essay writing service uk illegal

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https://educationhub.blog.gov.uk/2022/04/28/essay-mills-are-now-illegal-skills-minister-calls-on-internet-service-providers-to-crack-down-on-advertising/

Essay mills are now illegal - Skills Minister calls on internet service platforms to crack down on advertising

Skills Minister Alex Burghart has written to internet service platforms to make sure they know that essay mills - which facilitate cheating by helping academic writing, often by appearing to be legitimate - have been made illegal and to call on their support in making sure they can no longer advertise online. Here you can read that letter.

The Skills and Post-16 Education Bill has become law. Through this act, the Government has legislated for landmark reforms that will transform post-16 education and skills, including criminalising essay mills.

As you may know, Essay Mills are online platforms that facilitate contract cheating. Contract cheating happens when a third party completes work for a student which is passed off by the student as their own work. Many essay mill companies use marketing techniques which indicate they are offering ‘legitimate’ academic writing support for students. Reports also indicate that some essay mills seek to blackmail students who use these services. It is right that we have legislated against these insidious crimes.

It is now a criminal offence to provide or arrange for another person to provide contract cheating services for financial gain to students taking a qualification at a post-16 institution or sixth form in England, enrolled at a higher education provider in England and any other person over compulsory school age who has been entered for a regulated qualification at a place in England.

Similarly, it is now an offence for a person to make arrangements for an advertisement in which that person offers, or is described as being available or competent, to provide or arrange for another person to provide a cheating service. Importantly, the offence centres around the act of advertising to students, and for the offence to be committed it does not need to be seen by its target demographic.

There is now a strengthened, collaborative effort across the sector to tackle essay mills and we want you to be part of this campaign. Platforms such as yourself play an integral role in helping us to make the most effective use of the legislation; marketing and advertising are the lifeblood of any successful industry. We are aware that high numbers of essay mills have used your platform to promote their services to students in the past, paying for advertising to promote their companies. Essay mills are now illegal entities, and you should not carry their advertising. It is no longer a moral question; you will be facilitating an illegal activity. I ask you to do everything in your power to prevent the advertising these unscrupulous practices.

Removing essay mill access to online marketing will seriously hamper their efforts to target vulnerable students and I implore you to do so following the introduction of this legislation. We must now all work together to capitalise on it.

I hope that in writing to you today I have underlined the urgency of this issue and the important role that companies like yours play in stamping out essay mills once and for all and am sure I can be confident in your support.

Thank you for your support with this important matter.

Tags: cheating , essay mills , internet service platforms

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Essay-writing services to be made illegal in England

22 February 2022 | Applicable law: England and Wales

Essay-writing services, known as essay mills, are to be made illegal under plans announced by the government on 5 October 2021.

The government intends to make it a criminal offence to provide, arrange, or advertise any essay-writing services for financial gain to students taking a qualification at any institution in England providing post-16 education, including universities.

The move follows a number of steps already taken by the government to protect academic integrity from the effect of essay mills. In 2018, 46 university vice-chancellors wrote a joint letter calling for essay-writing services to banned, and the government worked with the Quality Assurance Agency for Higher Education, Universities UK and the National Union of Students to produce guidance on how institutions could counter the threat of contract cheating, and for students to make them better aware of the consequences (which might include removal from their course of study or expulsion from their place of study). The latest efforts to outlaw essay mills and other ‘contract cheating’ has been welcomed by members of all parties and across the education industry, and hailed as safeguarding the academic integrity and standards of post-16 and higher education in England as well as protecting young people during their studies.

The Skills and Post-16 Education Bill (the ‘Bill’) introduces this measure as a means to protect students from the “deceptive marking techniques of contract cheating services”. The Bill also aims to help level up opportunities across the country by transforming the existing educational landscape: alternative training and career routes, such as technical education, apprenticeships, T Levels or traineeships, are to be emphasised and given equal status alongside the traditional academic route (as set out in the Skills for Jobs White Paper ).

Essay mills – given that they profit from committing academic fraud – are largely considered to be unethical, though they remain lawful in most countries. The UK follows in the footsteps of Australia, New Zealand, South Africa, and Ireland by taking action against contract cheating.

Ghostwriting services are active globally, and often target students who are studying in a second language. The rise in demand for such services are likely the result of increased competition for university places, especially where coursework and open-book exams contribute to pivotal final grades. Ironically, these services encourage a lack of scholarship that sets students up poorly for further education.

The online learning environment that developed as a result of stay-at-home mandates during the Covid-19 pandemic meant that students became increasingly vulnerable to the lures of essay-writing services. As campus welfare and support became less accessible to students working remotely from home and motivation throughout the academic year dwindled as Zoom-fatigue set in, levels of online cheating exploded: the Quality Assurance Agency estimated in 2021 that there are at least 932 sites in operation in the UK, up from 904 in December 2020, 881 in October 2020 and 635 in June 2018. More brazenly, there are examples of essay mill service providers taking advantage of the difficult circumstances faced by students during the pandemic by offering 2-4-1 deals and other special offers to ‘help’ students navigate a difficult and unusual few academic years.

While the proposals in the Bill are welcome, the measures do not amount to a full solution to online cheating. The International Journal for Educational Integrity has highlighted the increasing number of ways in which students wishing to circumvent rules on academic honesty may do so using technology. For example, the use of file-sharing websites to request assistance from others and receive answers to exam questions – in real time and during exam conditions – has risen by an estimated 196% in the year 2020-21 in STEM subjects. The Bill does not extend to Wales or Scotland, for whom education is a devolved matter: essay mills may yet target UK schools and universities and see plenty reason to maintain operations.

Gareth Crossman, head of policy and public affairs at the Quality Assurance Agency for Higher Education, has touched on the length of the journey ahead, saying: “ [the Bill] sends a clear signal but, with well over 1000 essay mills in operation, the sector must continue working together to put them out of business. ” Only time will tell whether the measures, when implemented, are effective, and whether the government needs to go further to protect students from predatory academic practices in future.

