pay someone to write my research paper

pay someone to write my research paper

The Ethics and Consequences of Hiring Someone to Write Academic Papers

1. Introduction

In this essay, I will use the expression “shaft victim” to refer to the person who is harmed by the student who hires someone to do their work. I will use the abbreviation “EAP” to refer to someone who is hired by a student to be a proxy for that student taking an online or hybrid course. I am interested mainly in EAPs because I think that, in practice, it is the conduct of EAPs that most people have in mind when they ask whether hiring someone to write an academic paper is ethically justifiable. But the relevant aspects of that question can be addressed in a way that also applies to cheaters and other proxy-test-takers. The EAP was typically guided in how closely to follow the instructor’s requirements. Even when the instructor provided a grading rubric, meaning that they told the EAP exactly what they would be graded on, they typically did not also take the more obvious step of specifying criteria and corrigenda.

Some students may hire someone to write academic papers for them. The question of whether this is ethical is important for multiple reasons. It is not just a theoretical question; what people say about it can make a real difference to the reputations, prospects, or legal fates of the various people involved. Also, understanding what is so bad about hiring someone to write an academic paper can help us better understand what makes something a legitimate object of research. What are the consequences of hiring someone to do this? In what ways does it harm people or threaten institutions, and how much does it do this? What are different responsible institutions and organizations doing about the harms that hiring someone to write an academic paper causes?

2. The Ethics of Academic Integrity

Furthermore, regardless of the physical consequences one may encounter as a result of doing so, there are ethical and moral concerns to consider when contemplating employing someone to write academic papers. Conceivably, promoting the use of these services and, in effect, employing someone else to complete one’s assignments might reduce someone’s academic honesty and the effort needed in the process. If academic institutions make little effort to reduce cheating by addressing the underlying issues forward this situation and simply make it much easier for students to cheat, they are demonstrating a disregard for human decency and ethics.

Academic integrity refers to the fundamental principles of honesty, fairness, trust, and responsibility as they apply to all activities associated with learning and scholarship, be it following, reading, conducting experiments, interpreting data, or reporting findings. The American Association for Higher Education (AAHE) promotes this notion of transformation on academic integrity. Hiring or hiring someone else to write your academic paper is an exemplary action that violates academic integrity. It betrays the trust of the educational institution, the institution’s staff, fellow students, and the community, the larger society that expects educational institutions to produce graduates who are honest, skilled, and intelligent, both academically and professionally.

3. Consequences of Contract Cheating

We expect that a qualification will carry meaning and ensure that individuals have a certain knowledge and set of skills. But qualifications’ value may decline if they are awarded to individuals who have not genuinely achieved them. For individuals, the harm of hiring a ghostwriter might be less direct, although it is likely that individuals miss an opportunity to develop vital academic and critical thinking skills and to learn from the material that they delegate. If discovered, there may be individual consequences for students accused of ghostwriting, such as expulsion, and broader consequences for those who have qualifications that are not representative of their abilities and expertise.

It is a difficult and deeply personal decision for any student to hire someone to write academic papers. However, we must go beyond this tendency to focus on the moral and ethical dimensions of an individual’s decision and instead address the broader consequences of using ghostwriters. My students struggle to produce academic writing that meets assessment criteria, such as coherent and logical arguments, proper integration of current literature, and demonstration of academic language and conventions. However, I know and they know that if they persist and work hard, they are capable of developing these skills. They will produce work that is reflective of their real academic ability. Other students take a faster path, offloading their work onto others. This could allow students to graduate with qualifications that do not reflect their achievement nor their abilities.

4. Preventative Measures and Solutions

We should note, however, that where documents were copied there was a preference for the 20 sites chosen to have been written by academics. As long as this preference for the involvement of real lecturers exists, educational interventions, such as those including the creation of discursive feedback cultures (in seminars and virtual learning environments), where ‘content’ is openly discussed and good practice prized, should be promoted. Where the activity originated with non-academics, which was the case for essays but not so in the niche market for dissertation provision, we must also look to policy, in the form of both institutional assessment regulation and national regulations though Quality Assurance Agency (QAA) procedures. Furthermore, many sites are likely to be produced using word processing tools, and so extending plagiarism detection software to assess the individual writing style can be effective. Combining these technological solutions with educational interventions is likely to increase the likelihood of the desired preventative and deterrent effects.

We asked whether students who engage in contract cheating think it is wrong, and whether they worry about the consequences of being caught. To the first question, most believe their actions are not wrong, but instead the system is set up to entrap them into engaging in contract cheating. Importantly, hardly any plan to inform their future employers that they used somebody else’s work to achieve their qualifications. Given this, perhaps the most important strategy in preventing, or at least hindering, future contract cheating is to act to ensure that the cultures of the organizations students find themselves in are not the same as they experience at university, and do not value slick referencing and the succumbing to the temptation of contract cheating over creativity, imagination or ideas. This is reinforced in subsequent chapters as we develop conclusions and recommendations with practical repercussions.

5. Conclusion and Recommendations

It is challenging to intuit that there is an HCI that can tap into someone’s personal trajectory, explore complexity, and unpack subjective experience, and beneficial or negative personal outcomes and emotional costs in relation to the decision to use essay writing services. Clearly, there are many possible HCI research contributions in the area of essay-mills, from investigating the ethical issues of students benefiting from the “sweat of unacademic staff” to looking at the implications of university funding decisions. In our pilot, we found some evidence from students’ own words that using the writing industry came at a short and longer-term cost to their own self-regard, as well as implications for users, their classmates, and academics who set them classroom tasks.

The decision to seek out and use a professional to write your essay is an ethical issue that has consequences at all levels of education, for students, for the academy, and for society. Clearly, there are grounds to address contract cheating. Educational authorities should rethink the risks that arise with writing industry sites, noted in other governance areas, particularly in relation to potential harm to children, and take action along with policymakers. For as long as the writing industry operates in the shadows, flourishing and seemingly unchecked, we cannot secure widespread public recognition that there is a problem that needs acting upon when students who buy essays imagine “it’s a fair transaction” and proudly talk about using an essay-mill “when you’re directly asked, what’s the harm?”.