This section comprises three sub-sections. They consider in turn: (1) The identity of the ‘writers’ that furnish contracted assignment work. (2) How widespread the services are that provide this form of help (3) The quality of the products that are sold to customers in this way.
It proves difficult to explore the identity or motives of those who write contracted assignments. The business process that underpins their work has been well described by many insiders: it is typically streamlined and competitive. Most authors are likely to be current postgraduate students or students recently graduated. Confessional reflections are a risky basis from which to make generalisations about motives, but these tend to be expressed in terms of (a) genuine sympathy for stressed students (b) hostile attitudes towards the culture of higher education, or (c) an appetite for learning or intellectual stimulation. Evidently renumeration is an overarching concern – voices differ at so how generous this is and one can assume rates vary a lot across the very large number of employers.
We conclude that the scale of the web-based companies is vast and well-established. Although its apparent size may be over-estimated by some lists of providers, because many sites with different addresses may feed into the same master site of contracted writers. It is more difficult to judge the scale of freelance work but such individual ghostwriters advertise widely. Our own research suggests that family-based or peer-based social help seeking is common for assignments, although attitudes towards this more informal practice is dominated by a strong discourse of ‘fairness’.
Similarly, only work from traditional essay mills has been subject to quality scrutiny. The media and independent commentators tend to warn students away from these services because of (among other reasons) the poor quality of their products. What little research there has been on this topic suggests that products may usually be of an acceptable standard – although likely to fall below that requested by the customer. There are many sites that review different providers, but they are prone to false postings.
Overall, we conclude that contracted plagiarism is a stable industry, is available on a large scale and proceeds with aggressive marketing. Authors are likely to be competent and the quality of the work often would be adequate to pass most assessment expectations that are commonly sought.