This document (and any information accessed through links in this document) is provided for information purposes only and does not constitute legal advice. Professional legal advice should be obtained before taking or refraining from any action as a result of the contents of this document.

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Essay mills to be banned under plans to reform post-16 education

Unscrupulous ‘essay mills’ to be criminalised as part of the Skills and Post-16 Education Bill

Services offering to provide students with essays for money, known as essay mills, are to be made illegal under plans announced by the government today (5 October).

The government intends to make it a criminal offence to provide, arrange or advertise these cheating services for financial gain to students taking a qualification at any institution in England providing post-16 education including universities.

The move is one of a number of measures being introduced to the Skills and Post-16 Education Bill , to transform the skills and training landscape and help level up opportunities across the country.

The law will also be changed to give equality to technical education in careers advice in schools, so all pupils understand the wide range of career routes and training available to them, such as apprenticeships, T Levels or traineeships, not just a traditional academic route.

Minister for Skills Alex Burghart said:

Essay mills are completely unethical and profit by undermining the hard work most students do. We are taking steps to ban these cheating services. We have also announced a new measure to make sure all young people receive broader careers guidance so everyone can get the advice that’s right for them.

Banning essay mills will help to safeguard the academic integrity and standards of post-16 and higher education in England and protect students from falling prey to the deceptive marketing techniques of contract cheating services.

This follows a number of steps already taken to tackle unscrupulous essay mills, including government working alongside the Quality Assurance Agency for Higher Education, Universities UK and the National Union of Students to produce guidance for institutions on how to combat the threat of contract cheating and guidance for students to make them better aware of the consequences, sending a clear message that these services are not legitimate.

Additional measures being introduced to the Bill include enabling sixth form colleges with a religious faith designation to become a 16-19 Academy, boosting diversity in 16-19 academies and allowing more faith school providers to open 16-19 academies with a religious character.

The Bill, which will enter its report stage in the House of Lord on 12 October, underpins the government’s transformation of post-16 education and skills as set out in the Skills for Jobs White Paper . The reforms outlined in the Bill will help to create more routes into skilled employment in sectors the economy needs such as engineering, digital, clean energy and manufacturing, so more people can secure well-paid jobs in their local areas, levelling up the nation and supporting communities to thrive.

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Important notice: Essay writing services now illegal in the UK

Following a government reform, it is now illegal to use and/or provide contract cheating services.

On Thursday 28 April 2022, the Skills and Post-16 Education Bill became law, making it a criminal offence to engage in paid cheating services, often known as essay mills.

Essay mills offer students in Post-16 education plagiarism free essays and assignments in exchange for money.

The government has listened to calls for legislation and intervened to criminalise the provision of, and advertising of, cheating services. This aims to minimise the number of these essay mills in operation and to enhance activity already taking place to detect, deter and address incidents of cheating.

In a letter to Higher Education (HE) providers , Parliamentary Under Secretary of State for Skills, Alex Burghart MP said: “Cheating of any kind is unacceptable. It not only threatens to undermine the reputation of our world-class higher education sector, but also devalues the hard work of those who succeed on their own merit.”

The university takes academic offences very seriously. Submitting work that is not your own can lead to expulsion.

We want to ensure that all DMU students are following academic regulations, which we outline  here .

The Centre for Learning and Study Support (CLaSS) team work with undergraduate, postgraduate and research students at DMU to provide support and guidance on a range of areas, such as planning assignments, how to approach critical analysis and how to improve your research and referencing.

You can access the CLaSS services here .

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Governments across the world are fighting a global network of so-called “essay mills”, businesses that help the world’s rising population of university students to cheat their way through their studies.

A list shared among British and Australian officials, seen by the Financial Times, contains the names of 2,000 websites offering what officials and academics studying the phenomenon call “contract cheating” services.

The governments of Australia, South Africa, Ireland and 17 US states have taken some action, and England is to introduce legislation to ban these companies from operating or advertising in the country. However, contracting to write essays for students to submit for academic qualifications is currently lawful in most countries, including the UK.

The businesses’ main activity is ghostwriting assignments — often including coursework or open-book exams that contribute directly to student degree results. Students studying in a second language are a particular target. While academic software is effective at spotting plagiarism, it struggles with the essay-writing sector’s bespoke work.

To investigate the mills, the FT arranged for essays to be bought from three websites. The companies were asked to write a short essay on the history of UK education — ostensibly to help a Cambridge university student write a weekly assignment, an exercise that does not count for a final grade.

Peter Mandler, a Cambridge professor who teaches the history of UK education to undergraduates and is author of The Crisis of the Meritocracy , a core text on the topic, agreed to mark them.

The FT selected mills from a list provided by UK officials and academics that they said were of particular concern because of their scale and prominence. The first was Peachy Essay, which Gareth Crossman, a senior official at the Quality Assurance Agency, a public body responsible for academic integrity in the UK, told the FT was “one of the largest scale essay mills”. 

Its ownership and staffing is opaque. Peachy Essay says it was founded by students studying at University College London in 2007. However, it is incorporated in the US state of Wyoming, which does not require companies to list shareholders or officers. It takes payment in US dollars.

After making inquiries, the FT was called by someone using a US telephone number who would only give his name as “Kevin”. Kevin declined to answer our questions about his identity and the structure of the company.

Several details — such as describing himself to the FT as the company’s founder — suggested he was a man with several online profiles under the name “Kevin McCabe”. This person lists himself as an “experienced academic writer, dissertation and research paper consultant, university lecturer and blogger based in London”. However Kevin declined to confirm the link and asked the FT not to contact him further.

The McCabe profile on LinkedIn lists a PhD in “business, management, marketing and related support services” from Oxford university — a qualification that institution does not offer.

Two of Kevin McCabe’s profiles also feature a photograph which is, in fact, that of an Irish writer called Dominic Haugh. Haugh confirmed the photo was of him, was used without his consent and said he would take action to get it removed. He told the FT: “I’m not running an essay mill. I’m a history teacher in County Clare”.

Kevin did say he would meet FT journalists to prove he was in London, but only if we would wait until mid-November.

