally different voice and style will raise questions.

Where's the Line Between Helpful Editing and Unethical Over-Editing?

Sometimes it's hard to tell whether your college essay editor is doing the right thing. Here are some guidelines for staying on the ethical side of the line.

• An editor should say that the opening paragraph is kind of boring, and explain what exactly is making it drag. But it's overstepping for an editor to tell you exactly how to change it.
• An editor should point out where your prose is unclear or vague. But it's completely inappropriate for the editor to rewrite that section of your essay.
• An editor should let you know that a section is light on detail or description. But giving you similes and metaphors to beef up that description is a no-go.

Proofreading (also called copy-editing) is checking for errors in the last draft of a written work. It happens at the end of the process and is meant as the final polishing touch. Proofreading is meticulous and detail-oriented, focusing on small corrections. It sands off all the surface rough spots that could alienate the reader.

Because proofreading is usually concerned with making fixes on the word or sentence level, this is the only process where someone else can actually add to or take away things from your essay . This is because what they are adding or taking away tends to be one or two misplaced letters.

Laser focus. Proofreading is all about the tiny details, so the ability to really concentrate on finding small slip-ups is a must.

Excellent grammar and spelling skills. Proofreaders need to dot every "i" and cross every "t." Good proofreaders should correct spelling, punctuation, capitalization, and grammar. They should put foreign words in italics and surround quotations with quotation marks. They should check that you used the correct college's name, and that you adhered to any formatting requirements (name and date at the top of the page, uniform font and size, uniform spacing).

Limited interference. A proofreader needs to make sure that you followed any word limits. But if cuts need to be made to shorten the essay, that's your job and not the proofreader's.

A bad proofreader either tries to turn into an editor, or just lacks the skills and knowledge necessary to do the job.

Some signs that you're working with a bad proofreader are:

• If they suggest making major changes to the final draft of your essay. Proofreading happens when editing is already finished.
• If they aren't particularly good at spelling, or don't know grammar, or aren't detail-oriented enough to find someone else's small mistakes.
• If they start swapping out your words for fancier-sounding synonyms, or changing the voice and sound of your essay in other ways. A proofreader is there to check for errors, not to take the 17-year-old out of your writing.

What Do Colleges Think of Your Getting Help With Your Essay?

Admissions officers agree: light editing and proofreading are good—even required ! But they also want to make sure you're the one doing the work on your essay. They want essays with stories, voice, and themes that come from you. They want to see work that reflects your actual writing ability, and that focuses on what you find important.

On the Importance of Editing

Get feedback. Have a fresh pair of eyes give you some feedback. Don't allow someone else to rewrite your essay, but do take advantage of others' edits and opinions when they seem helpful. ( Bates College )

Read your essay aloud to someone. Reading the essay out loud offers a chance to hear how your essay sounds outside your head. This exercise reveals flaws in the essay's flow, highlights grammatical errors and helps you ensure that you are communicating the exact message you intended. ( Dickinson College )

On the Value of Proofreading

Share your essays with at least one or two people who know you well—such as a parent, teacher, counselor, or friend—and ask for feedback. Remember that you ultimately have control over your essays, and your essays should retain your own voice, but others may be able to catch mistakes that you missed and help suggest areas to cut if you are over the word limit. ( Yale University )

Proofread and then ask someone else to proofread for you. Although we want substance, we also want to be able to see that you can write a paper for our professors and avoid careless mistakes that would drive them crazy. ( Oberlin College )

On Watching Out for Too Much Outside Influence

Limit the number of people who review your essay. Too much input usually means your voice is lost in the writing style. ( Carleton College )

Ask for input (but not too much). Your parents, friends, guidance counselors, coaches, and teachers are great people to bounce ideas off of for your essay. They know how unique and spectacular you are, and they can help you decide how to articulate it. Keep in mind, however, that a 45-year-old lawyer writes quite differently from an 18-year-old student, so if your dad ends up writing the bulk of your essay, we're probably going to notice. ( Vanderbilt University )

Now let's talk about some potential people to approach for your college essay editing and proofreading needs. It's best to start close to home and slowly expand outward. Not only are your family and friends more invested in your success than strangers, but they also have a better handle on your interests and personality. This knowledge is key for judging whether your essay is expressing your true self.

