- Essay mill
An essay mill, sometimes also called a paper mill, is the colloquial term for a type of
ghostwriting service which specializes in the sale ofessay s, term papers, and other forms ofhomework assignments to university and college students. Submitting another person's work as one's own is a form ofacademic dishonesty oracademic fraud , and universities and colleges may investigate homework turned in by a student if the paper's content comes under suspicion. Measures include using Internetplagiarism detection software, which compares essays against a database of known essay mill essays; and orally testing students on the contents of their papers, in cases where a paper is a suspected 'essay mill' product.Types of products
'Essay mill' companies hire university students, graduates, and professional writers to ghostwrite essays and term papers, and solicit business from university and college students by posting advertisements. Until the early 1990s, most essay mill companies were 'bricks and mortar' businesses offering their services by mail-order or from offices located in university or college towns. By the 2000s, most essay mill businesses have switched to an
e-commerce business model, soliciting business and selling essays using an Internet website. Companies often provide free sample essays on popular topics, such as "Hamlet " or "The Merchant of Venice ", to attract Internet searches.Fact|date=May 2007The most basic 'essay mill' service is the sale of a previously-written essay; services advertise essays that have allegedly gained a good grade and which have allegedly not been used for
plagiarism before. Unless the company is registered and located in a region where the law covers such sales (such as in theUnited Kingdom Fact|date=April 2008) students using essay mill services have little or nolegal recourse if the essay they purchase has not actually received a good grade.Since submitting a previously-written essay exposes a student to the risk of detection, some students will pay a much higher price for custom-written papers that take into account the course outline, topic, number of sources and any specific grade the student wants. While some students select a high grade on the ghostwritten paper to boost their average, other students with poor grades may choose to purchase a paper that deliberately contains errors, and which will receive a grade such as "C+", to reduce the suspicion that they have committed
academic dishonesty .Criticism and controversy
The academic community has criticized essay mill companies for helping students to commit academic fraud.
Some essay mills have defended themselves against criticism by claiming that they are selling pre-written examples which students can use as guidelines and models for the student's own work. In 2002, a UK-based essay mill called Elizabeth Hall Associates required students purchasing essays to sign a disclaimer stating that "any material provided by Elizabeth Hall Associates [is] on the understanding that it is a guidance model only." [ [http://www.caslon.com.au/essaymillsnote.htm Essay Mills Note: Basis, Economics, Management ] ] Other essay mills claim that they are "scholarly publishing houses" that provide students with essays that the student can then cite in the student's own work.
trategies for combating academic fraud
Universities and colleges have developed several strategies to combat this type of
academic misconduct . Some professors require students to submit electronic versions of their term papers, so that the text of the essay can be compared by anti-plagiarism software against databases of known 'essay mill' term papers.Other universities have enacted rules allowing professors to give students
viva voce (oral) examinations on papers which a professor believes to be 'ghostwritten'; if the student is unfamiliar with the content of an essay that they have submitted, or its sources, then the student can be charged with academic fraud, a violation of the rules by which a student agrees to be bound when they enter a university or college program.When a student is charged with academic fraud, their case is typically heard by a quasi-judicial administrative committee, which reviews the evidence. For students who are found guilty, the punishments range from failure in the course in which the plagiarism occurred, to suspension or expulsion. In some cases, students who have committed academic fraud may also have any academic honours, degrees, or awards revoked.
ubcontracting
The
contract cheating research literature, which encompasses multipleoutsourcing opportunities for students, of which essay banks are one, reports that students are putting assessed work to tender to essay sites. The research reports that some essay sites are not completing work for students in-house. Instead, they are using auction sites to subcontract work out at a lower cost than would be required by directly payingghostwriter s. [cite web|url=http://hebe.cie.uce.ac.uk/soc/InfoC/CCheatInfoC.nsf|title= Eliminating the successor to plagiarism? Identifying the usage of contract cheating sites.|author=Robert Clarke & Thomas Lancaster|publisher=JISC Plagiarism Advisory Service/jiscpas.ac.uk|date=2007-05-13 |accessdate=]ee also
*
Diploma mill
*Plagiarism
* Ghostwriting
*Academic dishonesty
*Contract cheating Further reading
*"The Cheating Culture: Why More Americans Are Doing Wrong To Get Ahead" (New York: Harcourt 2004)
*Ann Lathrop & Kathleen Foss. "Student Cheating & Plagiarism to the Internet Era: A Wake-Up Call for Educators & Parents" (New York: Libraries Unlimited 2000)
*James Page. 2004. 'Cyber-pseudepigraphy: A New Challenge for Higher Education Policy and Management'. "Journal of Higher Education Policy and Management". 26(3):429-433; available on-online at http://eprints.qut.edu.au/archive/00006015/.References
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