When commissioning the essay, the FT was promised that the author would be “Patrick”, an academic from a British university. But the FT sent Peachy Essay a link to a page with an embedded tracking script which could reveal the location of the person opening it. The link was only opened in Kenya. Peachy Essay denied that the essay was written there. But it was possible, they said, that their staff were there on holiday.

The second commission was from EduBirdie, another prominent essay mill. It made no promises about the location of its authors — saying they were from “around the world”. The company lists its main address in Bulgaria. The link we sent it was also opened in Kenya. The company declined to respond to our queries. Their only apparent response was to delete evidence of our purchase from the user account.

Kenya has emerged as a core hub of global contract cheating. The practice is not illegal there and it has a large pool of English-speaking graduates. One writer, a 23-year-old engineering undergraduate at Jomo Kenyatta University of Agriculture and Technology, told the FT that he supplied essays for students in Europe, the UK, US, China and Japan. “It’s majorly because of economic necessity. But it’s also coupled with the desire to know more, to study things,” he said.

The student said that an essay writing service pays him “roughly Ks250 [per page] (£1.64). The maximum I’ve been paid was Ks500 per page (£3.30)”. Edubirdie charged the FT £199 for the service, while Peachy charged £146 — equivalent to around £28 and £21 per page respectively.

Maurice Amutabi, a professor at the Technical University of Kenya and vice-president of the Kenya Studies and Scholars’ Association (KESSA), said the industry “fosters dishonesty, it creates a lack of scholarship”.

He said changes in higher education may enable more cheating: “Online classes tend to have almost 60 per cent in terms of submission of assignments online, and I think this has also created room for manipulation leading to these individuals for hire.”

Both essays bought by the FT were poor. The Edubirdie essay begins: “The history of the UK dates back many years ago”, while the Peachy Essay effort veers into Indian history in the last paragraph.

Mandler said “none of these is really a passing result, though [the Peachy Essay] . . . might come close, since there is evidence that the author has read (and sort of understood) at least one book that is actually on the subject”. 

The third essay commissioned by the FT was from UK Essays, a more expensive service priced at £244. Officials stated the company was a concern because of its very high profile: it is UK-incorporated and open about its work.

The essay the FT commissioned

Course: British Economic and Social History since 1880

Essay question: How And Why Has State Education Been Divided Along Class Lines?

Cost for 1,750 words:

Peachy Essay

UK Essays said it provides “model answers” for students to work off, and does not facilitate cheating. Daniel Dennehy, the company’s chief operating officer, told the FT: “We do not deem ourselves to be an essay mill. Our job is to work with the client to ensure the model answer they receive will help them learn and understand the subject matter in greater detail.”

Dennehy had previously told the FT that the company makes efforts to check whether students plan to use its essays to cheat — and blocks them if they do. However, when the FT bought an essay, a reporter was required to indicate they would abide by the company’s “fair use” policy, but faced no other scrutiny.

UK Essays said they tried to telephone the FT prior to our purchase and added that “our staff member would have spoken about the fair use policy” if we had revealed an intention to cheat.

The essay was better than the other two and received a mark of 62 — equivalent to a low upper-second class pass. (In 2020, 82 per cent of UK degrees were upper second or better.) This was within the range of grades that the FT had paid for. Mandler said that it was the best of the three but “doesn’t make much sense . . . it’s not very historical and not based on very much reading”. 

He added: “I marked these [three essays] permissively — as though they were weekly exercises to help students as they learn. If a student turned essays of this quality in for an actual assessment, they would fail.” 

Governments and higher education institutions are increasingly worried by the use of essay mills. Michelle Donelan, the minister for higher and further education in England, said: “It is completely unacceptable that companies are actively facilitating cheating and dishonest behaviour.”

UK universities have campaigned for a UK-wide ban: in 2018, 40 vice-chancellors wrote to the UK’s education secretary saying that essay cheating “is particularly hard to detect” and there is a need for “legislative backing . . . to shut down these operations”.

Thomas Lancaster, an academic at London’s Imperial College who studies the phenomenon, said the sector has “ballooned” since the mid-2000s. He estimated that “billions of pounds . . . are going through these firms every year”. In the UK, he estimates that between 5 and 10 per cent of students will use them at least once.

The UK’s National Union of Students said that essay mills “prey on students’ vulnerabilities and insecurities”. The companies often present themselves as having been set up by students or recent graduates, but regulators believe that parts of the industry are linked to organised crime.

Crossman, of the Quality Assurance Agency, said: “We are increasingly hearing of situations where students are being blackmailed after they have used an essay mill.” 

In 2018, the University of Coventry’s student union revealed that some of its members had been blackmailed for £5,000 by an essay-writing service that threatened to tell the university they had been cheating. Crossman said there is also evidence of potential “targeted identity theft” by mills.

Fighting contract cheating is very complex. In Australia it is now an offence “to provide or advertise academic cheating services relating to the delivery of higher education”. But of the 2,061 companies on the list, compiled by Teqsa, the Australian higher education regulator, only 105 have blocked themselves from Australia.

Last month, Teqsa used the newly toughened law for the first time to force internet service providers to block access to an Indian-domiciled site. Regulators, however, face an uphill task. Of the names on the list, the FT has identified 136 which have already been abandoned: mills often drop old names to escape legal action or poor reputations.

Crossman told the FT: “Targeting individual essay mills is like playing a game of whack-a-mole.”

Letter in response to this article:

The criminality of essay mills is hurting universities / From David Boughey, Professor of International Business History, University of Exeter Business School, Exeter, Devon, UK

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UK to ban 'essay mills' in sweeping post-16 education reforms

British government announces plan to crack down on 'cheating services'.

It will soon be a criminal offence in England to provide, arrange or advertise essay-writing services for financial gain to students. Photo: Martin-DM

Commercial essay-writing services for students, or "essay mills", are set to be banned in England under plans to protect the academic integrity and standards of post-16 education, the UK government said on Tuesday.

It intends to make it a criminal offence to provide, arrange or advertise such services to university and college students for financial gain.