Parents or Close Relatives

Your family may be full of potentially excellent editors! Parents are deeply committed to your well-being, and family members know you and your life well enough to offer details or incidents that can be included in your essay. On the other hand, the rewriting process necessarily involves criticism, which is sometimes hard to hear from someone very close to you.

A parent or close family member is a great choice for an editor if you can answer "yes" to the following questions. Is your parent or close relative a good writer or reader? Do you have a relationship where editing your essay won't create conflict? Are you able to constructively listen to criticism and suggestion from the parent?

One suggestion for defusing face-to-face discussions is to try working on the essay over email. Send your parent a draft, have them write you back some comments, and then you can pick which of their suggestions you want to use and which to discard.

Teachers or Tutors

A humanities teacher that you have a good relationship with is a great choice. I am purposefully saying humanities, and not just English, because teachers of Philosophy, History, Anthropology, and any other classes where you do a lot of writing, are all used to reviewing student work.

Moreover, any teacher or tutor that has been working with you for some time, knows you very well and can vet the essay to make sure it "sounds like you."

If your teacher or tutor has some experience with what college essays are supposed to be like, ask them to be your editor. If not, then ask whether they have time to proofread your final draft.

Guidance or College Counselor at Your School

The best thing about asking your counselor to edit your work is that this is their job. This means that they have a very good sense of what colleges are looking for in an application essay.

At the same time, school counselors tend to have relationships with admissions officers in many colleges, which again gives them insight into what works and which college is focused on what aspect of the application.

Unfortunately, in many schools the guidance counselor tends to be way overextended. If your ratio is 300 students to 1 college counselor, you're unlikely to get that person's undivided attention and focus. It is still useful to ask them for general advice about your potential topics, but don't expect them to be able to stay with your essay from first draft to final version.

Friends, Siblings, or Classmates

Although they most likely don't have much experience with what colleges are hoping to see, your peers are excellent sources for checking that your essay is you .

Friends and siblings are perfect for the read-aloud edit. Read your essay to them so they can listen for words and phrases that are stilted, pompous, or phrases that just don't sound like you.

You can even trade essays and give helpful advice on each other's work.

If your editor hasn't worked with college admissions essays very much, no worries! Any astute and attentive reader can still greatly help with your process. But, as in all things, beginners do better with some preparation.

First, your editor should read our advice about how to write a college essay introduction , how to spot and fix a bad college essay , and get a sense of what other students have written by going through some admissions essays that worked .

Then, as they read your essay, they can work through the following series of questions that will help them to guide you.

Introduction Questions

• Is the first sentence a killer opening line? Why or why not?
• Does the introduction hook the reader? Does it have a colorful, detailed, and interesting narrative? Or does it propose a compelling or surprising idea?
• Can you feel the author's voice in the introduction, or is the tone dry, dull, or overly formal? Show the places where the voice comes through.

Essay Body Questions

• Does the essay have a through-line? Is it built around a central argument, thought, idea, or focus? Can you put this idea into your own words?
• How is the essay organized? By logical progression? Chronologically? Do you feel order when you read it, or are there moments where you are confused or lose the thread of the essay?
• Does the essay have both narratives about the author's life and explanations and insight into what these stories reveal about the author's character, personality, goals, or dreams? If not, which is missing?
• Does the essay flow? Are there smooth transitions/clever links between paragraphs? Between the narrative and moments of insight?

