Googling “essay writing services in the UK” raises a plethora of websites, a reflection of the high demand for their services. The Independent newspaper reported that between 2008-2011 an alarming 45,000 students at over 80 British universities were caught cheating in their exams with the use of mobile phones, or through buying essays online. Ominously, these numbers are expected to rise, although universities seem unable to provide comprehensive figures for plagiarism itself. According to the Independent, many universities blamed Britain’s financial crisis which resulted in an increase of university tuition fees. In this harsher climate, more students are willing to shelve out hundreds of pounds to assure good grades. British universities reported that there are an estimated 12,000 essays purchased each year by students.
Is buying an essay online considered to be dishonest? In a video posted on its company website, UK www.essays.com’s CEO Tony Enynon, emphatically refutes this, although concedes the potential for their product to be used for “cheating”. In another interview in the Guardian, Barclay Littlewood of oxbridgegraduates.com, invites students to “use” their services, he warns however, to “use” them just like any other source and advices them to write their own piece.
All UK essay writing services will feature at the very bottom of their website – in very small print – a disclaimer declaring that all their “products” are purely for research or guidance purposes only, and discouraging purchasers passing the essays off as their own. However, some of the same websites also offers a money-back-guarantee, if customers fail to achieve the desired grades.
Universities across Britain are trying to combat this debilitating problem. In the same article in the Guardian, Professor Elizabeth Fallaize, Oxford’s Pro Vice-chancellor for Education asserts, “We see plagiarism as an educational problem rather than a discipline one”. Universities use expensive anti-plagiarism software, but concede difficulty in detecting essays purchased online, especially those tailor made to for a particular client. On the other hand, knowledgeable academics won’t need such devices to detect something awry if an unexceptional undergraduate suddenly comes up with a brilliant essay. They may request for an oral examination to see if the questionable student can produce the same excellent work.
Most students know what plagiarism is, although initially some may be genuinely ignorant of what it is all about. At the beginning of their studies, they are advised about it as part of induction to undergraduate life. Nowadays, it is normal to formally declare that an essay is a student’s own work by either ticking a box or signing a form before submitting their essay. The Open University, a leading provider of distance learning, offers advice on topics such as plagiarism as part of their wide array of online ‘toolkits’, designed to help students understand what is required of them and to help them refine their academic skills.
The issue of plagiarism, however, is as old as scholarship. These websites are merely the latest technical manifestation of its persistence.
Information for the research provided by bestessays.com team.
Guest Post by: James Powell
