Online Writing Services (Plagiarism)

I'm seeing a sudden increase in the number of online students who are using online writing services to write their essay papers for them. Turnitin is showing a significant increase in plagiarized work that is suddenly being submitted to my online university, to include plagiarism from the following plagiarist companies:

Custom Papers
http://edited by admin

Just Answer
http://edited by admin
http://edited by admin

Custom Essay Meister
http://edited by admin

And many others.

This could completely blow the lid off trusting online degrees. I see it totally destroying online credibility. This is apparently turning into a BIG BIG BIG business and it's growing rapidly.

I have some students who write really crappy and then ***POOF*** they suddenly turn in a near-perfect paper that comes back to one of these custom writing services. In other instances, I may have a student who turns in four crappy substandard near-illiterate papers, followed by a perfect A+ paper i.e. I know that they paid someone to write it, but how do I prove it in a degree program that is 100% online?

Is anyone else noticing an uptick in papers from custom writing services?

 

I would think this is also an issue for B&M schools.

There are websites and software for detecting plagiarized work. If I was a teacher I would let my students know up front that I would be checking for plagiarism.

 

A friend of my wife's writes papers for international students of the local B&M. She tells them, "you have to do the research, and bring me the the notes at least." It's not a new phenomenon.

Phillip

 

It may not be a new phenomenon, but the convenience is certainly new because now it's only a mouse-click away from completion. A three page essay for only $30? Considering that the course itself might be anywhere from $1500 to $2500, $30 is extremely affordable for the aspiring plagiarist who is seeking a degree.

 

Agreed. This is not a problem that is exclusive to DL schools.

 

That is 100% plagiarism....

I have never purchased nor taken any paper online to turn it in. I learned my lesson from an undergraduate degree course. I remember I wrote a paper, my instructor stated that TurnItIn.com had detected 35% of the paper. From that time on so, I write my paper and have the program detect my sources before turning it.

 

This reminds me of when I had a research service back in the 80's. I basically did research for writers and aspiring writers for a fee. I was contacted by a freshman student at Texas A&M to write a research paper. Since I needed the money I did it for him and he received a grade of 93. I'll never forget the grade because he complained about it. I vowed never to do that again. Not because of the complaint but because it just wasn't right. Not only is it unethical for the student but it is especially unethical for a service to offer to help a student cheat. And that's what it is, plain and simple, cheating.

 

I don't see why it specifically destroys the credibility of online degrees, when a B & M student could do the EXACT same thing.

What blows my mind about these companies is that they all have huge BBB logos on their front page, and also that the heading for the custompapers.com site is:

We Write Custom Papers and Essays for Students!


They don't even bother trying to pretend its something else? (for example, you can get brass knuckles online, but they are called "paper weights") How do such "businesses" operate legally?

 

Academic cheating probably falls outside of the jurisdiction of the BBB. As long as financial transactions and customer complaints are handled in an acceptable manner, that's really as far as the BBB is likely to go. For what it's worth, brothels in Vegas could theoretically belong to the BBB...if they really wanted to.

 

Thanks for pointing that out. That is exactly what I was wondering- what a BBB membership actually means. I think it could be (and probably often is) used to falsely portray the legitimacy of an illegitimate buisness (like an unaccredited school that touts membership to unesco).

 

This definitely goes on at B&M schools as well. Have a paper due tomorrow? Go online, buy/have a paper written, print it out, turn it in the next day. This is not a DL only problem.

 

Since we're suggesting thiat these services are un-wonderful, I've chosen to delete the links. We don't need to help them advertise, do we?

 

Noooo, I have a paper due tomorrow.

 

Don't worry, most of the Mid-Atlantic colleges are closed tomorrow. You can give your instructor an excuse because of severe weather. Your electronic mail cannot delivery.

 

I think at least a part of the problem is that for whatever reason, personal integrity, at least in the US, seems to be falling to an all-time low. It's not just in essays written for college; if you look at the mortgage crisis, the first 18 months of that (the subprime mess) was almost solely a result of undocumented loans where people lied their asses off about their income.

And it isn't just the students either... a college-aged friend of mine told me that his mother was writing most of his sister's papers for her work at a University of California school. I asked how his mother (who, by the way, is a high school teacher) could possibly justify blatant plagiarism and he said "well, she wants my sister to do well and be able to get a good job." The sad thing is, my friend, who graduated from an Ivy school, seemed to see no problem with the plagiarism, and even admitted that he'd written a few papers for his friends when he was in school (clear honor code violation... as if anyone cares.)

I don't at all think this is a problem limited to online schools. It's sad, but we may have to resort to proctored exams and analysis of writing styles to get a handle on it.

 

As a high school teacher, I can tell you plagiarism is very abundant in high school. During my first year as a teacher, I was teaching a US Government class. Every 3 weeks or so, I'd have the students write summaries of current events. I had one kid actually copy an article from a newspaper, word for word. He hand wrote it, which was fine because almost all of the kids did. I probably never would have figured out it was plagiarized if he hadn't left some extra wording in there. Apparently he wasn't paying attention, because in the article the original writer said "See picture above" in parentheses, and so my student copied that too. When I saw that with no picture, it was a dead giveaway.

I know this will come across extremely wrong, but at least that kid took the effort to hand write the thing. Many kids just find something online, print it off, and hand it in. My antennae perk up when I see high school students using words with numerous syllables or the letters x and z. If that happens, I type a line into google and can usually find the source.

My favorite excuse from administrators is "But he didn't know he was plagiarizing." Yes... he didn't know. "Gee officer, I didn't know I was doing cocaine / beating my wife / holding a smoking gun." When teachers tell kids not to print things off the internet and hand them in as their own, I think that's all they need to hear, and it's unfortunate that plagiarism is just pushed aside. Just look at the Vice President...

-Matt

 

Matt,

Don't teachers teach students plagiarism in Middle School? By the time they are in High School, they suppose to know it.

 

It crossed my mind that some students would read this thread and see the links to businesses that will write essay papers for them -- and that they would actually do business with them. LOL

Conversely, the links prove to all readers that these kinds of money-making businesses are real -- and they can see the actual websites with their own eyes. The only reason I'm aware of these particular websites is because Turnitin is providing direct links to them from plagiarized papers. One student accidentally sent me a request to write her paper for her -- instead of sending the request to the essay company (that was the second link in the first post of this thread)!

Is anyone else experiencing an uptick in plagiarism from essay writing companies?

 

LOL this is hilarious. Did you reply?

 

The reason that I believe that online degrees will be almost exclusively affected is that final grades at many schools are entirely based on essays. At a traditional college, at least 80% of earned grades are based mostly on closed-book quiz, tests, and final exams.