Reader Response Questions

• Does the writer's personality come through? Do we know what the speaker cares about? Do we get a sense of "who he or she is"?
• Where did you feel most connected to the essay? Which parts of the essay gave you a "you are there" sensation by invoking your senses? What moments could you picture in your head well?
• Where are the details and examples vague and not specific enough?
• Did you get an "a-ha!" feeling anywhere in the essay? Is there a moment of insight that connected all the dots for you? Is there a good reveal or "twist" anywhere in the essay?
• What are the strengths of this essay? What needs the most improvement?

Should You Pay Money for Essay Editing?

One alternative to asking someone you know to help you with your college essay is the paid editor route. There are two different ways to pay for essay help: a private essay coach or a less personal editing service , like the many proliferating on the internet.

My advice is to think of these options as a last resort rather than your go-to first choice. I'll first go through the reasons why. Then, if you do decide to go with a paid editor, I'll help you decide between a coach and a service.

When to Consider a Paid Editor

In general, I think hiring someone to work on your essay makes a lot of sense if none of the people I discussed above are a possibility for you.

If you can't ask your parents. For example, if your parents aren't good writers, or if English isn't their first language. Or if you think getting your parents to help is going create unnecessary extra conflict in your relationship with them (applying to college is stressful as it is!)

If you can't ask your teacher or tutor. Maybe you don't have a trusted teacher or tutor that has time to look over your essay with focus. Or, for instance, your favorite humanities teacher has very limited experience with college essays and so won't know what admissions officers want to see.

If you can't ask your guidance counselor. This could be because your guidance counselor is way overwhelmed with other students.

If you can't share your essay with those who know you. It might be that your essay is on a very personal topic that you're unwilling to share with parents, teachers, or peers. Just make sure it doesn't fall into one of the bad-idea topics in our article on bad college essays .

If the cost isn't a consideration. Many of these services are quite expensive, and private coaches even more so. If you have finite resources, I'd say that hiring an SAT or ACT tutor (whether it's PrepScholar or someone else) is better way to spend your money . This is because there's no guarantee that a slightly better essay will sufficiently elevate the rest of your application, but a significantly higher SAT score will definitely raise your applicant profile much more.

Should You Hire an Essay Coach?

On the plus side, essay coaches have read dozens or even hundreds of college essays, so they have experience with the format. Also, because you'll be working closely with a specific person, it's more personal than sending your essay to a service, which will know even less about you.

But, on the minus side, you'll still be bouncing ideas off of someone who doesn't know that much about you . In general, if you can adequately get the help from someone you know, there is no advantage to paying someone to help you.

If you do decide to hire a coach, ask your school counselor, or older students that have used the service for recommendations. If you can't afford the coach's fees, ask whether they can work on a sliding scale —many do. And finally, beware those who guarantee admission to your school of choice—essay coaches don't have any special magic that can back up those promises.

Should You Send Your Essay to a Service?

On the plus side, essay editing services provide a similar product to essay coaches, and they cost significantly less . If you have some assurance that you'll be working with a good editor, the lack of face-to-face interaction won't prevent great results.

On the minus side, however, it can be difficult to gauge the quality of the service before working with them . If they are churning through many application essays without getting to know the students they are helping, you could end up with an over-edited essay that sounds just like everyone else's. In the worst case scenario, an unscrupulous service could send you back a plagiarized essay.

Getting recommendations from friends or a school counselor for reputable services is key to avoiding heavy-handed editing that writes essays for you or does too much to change your essay. Including a badly-edited essay like this in your application could cause problems if there are inconsistencies. For example, in interviews it might be clear you didn't write the essay, or the skill of the essay might not be reflected in your schoolwork and test scores.

Should You Buy an Essay Written by Someone Else?

Let me elaborate. There are super sketchy places on the internet where you can simply buy a pre-written essay. Don't do this!

