custom assignment writing service

custom assignment writing service

The Ethics and Impact of Custom Assignment Writing Services in Education

1. Introduction to Custom Assignment Writing Services

So that students can learn from their cheating. As a matter of fact, writer Tim Barkow claims that the New Orleans-based service Notes U.S.A. “employs 166 college students to write its customers’ research papers [Emphasis added].” While Notes U.S.A denies Barkow’s claims, the writer argues that Notes U.S.A. owners admit that some of the clients are college students. Barkow, in fact, was able to obtain an on-campus utility bill that Notes U.S.A had recently paid. Schools face a considerable challenge from custom paper writing services. For one thing, if one of these services is on private property and pays its own water and electricity bills, police need a search warrant to investigate. Moreover, schools that might be able to successfully prosecute the sorts of students who use custom paper services.

Most people would agree that while some kinds of help are illegal and unethical, other kinds of help are beneficial and morally acceptable. The boundary between the two is not always clear. One service that has attracted a good deal of attention is custom paper writing. By the term custom paper writing, we mean a system that offers students pre-written templates whose themes and contents correspond to an assignment that a student is required to research then write. A typical custom paper writing service boasts a thesis bank in the tens of thousands. Moreover, students may submit a subject and some parameters for the paper they need, then receive, for a fee – often $8 per page – a “devoted research team, advanced research capabilities, and software to turn research into writing.” There are also free “essays” and “term papers” freely available via the World Wide Web. However, these are usually somewhat crude and of poor quality; they are usually the same assignments that students themselves have handed in to cheating sites.

2. Ethical Considerations in Using Custom Assignment Writing Services

In this essay, I argue that recognizing the environmental change in higher education and the changing nature of the tasks set for students in higher education, and reassessing what outcomes are desirable in assessment, are essential preconditions to addressing students’ move to contract cheating/custom assignment writing services. The issue of intent, as considered in Silk v Skipper, and the difficulty of using the current model of academic integrity, need to be addressed as part of the reassessment process. I argue that a form of negligence model is used to address breaches of academic integrity caused by students, and that a similar model, adapted from the English law on plagiarism, would provide a means of addressing students who knowingly or recklessly engage the custom assignment writing services. With the increasing commodification of higher education, academic integrity is an important issue for students, educators, and institutions, but at present, fair sanctioning and enforcement mechanisms, which support and maintain it, are not in place.

The use of a custom assignment writing service is an unusual method of assessment for any subject, at any level. This essay employs data from a recent qualitative survey with students and a literature review on the practices of custom assignment writing providers in the UK, the USA, and Australia. It considers the use of such services in global higher education from the perspective of students, educators, and institutions, and the provenance of these services from the perspective of commercial contract law. The episode of Silk v Skipper [2018] EWHC 51 (Ch) brings all these enforcement mechanisms together and neatly provides an exemplar of the business models of custom assignment writing providers, the difficulties educators have in trying to detect plagiarism, and the unenviable position that students are placed in by considering such services in the first place.

3. The Impact of Custom Assignment Writing Services on Academic Integrity

Popular academic literature compares being a university student to many things, from being a consumer of a product, to being imprisoned in an institution purporting to liberate students.

There has been much recent news and opinion circulating throughout the Australian higher education sector attributing this practice to the overwhelming feelings of inadequacy, perfectionism, and mental health problems experienced by young people. As becoming fluent in such a culture is recognized as being extremely harmful to young people and contributing to poor development of resilience, increased demand for university writing instruction, reduced student preparation for independent work and scholarship, inhibited development of communication and critical thinking skills, counts the proliferation of generics and grammar-checking software as significant causes. Academic integrity training programs and schools become cornerstones of universities’ resistance to contract cheating, offering a foundation that identifies plagiarism and highlights the threat it poses to students and the community. Connoisseurs write a strange world into being, the essentially irrational world of the academy.

4. Regulating and Monitoring Custom Assignment Writing Services

Of the 13 top companies mentioned in an earlier section, I found EssayShark (BigNewman Ltd) and MyAssignment – both are UK registered companies; AcadWrite (Icy Mercury GmbH), AcadWrite (Academic Solutions Ltd), CriticalEssays.co.uk (The Student Room Ltd), IvoryResearch.co.uk (Good News Ltd), Oxbridge Essays (Assist FZ LLC) – all registered in the UK with their final owners being private; GraduateWriter (Masangoer & Colinda Trading & Projects) South African Company; AcademicWriters (Academic LLC), UvoBot.za (Domain Barback), UK Write My Essay (WriteMyEssay Inc) – owned by private individuals based in the US; 99Papers (Webster Solutions Inc) and WriteMyPaperUSA (Rocketspace Intl Pty Ltd) – private companies registered in the US and AustralianWritings (Best Company Finance LLC) – a US-owned company registered in Ukraine.

While a quick web search will give numerous companies that position themselves as custom assignment writing services, no specific laws or regulations apply to these service providers, at least to the best of our knowledge. As a part of my research, I tried to find out if any of these custodians of academic services were registered as a company in their respective countries – there are regularly updated lists maintained by the authorities, so the names themselves are mentioned here, there is publicly available ownership information.

5. Conclusion and Future Directions

In 2015, Stella-Maris Kiguta claimed to have unseen nightmares as a student who did not cheat. The reason she cited was a decision made to seek success through hard work rather than dishonesty. An implication of this statement is that students who engage in academic dishonesty worry less and benefit from a fair sense of deserving, rendering role models for future professionals as well as reinforcing the untenable idea that knowledge accumulation takes place without genuine effort. Learners in higher education will be future leaders as well as professionals in industrial positions of responsibility. A professional title is associated with the public’s trust, confidence, and an ethical code of conduct. Role modeling by professionals chaperones work-based learning and holds institutions accountable for quality and commitment to learning. Society can be said to demand more than an appropriately trained and knowledgeable professional; it also demands a graduate with a strong work ethic and a respectful belief in the social value of earned credentials. Although there is no visible success in non-thoughtful work or in a zero-rule economy, a combined effort by institutions, educators, employers, and wider society would result in reducing student reliance on custom assignment writing services.

In conclusion, it is well established that all parties within a capitalist society benefit from exchanges in one way or another. However, we argue that there is a clear distinction in the social contribution of each. Institutions facilitate learning and promise to confer credentials upon completion. Educators transfer both generic as well as subject-specific knowledge, teach and assess academic proficiency and skills in a pedagogy that considers diverse learner needs. In return, educators expect employers, and in wider society, to value what credentials represent, to provide graduates with economic independence, and to fund their programs. The internal benefit of knowledge through learning is often overlooked in this argument, with institutions, learners, employers, and wider society benefiting from a more knowledgeable workforce. The cost of custom assignment writing services and the economic gain this brings to students is often considered negligible. They, however, engage in a transaction that requires time, expertise, knowledge, and possibly resources that were not proportionally remunerated.