There are many ways for a student to cheat and there is no shortage of advice on how to do so. Institutions may apply their own regulations to manage the social plagiarism situation but, meanwhile, initiatives on a national scale are scarce. Government petitions have been launched; e.g., to “Ban the provision and advertising of ‘essay mill’ cheating services”, but after 6 months only 5,911 citizens had signed. ‘Days of Action’ have been organised, but at a recent UNESCO event only 5 of the 130 UK universities were in attendance.
Pressure for legal action
Amongst the solutions for challenging the essay mill phenomenon have been calls for applying legal constraint. Members of the UK Russell Group of universities have written to the Secretary of State for Education urging movement in this direction. The letter’s text does admit realisation that legislation will not be a ‘magic bullet’ but, it is argued, it can be part of a larger package of measures. While this position makes sense, the universities are coy about what could be in that ‘larger package’ and what their own manifesto might be for populating it. Various individual Vice Chancellors have also written to support legislation. For example, one VC blog frames their own concern in a nostalgic reflection on the original promise of the internet and how essays mills are yet another souring of it.
These voices urging legislation have received attention from the press but also from students. There are discussions in the online forum ‘Student Room’ addressing Universities urged to ban ‘essay mills’ and addressing ‘Should the UK Government make essay mills illegal?’ Views are mixed, making these threads an interesting window on student perspectives. Overarching the university family, the QAA has called “for online companies to stop essay mills in their tracks”, directing their requests to Bing, Facebook, Google, Paypal, Yahoo and Youtube. There has been some measure of success – such as paypal rejecting these companies. The text of the QAA letter to Google is here – which seems to have had limited impact. While one recent Secretary of State has endorsed crackdowns on essay mills, it is not clear that this has been followed up by government successfully. A poll of student views on legislation finds that its approved of – even by those who use the services. Moreover, a majority of students thought that offending students should be implicated in the legislation.
The legal possibilities
The QAA (2016) have considered possible legal approaches that might be taken under existing law and concluded that the Fraud Act was the “nearest applicable legislation”. However, close examination of this route led Draper et al (2017) to rule it out.
So, against that background, Draper and Newton (2017) have formulated a possible route for legislation on an alternative basis to fraud. However, formulations are plagued by the fuzziness of the boundaries between practices that are uncontrovertibly wrong and those that seem an extension of normal educational traditions. This particularly applies to the work of various tutorial agents (including family) – where cheating comparable to that of essay mills might be perceived to be taking place. There is even the possibility that conventional text plagiarism could be captured as illegal by some forms of legislation. In addition, there are extraterritoriality issues, as many of the essay mill sites are located outside of the boundaries where legislation might be invoked. Moreover, with freelance writers at least, the source of a controversial assignment submission might be very hard to trace. Finally, Draper and Newton acknowledge that there will be a burden on the sector: “Any change to the legal status of contract cheating will require extensive additional education if it is to be effective, and provision for additional staff time to prepare for and attend court hearing”.
As it happens there are already jurisdictions where contract cheating provision is prohibited in law. For example, New Zealand, 27 US states and more recently Ireland. However, Amigud and Dawson (2019) indicate that there is little evidence to show that these laws are being enforced. Moreover, they present data based on a sample of essay mill sites that show these companies are just as likely to be based in those jurisdictions, and also just as likely to accept contracts from customers who are based there. It is reasonable to infer that such enforcement is a resource intensive process. The authors conclude that: “We think the onus is on instructors, academic administrators, university admissions processes and support services to ensure that students are able to progress through their program and provide interventions when necessary”.
Finally, legislation in Australia has created a worry that family and friends who contribute to a student’s assignment could be liable to a fine. The law prohibits any party providing “any part of a piece of work or assignment” that a student is required to submit.
Legislation is not enough
A major challenge for a successful legal action would be confronting the claimed nature of the service provided – rather than the use to which it is put by students. This is the difference between innocent models for giving support on academic topics versus purchased products then submitted in the customer’s name for assessment. Sites commonly declare their purposes in terms of the first version. For example lawteacher. net asserts: “The legitimate way to use our service is to use your model answer as a learning aid. It’s no different to using a journal, book, web article, study guide or any past paper given to you by your tutor – except this learning resource is tailored to your exact requirements.“
One writing insider has defended these companies (that prefer to be called “the UK model answers industry”), arguing that they are filling gaps left by poor university tuition. Moreover some university insiders have mounted a similar case: one that highlights the declining quality of higher education experience and even acknowledges the genuine value of free study resources that some essay mill sites seem to supply in good faith. Whether or not there is public and political sympathy for legislation and whether or not it is deemed practical to implement, it would be wise for the sector to complement its lobbying in this direction with clear examples of how it is acting to put its own house in good order.