For one thing, you'll be lying on an official, signed document. All college applications make you sign a statement saying something like this:

I certify that all information submitted in the admission process—including the application, the personal essay, any supplements, and any other supporting materials—is my own work, factually true, and honestly presented... I understand that I may be subject to a range of possible disciplinary actions, including admission revocation, expulsion, or revocation of course credit, grades, and degree, should the information I have certified be false. (From the Common Application )

For another thing, if your academic record doesn't match the essay's quality, the admissions officer will start thinking your whole application is riddled with lies.

Admission officers have full access to your writing portion of the SAT or ACT so that they can compare work that was done in proctored conditions with that done at home. They can tell if these were written by different people. Not only that, but there are now a number of search engines that faculty and admission officers can use to see if an essay contains strings of words that have appeared in other essays—you have no guarantee that the essay you bought wasn't also bought by 50 other students.

• You should get college essay help with both editing and proofreading
• A good editor will ask questions about your idea, logic, and structure, and will point out places where clarity is needed
• A good editor will absolutely not answer these questions, give you their own ideas, or write the essay or parts of the essay for you
• A good proofreader will find typos and check your formatting
• All of them agree that getting light editing and proofreading is necessary
• Parents, teachers, guidance or college counselor, and peers or siblings
• If you can't ask any of those, you can pay for college essay help, but watch out for services or coaches who over-edit you work
• Don't buy a pre-written essay! Colleges can tell, and it'll make your whole application sound false.

Ready to start working on your essay? Check out our explanation of the point of the personal essay and the role it plays on your applications and then explore our step-by-step guide to writing a great college essay .

Using the Common Application for your college applications? We have an excellent guide to the Common App essay prompts and useful advice on how to pick the Common App prompt that's right for you . Wondering how other people tackled these prompts? Then work through our roundup of over 130 real college essay examples published by colleges .

Stressed about whether to take the SAT again before submitting your application? Let us help you decide how many times to take this test . If you choose to go for it, we have the ultimate guide to studying for the SAT to give you the ins and outs of the best ways to study.

Anna scored in the 99th percentile on her SATs in high school, and went on to major in English at Princeton and to get her doctorate in English Literature at Columbia. She is passionate about improving student access to higher education.

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Students who cheat don’t just have to worry about getting caught. They risk blackmail and extortion

Director, Academic Integrity, Torrens University Australia

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Kristina Nicholls does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.

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When students use a commercial contract cheating service, getting caught by their lecturers is just one of many serious consequences that could damage them and those who trust them. They also expose themselves to blackmail and extortion. Despite these risks, one in ten students at Australian higher education institutions have used a commercial cheating service to complete an assessment, according to survey findings presented at the inaugural Australian Academic Integrity Network Forum 2021 (AAIN) hosted by Torrens University.

Read more: 1 in 10 uni students submit assignments written by someone else — and most are getting away with it

With sophisticated artificial intelligence and indeed sinister forces coming into play, there is a growing urgency for higher education institutions to act on this increasing threat to academic integrity. The threat isn’t just to the reputation of institutions. It also places students at risk.

When students fill in their credit card number to complete a purchase from a contract cheating service, they are doing business with unscrupulous gremlins. They risk heading down a sinister black hole of extortion and blackmail using the threat of exposure to their university or employer.

Services have found a new income stream

Extortion is the new name of the game. Contract-cheating gremlins have turned to blackmail as an ongoing source of income from students. They threaten to tell the university the student has bought an assignment unless the student pays up.

Students can be blackmailed even after finishing their degrees when the gremlins threaten to expose their cheating behaviour to employers.

If the student refuses to pay up, then the gremlins get to work on destroying their credibility. The university can revoke the degree the student “earned”. The student loses their qualification and potentially their career and suffers reputational damage and financial loss.

Contract cheating starts off as a rational approach to getting an assignment done quickly and easily. As the student descends the morality ladder, the lines between right and wrong become blurred. The student who engages in academic misconduct is laying the foundations for unethical conduct in the workplace.