Making essay mills illegal under new legislation will help to protect students from falling prey to the "deceptive marketing techniques of contract cheating services", the Department for Education said.

"Essay mills are completely unethical and profit by undermining the hard work most students do," said UK Skills Minister Alex Burghart.

"We are taking steps to ban these cheating services."

The move was welcomed by Universities UK which said it had "repeatedly called for essay-writing services to be made illegal".

"While the use of essay mills by students is rare, all universities have codes of conduct that include severe penalties for students found to be submitting work that is not their own," it said.

"Universities have become increasingly experienced at dealing with such issues and are engaging with students from day one to underline the implications of cheating and how it can be avoided."

Banning essay mills is one of several measures being introduced to the Skills and Post-16 Education Bill, which aims to transform further and technical education.

Careers education in schools will be strengthened to ensure all pupils have opportunities to learn about all technical education options available to them, including apprenticeships, T-levels and traineeships.

The law will also be changed to give equality to technical education in careers advice in schools, so all pupils understand the wide range of routes and training available to them, not just academic options.

Other amendments to the Skills and Post-16 Education Bill, which enters its report stage in the House of Lords on October 12, include allowing more faith school providers to open post-16 academies with a religious character.

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Paid essay-writing services will be made illegal in England under new government plans to reform education.

Services that provide students with essays for a fee, known as ‘essay mills’, have become a problem at many universities but are not yet illegal in the UK.

Skills minister, Alex Bughart, said in a statement: “Essay mills are completely unethical and profit by undermining the hard work most students do. We are taking steps to ban these cheating services.”

There are over 1,000 essay mills in operation across the country according to the UK’s university standards watchdog - the Quality Assurance Agency for Higher Education - and a 2018 survey suggested that around one in seven graduates have used essay mills.

In response to the ban, a spokesperson from collective Universities UK said: “We welcome this news. UUK has repeatedly called for essay writing services to be made illegal and we have worked together with government, the Quality Assurance Agency (QAA) and other higher education bodies to tackle their use.

They added: “While the use of essay mills by students is rare, all universities have codes of conduct that include severe penalties for students found to be submitting work that is not their own.”

A spokesperson from the National Union of Students said: “NUS firmly opposes essay mills. These private companies prey on students’ vulnerabilities and insecurities to make money through exploitation, and never more so than during the pandemic.

“NUS has called on the Government to take action against them in the past, and we hope they are finally listening. In the meantime we would urge universities to put in place academic and pastoral support so that students are never in the position of feeling they have to turn to essay mills in the first place.”

This is just one of the new measures being put in place under the post-16 education reform, with other actions including changes to careers advice and support for apprenticeship, traineeships and other forms of technical education.

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Paid essay writing services to be made illegal as government brands it 'cheating'

• Tuesday 5 October 2021 at 8:12pm

Getting somebody else to write an essay for you in exchange for money will soon be made illegal in England.

So-called 'essay mills' see students paying money to a service and getting an essay back in return - allowing the pupil to submit an assignment without necessarily having done the work.

Students can stipulate the topic, number of pages and the timeframe.

The ban will make it a criminal offence to provide, arrange or advertise these services to any students in post-16 and higher education .

Minister for Skills Alex Burghart said: “Essay mills are completely unethical and profit by undermining the hard work most students do. We are taking steps to ban these cheating services.

“We have also announced a new measure to make sure all young people receive broader careers guidance so everyone can get the advice that’s right for them.”

The move comes as part of the Skills and Post-16 Education Bill.

Banning charged essay writing services will safeguard the academic integrity and standards of educational institutions in England, the government said.

Ministers insist it will protect students from falling prey to the deceptive marketing techniques of contract cheating services.

The bill will enter its report stage in the House of Lords next Tuesday.

Essay writing services now illegal

Under new UK legislation, providing or using professional essay writing services, or 'essay mills', is now a criminal offence. Students have been made aware of this via today's Student News. They have also been advised that using these services directly contravenes the University's code of conduct. If students are found to be using professional writing services, or passing off other people's work as their own, they will face serious disciplinary action. There are a range of resources available to students about  study skills and avoiding plagiarism  on the Oxford Students website. Colleagues are asked to reinforce these messages to students in their parts of the University.

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NEWS... BUT NOT AS YOU KNOW IT

The rise of Essay Writing Services: A look at the ethics, legality, criticisms and defences of the VERY controversial industry

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The history of academic cheating is as long as the history of schools and universities themselves.

In ancient China, even the threat of the death penalty for cheating was not enough to put young scholars off trying any tactics that they could think of to get an advantage in the all-important civil service exams.

In the modern world, cheating at school or university is a lot less risky and also much easier. Google “essay writing services”, and you’ll get 3.7 million hits back in less than half a second.

Behind those hits are hundreds, if not thousands, of companies and individuals around the world offering to take the stress out of school or university by writing your essays for you.

Given the ease of accessing such services, it is no surprise that they are increasingly popular with stressed students who are struggling with the demands of their courses.

But just how common is so-called “contract cheating” becoming? In 2018, Professor Phil Newton of Swansea University set out to answer that question.

He went through forty years of surveys of students internationally to see how many of them admitted to getting someone else to write an essay for them. The results sent shockwaves through the academic community.

In the years 1978 to 2014, just under one in twenty students would admit to cheating like that. But in the years between 2014 and 2018, that number shot up to more than one in seven.

Doing the maths, Professor Newton calculated that around 31 million students around the world (including hundreds of thousands in the UK)  were getting someone else to write at least one essay for them each year.

In the five years since that study was completed, the situation seems to have got worse. Much worse according to Dr Thomas Lancaster of Imperial College London, the academic who coined the phrase “contract cheating” in the first place.

Dr Lancaster claims that the COVID-19 pandemic and the subsequent shift of education online have driven even more students to turn to the internet in search of essay writing services.

At the same time, the rise of sophisticated plagiarism detection software has made it much harder for students to just directly copy someone else’s essay.

