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Do ghostwriters help students cheat?

It's disappointing to read Caron Dann's article for the Times Higher Education supplement (below) condemning writers who ghostwrite for essay sites.

There are many ways of cheating on your coursework.

Copying from books, journals, and from the internet is one of the most prolific ways - more prolific than using essay writing websites.

By Caron's reasoning, we should all stop writing books and journals and stop creating internet sites.

You see the problem with this line of reasoning is, it doesn't acknowledge a proper use.

I firmly believe that model answers, past papers, Q & A books and even custom essays have a place.

They have a place on the honest student's desk! But they must be use properly, just as books, journals and internet sources must be used properly.

But, I hear you say, there's no way of detecting students who order essays from a custom essay company because the essay is written just for them.

Hmm - but that's not true! Firstly, a lot of custom essay companies don't deliver what they promise.

So you think you're getting an original essay but you actually get something copied and pasted from an old piece of work that's already been submitted to the system.

So you get caught if you cheat, because plagiarism detectors like TurnItIn will find the match.

Secondly, lecturers are not stupid.

They know your writing style, and they know your abilities.

If you go from 30% to 90% overnight and you start using a different style and vocabulary, they'll be on to you.

Last but not least, don't forget that plagiarism scanners can't scan all books.

They can scan some - the ones Google has happily digitalised for us - but not everything.

So if students copy and paste from certain books, they won't be caught.

But, this isn't a reason to stop writing books!! It's a reason to educate students properly in the use of sources.

Students need to be taught how to use books, journals, magazines, internet sites and custom essays properly.

The only proper use for a custom essay is as the basis for doing your own reading, research and writing.

If you plan to use it for anything else - don't - you may get caught, you won't learn anything, and you're wasting your time, as well as that of your lecturer.

(c) EssayCheat.net 2009 Article by Caron Dunn: A relative in his early thirties about to finish an economics degree has told me that cheating at universities is rampant.

Plagiarism is commonplace and many students buy essays and submit them as their own, he said.

As a tertiary educator, I know that plagiarism is common - and probably happens more often than I realise.

Who, after all, has time to meticulously google sentences from students' work when marking essay number 78 at 1am? I catch the obvious ones - and there's always one or two in every class.

Most offenders do not seem to realise that cutting and pasting from the internet is not research.

Most do not know that it is unethical.

Why do they do it? Because they can.

I am sure that in my student days, if lifting material was as easy as it is now, more would have done it.

But when I was doing my bachelors degree in the 1980s, you would have had to copy in your own handwriting from any source you wanted to plagiarise - this feels more heinous than simply highlighting a block of text on screen and moving it to another document.

But back to my relative's observation that blatant cheating - such as paying someone else to write your essay for you - is common and on the rise.

Again, in my undergraduate days, it would have been difficult to arrange - you would have had to know someone, arrange to physically pick up the essay, then copy it in your own handwriting.

Today, a cheat is a Google click away.

Cheat websites are everywhere.

They even have their own euphemistic name: they are "online ghostwriting" sites.

An Australian-based website I visited (which shall remain nameless, because I don't think it deserves any publicity, good or bad) was advertising recently for "writers".

"We are a freelance writing company, specialising in providing high- quality writing, research and editing services to our clients situated worldwide," the advertisement stated.

That sounds OK until you read closely and see that it is looking for writers "skilled at ghostwriting university assignments" and that successful applicants must have gained high marks for their own essays and have at least a bachelors degree.

Writers earn $7A (£ 3.28) to $17A per page, "depending on the academic level and degree of complexity".

I know times are tough, particularly for those of us who make our living by sessional academic work and freelance writing.

But I implore students: please do not stoop to writing for cheat sites.

By doing so, you will undo all the good work teachers are trying to do.

If there are no university-savvy people to write these assignments for cheats, the market will not be able to continue.

I would rather work in a slaughterhouse than write these essays, and I am an animal lover who would not hurt a fly.

I am not fooling myself: ultimately, there is probably no way to stop this kind of cheating.

And because of that, we need to keep - and in some cases, bring back - the hated end-of-term examination for every university subject.

The exam is still the best way to show what students have learnt and understood each semester.

Simply put, more emphasis on exams will make it harder to cheat.

Caron Dann is a Melbourne-based lecturer and writer.

Her latest book, Imagining Siam: A Travellers' Literary Guide to Thailand, is published by Monash Asia Institute.

The Times Higher Education Supplement February 5, 2009 Don't join ghostwriters in the lie BYLINE: Caron Dann SECTION: OVERSEAS NEWS; From where I sit; Pg.

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