There is strong evidence that cheating as a student can lay the foundations for unethical behaviour in life and as members of society.

When the US audit watchdog fined KPMG Australia A$615,000 following major cheating in its workplace, it revealed the dangers of the normalisation of these practices in society. Similarly, ASIC is suing the ANZ Bank for breaching the Credit Act by allegedly paying commissions to unlicensed third parties who referred borrowers to the bank for loans. Bank representatives overlooked these actions in an attempt to achieve sales targets for bonuses.

Gremlins are smart. They advertise their services as assignment help and tutors 24/7, in an attempt to normalise the practice of cheating.

Students then unknowingly open themselves up to a raft of offences, including misrepresentation, fraud, forgery and financial advantage from crime. When a student submits a bought assignment and completes the cover sheet stating that it’s their own work, it could be considered fraud because they are making a false or misleading statement. The financial advantage from this action would be the avoidance of retaking a subject and saving on course fees.

It’s potentially an act of forgery when a student submits a fabricated assignment and the university considers it to be original work, legitimately created by the student. So far no students have been charged with fraud for submitting a contract-cheated assessment in Australia.

Read more: Artificial intelligence is getting better at writing, and universities should worry about plagiarism

What is being done about cheating?

The Australian government’s introduction of anti-cheating laws in 2020 offers some hope of reining in the gremlins. The first successful prosecution by the higher education regulator, the Tertiary Education Quality and Standards Agency (TEQSA), resulted in the blocking of two illegal cheating websites.

The new law also makes the promotion and selling of contract cheating services illegal. Penalties include up to two years’ jail and a fine of $110,000.

By their very nature, these services are not exemplars of integrity and ethical behaviour. They blackmail their customers and exploit the so-called “academic” writers they employ. They are now also recruiting students to on-sell their services, exposing them to the risk of a criminal record.

Read more: Universities unite against the academic black market

Individuals make a significant investment in their education. But if they turn to cheating, their actions can have far-reaching consequences for their lives. They also harm those around them – their families, partners, employers and society in general.

While the AAIN Forum identified some strategies to encourage students to rethink cheating, it is critical that we create a robust culture of academic integrity across our institutions. Appreciating the true value of a well-earned degree will be just as important as the law in keeping the cheat gremlins at bay.

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Has anybody been blackmailed by an essay service website?

Jonasbros 1 | 1   Apr 22, 2022 | #1 I have been a user of some essay writing services.(Many years before) The experiences are generally good/ satisfying my need. However, recently, I am worrying that one of the websites I used might blackmail me as it knows my name(through payment information) and my ip address(hence most likerly my uni). I am wondering whether someone has experienced a backmail after he or she was satisfied with the orders.( the most blackmailing (extortion) cases here on this website are about asking for a refund). Also, I am wondering what happen when a service is running out of business (like that elephant essay one). Will it start to blackmail its past customers when its reputation is no longer important?