But contract cheating gets around that by hiring someone else to produce an original piece of work, which can be almost guaranteed to pass the plagiarism detectors with flying colours.

According to research by Channel 4 , students in the UK using essay writing services have a less than 1% chance of being found out by their university. 

The scale of the problem is clear. But it is not clear what can be done about it. So, we take a deep dive into this murky industry: identifying the different types of essay writing services and looking at the legal and ethical issues around using them.

We also look at the arguments in defence of essay writing services and highlight the solutions that could help prevent students from needing to use them in the first place.

Understanding essay writing services

Essay writing is a thriving industry that comes in a wide variety of different forms. The basic principle is that a student pays a company or an individual to write an essay for them.

At one end of the scale are huge companies like Write My Essay , which offer highly professional essays (which they can then submit as their own work).

At the other end are individual freelancers, who can be found on websites such as Upwork and Fiverr, who will create bespoke essays for their clients.

Such websites have rules forbidding academic cheating, but they don’t appear to be enforced, with job adverts requesting essay writing services regularly posted on the platforms.

In between the very big companies and the individual freelancers are the many so-called “essay mills”, that specialise in churning out original content for students.

The companies normally have websites that are more or less frank about what they are doing. Some claim to be offering simply “educational support” by providing a sample essay that should inspire a student rather than giving them something that they can just pretend is their own work.

Essay writing services vary enormously in price, but research by Dr Thomas Lancaster has shown that sourcing essays direct from individual writers can be very affordable for students.

The average price for a 2,000-word essay is just over $11, with most of the writers providing such services coming from Kenya, Pakistan and Nigeria. Further research by the same author found that students on Twitter are willing to pay up to $66 for a 2,000-word essay.

Are essay writing services illegal?

Hiring someone to write an essay for you might be cheating but does that actually make it illegal? The answer to that question varies depending on which country you are in.

In many places, including most US states, using an essay writing service is actually perfectly legal . The reason for that is that such services only claim to be providing students with sample essays so present themselves as simply online tutors.

However, governments are coming under increasing pressure from universities to use the law to clamp down on the problem, and an increasing number have responded by making such services illegal.

New Zealand was one of the pioneers in such legislation, leading the way in legislating against essay mills. Other places that have already done the same include Australia, Ireland and several US states.

In April 2022, the UK government followed suit. Now it is illegal to either provide or use essay writing services in the UK . As of June 2023, no actual criminal charges have been brought against anyone under the new legislation.

Perhaps recognising the difficulty in enforcing this law, the British government has written to internet search engines and service providers asking them to “do everything in your power to prevent the advertising of these unscrupulous practices”. Nevertheless, a simple search on google.co.uk will return thousands of hits for various companies.

Even in those countries that have not yet banned essay writing services, submitting someone else’s work as your own is certainly a breach of university and college policies.

So, while students in most US states might not face criminal charges for using such a service, they are very likely to find themselves facing serious penalties from their institution. Such penalties could go as far as seeing them kicked off their course. 

Still, given the difficulties in detecting content that has been written by a third party for a student to submit, that’s a risk that many are prepared to take.

Research has shown that up to 50% of students would consider cheating as long as they were confident that they could get away with it.  

Ethical Aspects

Regardless of whether essay writing services are legal in a particular country, serious questions remain about the ethics of getting someone else to do your work for you.

After all, degrees are awarded on the basis of a student’s intelligence and ability to work hard and give them privileged access to jobs and other opportunities as a result. So, surely, it’s wrong to steal an advantage over your more honest peers by just paying someone to do the work for you?

Another ethical consideration is that if students are cheating to gain qualifications does that mean that they might get a job that they are not really qualified for?

And how much more serious do those ethical questions become if, for example, someone is qualifying as a doctor on the basis of work that someone else did for them? In such cases, academic cheating can have serious real-world consequences in terms of impacting patient safety.

Essay writing companies have also been accused of preying on vulnerable students and encouraging dependency on their services.

By doing so, they prevent those students from developing the knowledge and critical thinking skills that are supposed to be the whole point of education. Other concerns have been raised about the fact that essay writing services expose students to the risk of blackmail.

In defence of essay writing services

Nevertheless, despite all the legal and ethical charges levied against them, essay writing services do have their defenders.

Some see them as essential services for stressed out students who are unable to cope with the pressure of having to submit too many assignments, especially when they are using them for subjects that they do not intend to major in.

Others have argued that in the real world after university, people will always collaborate with others and commission them to do work, so why shouldn’t they do the same during their academic careers?

Some commentators have stated that modern students have been brought up in a sharing economy with unlimited access to the resources they need online, so why shouldn’t they use essay writing services too?

Other arguments have focused on the struggles of students who are non-native speakers of English.

Many foreign speakers travel to English-speaking countries to complete their education and use essay writing services to overcome the stresses and difficulties of studying in a foreign language and to put themselves on the same playing field as their peers.

Other students find themselves forced to study in English even when in their own country, which can again prompt them to try to level the playing field by turning to essay writing services.

The basic thrust of many of the arguments that defend such services is that they are filling gaps that the university itself should be filling.

If universities provided proper support, less students would need to turn to essay writing services in the first place.  

Prevention and solutions

So, what can be done to prevent the rise of essay writing services? As the arguments in defence of such services suggest, universities can do more to support students, especially those who are not native speakers or who have learning difficulties.

More academic and pastoral support could reduce students’ reliance on contract cheating. For example, overstressed students should be encouraged to speak with their tutors to request the extra time that they might need to complete assignments, which would prevent them from turning to essay writing services in the days before their deadline.

There are also technical solutions emerging that might prevent students from using such services.

As Dr Lancaster has explained , such technology works by “identifying how we all write. We’ve all got a unique style and it shows in how complex our language is, the words we use too much, indicators like that. If you suddenly then hand in something written with a different writing style, that’s suspicious.”

Finally, more might need to be done to explain to students the importance of not using such services and the ethical issues involved in their use.

As Dr Grant Klinkum of New Zealand’s Qualifications Authority, has said, “Some of our values, based on some Renaissance idea of the value and importance of intellectual endeavour and so on, may not be shared by increasing numbers of students… This is not about immoral students. This is about varied values.”

