a cheap term paper writing service uk

a cheap term paper writing service uk

Exploring the Ethics and Efficacy of Cheap Term Paper Writing Services in the UK

1. Introduction to the Phenomenon of Cheap Term Paper Writing Services

It is well established in the academic sphere and beyond that the concept of purchase, either between peers or between those with predominant control and ownership, is a natural part of the life-blood of contemporary systems. The academic world is no different in this regard. Publishing, citation and article download or purchase, and journal impact factor all illustrate this concept and are indicative of both individual scholar reputation and institutional success metrics. Closely linked to the student pursuit of a degree classification, and as a performance measure in commercial sector academic paper mills, are paid for term paper writing services. The purchase of academic content posing as original authored work leads to ethical questions about the trading of knowledge and learning and to a challenge to academic integrity and academic freedom.

The original article observed the intrinsic challenge of these services to the achievement of a World Class student experience for all. These commercial entities clearly challenge academic integrity and potentially threaten the credibility of an educational establishment’s outputs into the external world. Current legislation, legal and student quality assurance arrangements are seen as barriers to action by individual institutions, while sector wide literature has also warned about the use of these services and the need to address academic expectations and challenge the culture of a student employability elite discriminatory model. The focus has traditionally been on the student use and problems associated with essay request companies and students who go freelance, or the final submission of a student’s work too close to the relevant deadline.

2. Ethical Considerations Surrounding the Use of Cheap Writing Services

The business of custom-academic services has long been criticized openly on the internet. Perhaps the most common criticism is that the service pursuit of profit happens to be furthering academic laziness by offering an easy way out. Unreliable services are readily available and very easy to find. Is it a pressing case to ask students to know better, and to educate themselves a little more thoroughly before using our kind of services? In other words, surely the existence of the market is not an argument about the academic morality of using the market. Detractors say that while there isn’t anything particularly moral about writing essays to a university standard, marking essays for someone else is a technique for producing an understanding of the subject matter under review. This is to attribute to the critic certain positive features of education. It is also an implicit put-down of unemployed lecturers who earn their dinner from the writing of essays. Their work, by contrast, has no impact on the mind of a student too busy with other pressure or simply uninterested to engage in study deemed to be essential for their future.

To academics from classic universities, the ethics are rather cut and dry. Firstly, using an essay to get ideas? That’s fine. Using an essay without setting it in the wider context of personal readings and discussions? Incorrect. Setting an exam question bearing a notable similarity to the commissioned essay? Body snatchers! Unfortunately for critics, and in common with just about any business, services also vary enormously in academic quality; it is very easy to find cheap services which plainly aren’t up to the same standard as their competitors. If the ultimate economic purpose of a version of an essay from elsewhere is to lower the chances of a good grade by someone else rather than to improve the student’s exam/assignment standing, then is the study pursuit really impeded? Although the scandal of obvious plagiarism and the ‘silent’ involvement with the essay department decrease the obvious or direct educational value of the commissioning services, it’s not too cynical to note that the academic transaction is probably considered by many of its participants to be a transaction for a specific grade.

Against the very understandable accusation of promoting academic laziness can be set the following valid and best motives for which, believe it or not, customers have contracted with students worldwide. Most of the complaints about our services describe the instance when the student has erred rather than the desire for another’s work. Strange as it may seem, students are occasionally, yet understandably, quite bashful about doing the right thing. If the essay is destined one day to be a family heirloom, then bibliographies, contextual phrases, significant secondary reading, and other artifices make it an appropriately successor of what profundity may have gone before it. Periodicity of drink and drugs present some hypocritical tragedy of youth. Patronizing and pedagogical? Certainly. However, were the bulk of our students unschooled, then our businesses would be entirely comprised concessionary stores.

3. The Efficacy and Quality of Term Papers Produced by Cheap Writing Services

The primary consideration of the use of any service is whether it is effective and whether the product satisfies the buyer. In this context, efficacy usually means that the product does what it says it will do, in the manner that it should, and that it meets a necessary standard of quality. A term paper is a professional academic product. It is used to satisfy the requirements for the successful completion of a module of academic study. Therefore, it should satisfy an academic faculty and be of an acceptable standard to justify its submission. This section examines whether the term papers produced by low-cost writing services are effective. It also investigates the implications that the use of these types of service has on the quality of academic output.

The objective of the use of term papers in an academic module is to measure the extent to which a student has obtained a particular learning objective or set of objectives. Learning objectives will typically form a range of cognitive levels. These might range from a basic understanding of the topic, to being able to apply specific learning and analyze key arguments, to the highest levels requiring the student to construct and evaluate arguments. For each level, it is possible to measure the extent to which a student has fulfilled the course requirements. The student is typically also required to have demonstrated a range of academic behaviors, such as the ability to conduct research beyond simply reading the required textbooks, and to frame their work in the theoretical, academic arguments surrounding their topic. At its most ambitious, coursework is a measure of a formative kind of learning, in which the student is given a topic or question and required to develop a unique response.

4. Impact of Cheap Writing Services on Academic Integrity and Learning Outcomes

Ethical concerns about the use of cheap essay writing services are exacerbated by the potential consequences on academic integrity and learning outcomes. In summary, the key questions are whether these services have an impact on the ability of higher education students to learn and gain a qualification, or whether they compromise academic integrity in the process.

At one level, if a student has utilized a cheap essay writing service, then their work and their learning and assessment may all be founded upon the deception involved in that act. If they gain a qualification from this, then it has no value, as explained by Newton: “Formal academic qualifications are only credible because they assess the attainment of a student as an individual against a set of learning outcomes. If a student does not show what they know in the examination, then no reliable inference can be made about their knowledge or skills.”

This is further clarified by Fishman, Taso, Sea, and Adachi, who explained that by outsourcing a student’s work assessment.

5. Conclusion and Recommendations for Students and Institutions

This article has offered insight into the world of the essay-cheating industry in the UK through studying those who supply the essays (many of whom are British students). The article also offers the first rigorous discussion around how institutions are dealing (or not) with this problem. The findings from this investigation point to the fact that some students are clearly willing to act in an ‘opportunistic’ manner when there is little or no detection or deterrence of given behaviours. It seems that essays really can be delivered ‘discreetly’ and ‘efficiently’ to those who wish to trade their own societal future competence for an educational qualification.

We make the educative leap to suggest that part of the ethical discussion around the use illicit essay writing services and the unstoppable demand for these products and services is that scared, under supported and underconfident students are willing to bypass a process established in universities to transform knowledge, understanding and skills. This process ultimately confers a legitimate societal trust and confidence in the degree itself. We suggest more needs to be done by institutions to alleviate stresses and pressures within their assessment, teaching, examination processes so that the temptation to cheat – and the need for essay writing services – is diminished. Sanctions for students using such services need to deter such ‘opportunistic cheating’. We also suggest that researchers need to continue to shine a light on this issue so that potential consumers are aware of the very real ethical and criminal consequences they may be faced with.