FreelanceWriter 6 | 2,550   FEATURED ☆☆☆   Freelance Writer Apr 23, 2022 | #2 I am wondering whether someone has experienced a backmail after he or she was satisfied with the orders.( the most blackmailing (extortion) cases here on this website are about asking for a refund). If you think about it, you've already sort of answered your own question. Most blackmailing situations arise when a shady company -- usually one with a 100% refund-if-not-satisfied "guarantee" -- that ONLY provides horrible work that never satisfies any of its first-time/last-time customers responds to totally justified refund demands with threats to report those customers to their schools if they don't cancel their payment disputes. Even these rip-off sites don't typically pop up out of nowhere with blackmail demands of clients who aren't pursuing refunds from the company. They use blackmail more as a way of keeping money they didn't really earn than as a way of actively chasing previous customers for more money. That's not to say they couldn't be simultaneously engaged in other shady or criminal schemes; but that would much more likely involve selling your credit card # and/or ID info to brokers, etc. They probably wouldn't be waiting for all of their customers' info to go stale before digging through their old payment and ID info years later to try to find and blackmail them. Even if you were inclined to being a blackmailer, that would be about the dopiest and most inefficient and unsuccessful way you could possibly do it. Legit companies (and writers) don't blackmail anybody. Think about it: Could you actually picture someone diligently working for hours to make deadlines on high-quality essays that would most likely qualify for very high grades also working a scam as a blackmailer? Those ways of earning a living are usually mutually exclusive, because the types of people who become predatory criminals usually just aren't also the types of people inclined to sit at a desk all day researching and writing academic essays. If you were going to try to rob people, why would you waste your time also writing the kinds of essays that customer would be happy to receive? That takes a lot of time, and effort, and a skillset that most criminals probably lack. At most, they'd send you some garbage pasted together from Wiki in 10 minutes if essay services were nothing but a "front" for a blackmail scheme; or they wouldn't bother sending you anything once they had your info. So, just the fact that you received good work from them should probably be enough for you not to have to worry that they're suddenly going to blackmail you out of the blue. A company with writers on one floor, billing department on another floor, and a blackmailing department in the basement just isn't anybody's business model. (Nor are there really any brick-and-mortar essay companies with "offices" and rooms of on-site writers, in the first place, but that's an entirely different topic.)

noted 6 | 1,241 ☆☆☆☆   Apr 23, 2022 | #3 I have not come across any cases of graduated students who have been blackmailed by an essay compan or companies. The blackmail scenario seems to work only on enrolled students and not graduates. If compared to the recent Varsity Blues scandal, only active students have a lot to lose if found out as accomplices to a crime. Do not misconstrue my statement. Academic writing assistance is not a crime provided the student uses it as a model paper. We do not control the results of what happens when it is submitted for a grade. The companies that go out of business do not normally chase after previous clients. That is not to say that some might do that in the future. Let's not give them any ideas now. International data privacy laws are in place to protect the students globally. However, protecting your privacy starts with you. Avoid using bank and credit cards when you can. Prepaid cards are fast becoming an option when it comes to digital payments. These seem to have a better cloaking system in terms of protecting your information. Having said these things, I cannot assure you that you won't be blackmailed in the future. I will not worry needlessly about it for now. Not all companies are blackmailers. You may have chanced upon an honest one for all you know. If you tell us what company you dealt with, we might be able to put your mind at ease (or not) depending upon what we know about it. Can you tell us the company name? The opinions are that of the author's alone based on an individual capacity. Opinions are provided "as is" and are not error-free.

OP Jonasbros 1 | 1   Apr 23, 2022 | #4 @noted @FreelanceWriter It is one of the websites that popped on the first page if you googled writing service( not including those ads) Thank you so much for your response

LawEssayUK 1 | 26   Freelance Writer Apr 23, 2022 | #5 @Jonasbros A newly created profile just in the nick of time. Another log-in for @noted @FreelanceWriter to memorise. It's just so obvious that @FreelanceWriter rather than addressing elementary grammatical errors on his website, chooses to salvage his reputation (such as it is) by having a three way conversation with himself. Regular visitors to this site can surely see though him. He doesn't even try to be subtle about it. I referred elsewhere to the photograph strategically placed on his website by Professional Services which is straight out of thinkstock now called iStock. Where are his qualifications listed? Non practicing attorney or practicing idiot to use USA spelling. So @Jonas I suggest you google Con Artist.