As we have seen, essay writing services are thriving, despite increasing attempts to clamp down on them through legislation.

Despite all the ethical issues surrounding their use, desperate students will turn to them, especially because there is little chance of them getting caught.

What do you think? Should more be done to prevent students from using essay writing services and to crack down harder on those who do?

Or should we focus on the positive sides of such services and see them as just another aspect of modern education that helps students to learn and develop? Whatever your answers to those questions, it seems certain that essay writing services are here to stay, and some students will continue to use them for as long as they can get away with it.

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This article was updated by the Great British Mag content team on 20 October 2021. 

Have you seen essay writing agencies advertised and been tempted to give them a try? Keep reading to get a better understanding of what essay writing agencies are, how they work and the implications of using them can have on your university education. 

What are essay writing agencies?

As a student, you probably have essay writing agencies very much on your radar. They advertise themselves relentlessly to university goers and seem to offer the perfect solution to tight deadlines.

If their marketing attempts have passed you by so far, a quick Google will pull up countless agencies that promise high-quality easy writing, editing and proofreading services for all levels of higher education. 

For a fee, you can give the agency your essay title and any details you have on what should be included in the content, and they’ll have one of their writers complete it for you within a matter of days.

Are they legal to use?

The UK government announced in June 2021 that it is putting legislation in place to make essay writing agencies that provide pre-written or custom-made essays for students to present as their own illegal. England is leading on implementing these changes. 

Do universities prohibit the use of essay writing agencies?

Absolutely – and they take it very seriously. In fact, there have been several calls over recent years from university leaders for the government to ban ‘essay mills’ (which the agencies are sometimes known as) entirely. In some countries like New Zealand, they’re actually illegal. 

That said, some essay writing agencies frame themselves as providing educational support, in the same way that a private tutor might. They state that the essays they provide aren’t for handing in and passing off as your own work, but for using as a basis from which to research and write your own essay. That makes the legal waters murkier. 

What do universities consider as cheating?

Handing in work that has been completed by someone else is definitely considered cheating – this includes getting a friend or family member to write your coursework for you, as well as going to an essay writing agency. 

Despite this, a   study by Swansea University revealed more students than ever were paying for third parties to write their essays. It found that potentially as many as one in seven recent graduates from around the globe, which equates to around 31 million, had engaged in cheating in this way. 

Indeed, a poll on Instagram that we recently ran suggested that around 25% of our student followers had handed in an essay that they didn’t write themselves. 

Covid-19 seems to have caused an uptick in people using these services too, says Dr Thomas Lancaster , senior teaching fellow at Imperial College London, who has conducted several studies on the topic and actually coined the term ‘contract cheating’, which is what this form of cheating is often referred to as. 

“The pandemic hasn’t helped with the situation. From my own research, we’re seeing many more requests for contract cheating services now than we were before Covid-19 disrupted the sector,” he says. 

With students having to grapple with remote learning, a lack of access to libraries and less face-to-face teaching time, it’s no wonder that more are resorting to using essay-writing services. But no matter the circumstances that cause people to turn to this kind of servive, it’s very much still considered to be cheating. 

How much do essay writing services charge?

This varies hugely depending on the agency, the academic level the essay is for and how close the deadline is. We’ve seen services advertised from as little as £4 for a 2:2 level essay with a long deadline, and up to £260 for a 3,000 assignment with a quick turnaround. 

It’s worth remembering that if a deal on an essay writing agency website sounds too good to be true, it likely is. The cheapest companies will often use writers from overseas whose written English might not be up to scratch. That could not only impact the quality of the essay, but also make it obvious that it’s been written by someone else. 

How likely am I to get caught? 

In all honesty, identifying paid-for essays isn’t easy for university professors. Even if a university does have its suspicions, it’s not a straightforward offence to prove. That said, it’s certainly not impossible – and with cases on the up, more university staff are on high alert of fraudulent submissions.

There is new technology emerging too, specifically designed to detect essays written by third parties. And it’s improving all the time, says Lancaster.

“It works by identifying how we all write. We’ve all got a unique style and it shows in how complex our language is, the words we use too much, indicators like that. If you suddenly then hand in something written with a different writing style, that’s suspicious. 

“There are quite a few detection methods in development that show promise and often there are all sorts of little clues that the university can piece together and use to work out whether the student is submitting work they have done themselves.”

What will happen if I am caught?

Getting caught is perhaps the biggest risk you run – it could ruin your university career. 

While each university is responsible for setting out its own procedure for dealing with cheating (you’ll likely find a page about it on your university’s website), be warned that they all take it very seriously. It’s considered a major violation of academic standards. 

Think about it: for institutions to be handing out degrees to people who aren’t qualified is hugely problematic. They’re breaching the national standards of these respected qualifications, meaning their reputation and status as a higher education provider is very much at stake. 

If you’re suspected of cheating, it’s likely you’ll be interviewed and asked to provide evidence that you wrote the essay in question yourself (think notes and previous drafts). If the allegations hold up after that, it could result in a disciplinary hearing and, ultimately, your expulsion from the university. 

Yep, this is a serious offence and one that could cut your time at university very short. 

What are the other risks?

Expulsion isn’t the only risk you run if you decide to hand in an essay that you didn’t write.  First, of course, there is no guarantee as to the quality of the essay you’ll be supplied with by the agency – you could easily still fail. 

“The writers who work for these agencies tend to be badly paid, so their incentive is to write as quickly as possible, not produce high-quality work,” says Lancaster. “They’ll take shortcuts. They add meaningless content to pad out the word count and make up references.”

So don’t be shocked if, after forking out for a professional writer to secure you a great grade, you still flunk. 

Then there’s the issue that by not studying for one piece of coursework you’re on the back foot for the next assignment – and the next. 

“Students become dependent on these services,” says Lancaster. “They’ve missed out on the learning. And once they’re on a company’s customer list, they’re going to be receiving marketing messages again and again.”