FreelanceWriter 6 | 2,550   FEATURED ☆☆☆   Freelance Writer Apr 24, 2022 | #6 his reputation (such as it is) The only "reputation" I have here is for providing very high-quality work, turning down any projects that I cannot take with high confidence that I can do them well, for doing business honestly, and for competing only above-board, ethically, and honestly against my legitimate competitors. Unlike you, I don't resort to fabricating totally false accusations against my competitors and posting nasty insults about them, totally unprovoked, let alone stalking their posts and their websites. This is my only forum ID, which you already know, and you also know that your accusations that I am also "Noted" and "Writers Beware" are absolutely absurd. WB, in particular, used to start threads here warning students never to do business with any writer without a website, as part of his/her perpetual efforts to steer all clients to companies like his/hers and away from all independent writers. At the time he/she created a thread characterizing all writers using AOL and other email accounts as untrustworthy, simply because we didn't have websites, he/she knew, full well, that the top 3 or 4 essay-company writers whose writing he/she was selling, at the same time , through his/her own essay companies were all here under the exact same IDs that we used as our IDs at his/her company and that we all did our indpendent business through AOL email accounts. In fact, it was that 2009 thread that left me with no choice but to create a website for the first time, in 2010, even though I didn't really think I needed one, otherwise. But the point is, simply, that it's absurd to imagine that any freelance writer would ever create threads like those, because they would only underine our efforts to get more freelance work. Every person who has commented about my work, including both customers and other writers, is a genuine forum member to whom I have no connection; and that can be confirmed by using the messaging system to contact them directly, as well as by contacting this forum's Admin by email. I referred elsewhere to the photograph strategically placed on his website by Professional Services which is straight out of thinkstock now called iStock. That's a really clever strategy for argument, there: When I do respond directly to your false accusations point by point, you completely ignore the substance of those direct responses, and you suggest that either I have OCD or you congratulate yourself for "touching a nerve" simply because I responded directly to each of your false accusations. If I ignore any of your accusations or implications, such as your silly comment about the photos on my website, because it's just too stupid to bother dignifying, you repeat it elsewhere and imply that I should have responded to it. The fact of the matter is that I wouldn't ever expect any person looking at my website to imagine, even for a second, that the photo to which you referred is actually supposed to be me. Obviously, I simply chose from whatever stock photos Intuit provided, because I'm not trying to convince anybody that I create websites for a living. Do I also need to "disclose" that the other photos on my site aren't really my actual customers sitting in front of their laptops or my actual colleagues sitting around a conference table?

LawEssayUK 1 | 26   Freelance Writer Apr 27, 2022 | #7 @FreelanceWriter Such a pathetic comment. Do I also need to "disclose" that the other photos on my site aren't really my actual customers sitting in front of their laptops or my actual colleagues sitting around a conference table? Answer: Of course not, that is obvious but the one beside your 'Professional Services' is designed to make people think it is you. You commented on my OP when I wrote about English law and our legislation banning essay writing companies and you launched straight in, missing the point, when it doesn't even concern you. Then you commented on Boris Johnson. Where is the relevance? Then @Jonasbros, another recent creation, comes out of the woodwork to endorse you. It's laughable if it wasn't so crass and obvious.

FreelanceWriter 6 | 2,550   FEATURED ☆☆☆   Freelance Writer Apr 27, 2022 | #8 If you paid any attention to Noted's earlier content on this forum, you'd see that he spent months vouching for and specifically recommended a totally different essay company that's a direct competitor of mine. In fact, that was my only problem with him. If I were going to adopt an "alias" here, I obviously wouldn't have used it for about a year recommending only one of my competitors instead of my own services. The same goes for your dishonest accusations about me "policing" this forum as WB. That particular forum member repeatedly accused me of "stealing" from his/her essay company because I'd simply mentioned which essay companies I was writing for when I first joined and introduced myself here in 2008. According to him/her, my mentioning those websites amounted to "stealing" their customers every time any forum member decided to use me instead of one of those companies. Your accusation that either of those members (or the actual client of mine who left the positive review that seems to have provoked your attacks) is an "alias" of mine is ridiculous. Nobody needs to take my word for that, because a review of their posting histories would make that quite obvious. Exhibit A: You introduced yourself as a "writer for *********," therefore garnering consumer confidence through *********'s name recognition. You then admittedly received several orders from EssayScam members who would have otherwise gone directly to [those]* sites you listed as employers. Therefore, you stole money from the company. https://essayscam.org/forum/es/academic-help-verification-656/#msg8985 *[Words removed from quote to fit the maximum words allowed in quotes] Highly experienced, versatile, honest writer with a US Law degree (JD) located in NYC. My website is nycfreelancewriter "dot com"

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Out of the Centre

Savvino-storozhevsky monastery and museum.