Yes, there is the chance that you pay for an essay, get a killer grade and live happily ever after – but there’s also a lot that can go wrong. 

What should I do if I’m struggling with my studies? 

If you’re struggling with your studies and feeling overwhelmed, talk to your university. There might be ways that they can support you and help ease the strain you’re feeling over coursework and deadlines. You may not need to risk your university career by buying your coursework.  

If it’s the language aspect that is causing you stress and making essay-writing a nightmare for you, then speak to your university – they may well have opportunities you can make the most of to improve your English, such as online courses. There will also be an International Student Support service at your uni, who can help with any non-academic issues that are getting in the way of your studies – everything from visa stresses to feeling at home in your new city. 

If you have any learning differences, like dyslexia, you might be entitled to extra support, so make sure your tutors are aware of the situation. The same goes for if you are experiencing personal problems that are impacting your learning – depending on the situation you might be offered more time to complete work, as well as other forms of help. 

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Essay writing services must be banned to stop cheating, say academics

One in seven students globally believed to have paid others to do their assignments for them

The British government has been urged to outlaw essay writing services that allow university students to pay for coursework for their degrees, after a study found that use of “contract cheating” is rapidly increasing around the world.

The study by Prof Philip Newton at Swansea University’s medical school collected evidence from surveys taken among students in higher education, and calculated that as many as one in seven recent students internationally have paid for someone to produce their assignments, potentially representing 31 million students.

While there is little detail of the involvement of UK-based students, Newton said that students in Britain were unlikely to be any different from their peers in the US and elsewhere, and warned that the UK “risks becoming a country where essay mills find it easy to do business”.

“There are a number of things the government could do to make contract cheating more difficult. The legal steps would probably include a new law – it’s not difficult, other countries such as New Zealand have done it and others like Ireland and Australia are thinking about it,” Newton said.

Staff at British universities regularly report essay-writing services openly advertising for both clients and writers on campus, while numerous websites offer students bespoke “study notes” or “essay aids” for a fee that runs into thousands of pounds depending on the length and deadline.

Essay mills also trawl social media, with automated accounts contacting students who post about essay deadlines and work panic.

Newton is one of a number of British academics who have warned of the dangers of “essay mills,” where students are able to order essays, dissertations or even doctoral theses with as little as eight or 12 hours’ notice. More than 2,000 people have signed a petition to parliament calling for a ban.

The study, published in the journal Frontiers in Education , analysed 71 survey samples from 65 studies from as far back as 1978, covering 54,000 participants who took part in questionnaires asking if they had ever paid someone to undertake their work.

Across the sample, contract cheating was self-reported by a long-run average of 3.5% of students but that rate was found to increase significantly over time. In studies from 2014 onwards, the percentage admitting to paying for work rose to nearly 16%, while cheating in general also appeared to be on the rise.

“There is an urgent need for a rigorous study to identify the extent of the problem in the UK. There’s a lot of circumstantial evidence to suggest the UK is as affected as everyone else,” Newton said, adding that surveys were if anything likely to underestimate the extent of the problem.

The government has recently acknowledged the issue. In a written answer to the Gower MP Tonia Antoniazzi in July, the higher education minister Sam Gyimah said: “We are currently focusing on non-legislative options, but remain open to the future need for legislation, and will investigate all options available.”

Newton and his colleagues have proposed a new offence, “to provide or advertise cheating services”, including writing or arranging an essay or other work without the approval of the higher education institution requiring the work.

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Are Essay Writing Services Legit?

• 5-minute read
• 3rd June 2022

Believe it or not, there are many companies, operating within the law, that write essays for students. This means you can pay someone to write your essay and then submit it to your tutor as your own work.

If that sounds like cheating to you, we wouldn’t disagree! So, how do companies offering essay writing services get away with it? And is it ever okay to use them? Read on to find out.

What is an Essay Mill?

An essay mill is a company that makes money by writing essays and other academic work for students. After providing little more than the title and required word count, clients can sit back and wait for their essay, assignment, or even 40,000-word dissertation, complete with a reference list, to drop into their inbox.

Essay mills use freelance writers, and the copy they produce becomes the property of the customer. They claim to write each assignment from scratch and usually run plagiarism checks as part of their service.

The Downsides of Essay Writing Services

The obvious advantage of using an essay writing service is that it saves you time and effort. So, if you can afford to pay someone else to do your homework, what’s not to like? Here are a few things worth considering before handing over your cash to an essay mill:

●  The writer is unlikely to be an expert in your subject: Essay mills and other companies offering writing services use freelancers. It’s therefore highly unlikely that they will have an expert in every academic field at their disposal. Even if they claim that your essay will be written by an expert, you won’t get to see the writer’s credentials, so you only have their word for it.

●  There’s no guarantee you’ll get a good grade: So, your essay is being produced by a writer who most likely isn’t an expert on the relevant topic. Because they’re a freelancer, they’ll only be getting a percentage of the fee you’ve paid, and they’ve not only got to write your essay, but research it, too. Unless they’re willing to work for a very low hourly rate, they won’t spend enough time on your essay to produce work that’s good enough to score high marks.

●  You could easily get caught: If your tutor is familiar with your usual style of writing, they might be suspicious when you hand in work written by someone else. What if they want you to clarify something or they query one of your references? If you’re caught cheating, it could spell the end of your academic ambitions.

●  It’s dishonest: You’ve probably worked out by now that we don’t approve of essay writing services! Whether or not they are legal (and we’ll cover that in the next section), they certainly aren’t ethical. And it’s a form of cheating, which is taken very seriously by academic institutions.

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●  You’ll miss out on learning opportunities: The whole point of an essay writing assignment is to learn valuable information about a topic. By handing that experience off to someone else, you’re essentially giving up part of the education that you’ve worked hard to qualify for (and are likely paying good money for)!

What Does the Law Say About Essay Writing Services?

The law regarding essay writing services varies from country to country (and from state to state in the US), so whether you’d be breaking the law by using them depends on where you’re studying.