Zvenigorod's most famous sight is the Savvino-Storozhevsky Monastery, which was founded in 1398 by the monk Savva from the Troitse-Sergieva Lavra, at the invitation and with the support of Prince Yury Dmitrievich of Zvenigorod. Savva was later canonised as St Sabbas (Savva) of Storozhev. The monastery late flourished under the reign of Tsar Alexis, who chose the monastery as his family church and often went on pilgrimage there and made lots of donations to it. Most of the monastery’s buildings date from this time. The monastery is heavily fortified with thick walls and six towers, the most impressive of which is the Krasny Tower which also serves as the eastern entrance. The monastery was closed in 1918 and only reopened in 1995. In 1998 Patriarch Alexius II took part in a service to return the relics of St Sabbas to the monastery. Today the monastery has the status of a stauropegic monastery, which is second in status to a lavra. In addition to being a working monastery, it also holds the Zvenigorod Historical, Architectural and Art Museum.

Belfry and Neighbouring Churches

Located near the main entrance is the monastery's belfry which is perhaps the calling card of the monastery due to its uniqueness. It was built in the 1650s and the St Sergius of Radonezh’s Church was opened on the middle tier in the mid-17th century, although it was originally dedicated to the Trinity. The belfry's 35-tonne Great Bladgovestny Bell fell in 1941 and was only restored and returned in 2003. Attached to the belfry is a large refectory and the Transfiguration Church, both of which were built on the orders of Tsar Alexis in the 1650s.  

To the left of the belfry is another, smaller, refectory which is attached to the Trinity Gate-Church, which was also constructed in the 1650s on the orders of Tsar Alexis who made it his own family church. The church is elaborately decorated with colourful trims and underneath the archway is a beautiful 19th century fresco.

Nativity of Virgin Mary Cathedral

The Nativity of Virgin Mary Cathedral is the oldest building in the monastery and among the oldest buildings in the Moscow Region. It was built between 1404 and 1405 during the lifetime of St Sabbas and using the funds of Prince Yury of Zvenigorod. The white-stone cathedral is a standard four-pillar design with a single golden dome. After the death of St Sabbas he was interred in the cathedral and a new altar dedicated to him was added.

Under the reign of Tsar Alexis the cathedral was decorated with frescoes by Stepan Ryazanets, some of which remain today. Tsar Alexis also presented the cathedral with a five-tier iconostasis, the top row of icons have been preserved.

Tsaritsa's Chambers

The Nativity of Virgin Mary Cathedral is located between the Tsaritsa's Chambers of the left and the Palace of Tsar Alexis on the right. The Tsaritsa's Chambers were built in the mid-17th century for the wife of Tsar Alexey - Tsaritsa Maria Ilinichna Miloskavskaya. The design of the building is influenced by the ancient Russian architectural style. Is prettier than the Tsar's chambers opposite, being red in colour with elaborately decorated window frames and entrance.

At present the Tsaritsa's Chambers houses the Zvenigorod Historical, Architectural and Art Museum. Among its displays is an accurate recreation of the interior of a noble lady's chambers including furniture, decorations and a decorated tiled oven, and an exhibition on the history of Zvenigorod and the monastery.

Palace of Tsar Alexis

The Palace of Tsar Alexis was built in the 1650s and is now one of the best surviving examples of non-religious architecture of that era. It was built especially for Tsar Alexis who often visited the monastery on religious pilgrimages. Its most striking feature is its pretty row of nine chimney spouts which resemble towers.

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