At the moment, essay mills are still legal in most of the US and Canada. However, in some states, it’s illegal for students to use them. In the UK, legislation was passed in April 2022 that makes it a criminal offense to provide essay writing services. And similar laws exist in Ireland, Australia, and New Zealand.

Summary: Are Essay Writing Services Legit?

Essay writing services are still legal in some areas, so the question of whether or not you should use them is largely an ethical one. However, even if you’re not committing a crime by paying someone to write your essay, you could get into trouble with your college if anyone finds out.

Unfortunately, essay mills often target international students who may lack confidence in their English writing skills. But, instead of getting someone else to write your essay for you, which is a form of cheating, why not consider just getting help with proofreading? While any tutor would disapprove of handing in someone else’s work, it is perfectly legitimate to have your own words professionally proofread before you submit them.

Our proofreading service includes correcting any errors in spelling, grammar, and punctuation. In addition, we adapt any unsuitable vocabulary and highlight anything that’s unclear. However, we never make changes that would alter the meaning of what you’ve written. It’s your writing—we just help you make it shine!

You can try our student proofreading service for free by submitting a trial document today. You’ll get it back, error-free, tomorrow!

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Is It Illegal To Pay Someone To Write an Essay?

Where there’s a need, there’s an opportunity to help, and the business of providing essay writing services has proven this brilliantly.

Students, from high school to post-graduate, have found a life-saving solution to their academic writing problems, in custom writing services. But there’s always that one question that comes to everyone’s mind before opting to pay for custom essays: Are these services even legal?

According to leading essay writing service review blog, IHateWritingEssays , these companies are completely risk-free and legal to use , as long as they work within the legal system and follow existing laws . But there are certain caveats to this. For instance, some universities forbid students from using said services, and anyone who gets caught will either be suspended or worse, expelled from school.

Legally getting help from essay writing services is never the issue here, but students are required to be smarter and more cautious in choosing them. Here’s why:

Essay Writing Services Are Legal – But There’s a Catch

There’s nothing to worry about the legal aspect of using essay writing services. After all, hiring a professional writer is no different from working with a tutor or ghostwriter. Just like these services, there are no provisions that prohibit students from getting the academic help they need.

However, countries like Australia have recently administered legislation that carries heavy sanctions to agencies and individuals that offer essay writing services to students. With that, essay writing services are now banned from doing business within the country.

University ministers in the UK are also urging for this type of services to be outlawed in the country. But at the time of writing, no law has yet been passed that prohibits students in the UK from using essay writing services.

Demand Is Greater Than the Risk

Whether we like it or not, more and more countries are proposing to ban essay writing services. But other than Australia and the UK, no other country has passed a law that forbids the use of said services – not even the US. Because the fact of the matter is, governments and academic institutions are aware that students need all the help they can get to achieve academic success.

So what role do essay writing services play in this? It’s quite simple. Legitimate essay writing companies strongly condone academic cheating and so, they have an important condition that students must follow before using their services. These companies only provide academic writing assistance, not finished papers. In short, purchased papers must be used solely as a supporting material or reference for when a student creates their own essay. These companies have strict Honor Code and anti-plagiarism policies that customers must adhere to. Anyone who gets caught violating their terms will be banned from using their services.

How to Spot an Illegal Essay Writing Service

Sadly, not all academic writing services have the students’ best interests at heart. Choose the wrong company and you could compromise your grades and academic prospects. If you’re considering paying someone to write an essay, make sure you’re working with a reputable company. Below are some tell-tale signs of an illegal essay writing service:

• Company has no license number and registered address on their website
• Writing services are offered at dirt-cheap prices (anything less than $10 per page is a red flag)
• Most of their writers are non-native English speakers (particularly from countries like Kenya and India)
• Website does not provide essay samples from their writers
• Website has no privacy policy
• Company has a record of reselling papers
• No round-the-clock customer support
• No way for students to directly communicate with their assigned writer

How to Find a Legitimate Essay Writing Service

Now that you already know what to do, it’s time to find a suitable essay writing service. Of course, what better way to find out a company’s credibility than to read reviews from customers?

The problem is, not all reviews you see online are trustworthy. So how can you find reviews you can trust? Here’s what you need to do:

Check the volume of reviews.

A simple Google search just won’t cut it. To determine an essay writing service’s credibility, you need to find out how often they receive customer feedback.

You may notice that some reviews have been published a long time ago, with no recent updates. Or worse, they only have a handful of reviews on trusted independent platforms like SiteJabber and TrustPilot. There could be two reasons for the lack of reviews: The website has either abandoned their services and has an outdated website or they don’t get a lot of customers due to poor quality. If this is the case, you’re probably better off doing your business elsewhere.

Find out if they’re real or fake.

When it comes to finding a trusted essay writing service, you need critical thinking.

Remember: Legitimate companies will be unbiased. The problem with some reviews is that they glorify a writing service in all aspects. The best writers, best price, best guarantees, best customer services. Best, best, best!

The competition in the writing service industry is fierce. Sure, there are a handful of great services out there, but it’s almost impossible to find the perfect one in every single aspect. So the next time you find a review that’s unrealistically positive or too good to be true, chances are it’s fake .

The same can be said for overly negative reviews. Some of these so-called “customer feedback” will only list down negative claims about a service. The thing is, it’s very rare for an essay writing company to stay in business if they fail that hard. So if you notice unhealthy amounts of extremely negative reviews about a company, you’re probably looking at biased reviews or an ongoing smear campaign from rival companies that only want to talk trash about the competition.

Look for Real Experience

The best reviews are those that are based on personal experience. However, students aren’t always willing to share their own opinions. Oftentimes they’re more interested in reading reviews online and if they like what they see, then they probably won’t bother going from one review site to another to share positive feedback. But if they’re disappointed, they’ll be prompted to warn others against ordering from a certain essay writing service.

If you’re new to ordering a custom essay, you’ll want to see customer experiences not only in the company’s website, but also in third-party review sites and blogs. You can also read customer experiences on platforms like Reddit, where students and freelancers have more freedom to write anything and talk about their personal experience working with an essay writing service.

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