INVESTIGATION: Inside the Term Paper Plagiarism for Profit Industry
Wednesday, December 03, 2014
Photo credit: iStock
Logan Cook is a freelance writer who lives solely off writing midterm assignments and dissertations for students all over the world.
“The longest job I had was 124 pages in 32 hours straight,” he said. “Welcome to my life.”
The internet is packed with websites like EWorld Publishing and Proficient Writers, who offer students stock or custom essays for a price, some costing 30 dollars per double-spaced, 12-point, Times New Roman-font page.
With usually only a two or three day deadline, Cook, an assumed name he used for this article, has become an expert on anything from nursing practices to historical government theories.
“For most assignments, if I can do one page in less than fifteen minutes, preferably in about ten, that’s pretty good,” Cook said. At that speed he can sometimes make $50 an hour.
Rampant Plagiarism
As a 2009 study in Ethics &Behavior revealed, a shocking 82 percent of college students admit to academic dishonesty. Many college presidents are alarmed with the rising trend of plagiarism, according to a PEW Research Center survey.
Tom Bivins, a media and ethics expert and professor at the University of Oregon, said plagiarists are hard to catch. Bivins said when he grades papers, sometimes essays can seem too good, but that there are few ways to prove that something isn’t a student’s work if it comes from an original source.
“There is literally nothing I can do about it,” Bivins said. “It’s unethical, but there’s nothing you can do.”
One of Cook's assignments from an essay mill
Essay mills act as a middleman between writers and clients. Clients from all over the nation post their requests on the sites like Proficient Writers, listing the assignment specifics and time limit. Cook and other writers then look through the postings via the website’s back end and apply for projects.
The mill picks one writer or the student can request one. Once picked, the writer is held responsible for completing the assignment on time.
Contact with the student depends on the essay mill. Some allow no contact between writer and client, but some give the option for the two communicate, Cook explained.
Writers are paid for the amount of assignments over a two-week period, either through check or PayPal. However, the essays mills keep a large chunk of the profits, with Cook usually getting 10 dollars a page.
Industry of Deception
Of course, the companies say the papers provided are not for students to turn in to teachers, but to use as helpful resources or models of good assignments. According to the essay mill bigpapers.com terms of service, “BigPapers.com does not endorse nor tolerates any form of whole or partial plagiarism or any activity that will facilitate cheating.”
Kenny Sahr is the owner of the homework site schoolsucks.com, which offers free sample essays and homework assignments on a variety of subjects. Sahr said he anticipates the 5,000 to 20,000 site-hits per day are not for nefarious purposes.
“I hope students don't turn in the papers. That’s not a smart thing to do,” Sahr said. “I do hope it helps them to get their feet wet by reading the work of their peers and understanding complicated topics.”
Yet once students pay for writing services, the essay mills companies have no control over what happens next. And while students can fail classes or even be expelled from their institution for turning in the papers, holding the suppliers responsible is another story. Bivins explained there is no legal action that can be taken against these companies and their writers, unless they plagiarize another author’s copyrighted work.
Photo credit: iStock
Five years ago, Cook was far from the writing world, pulling espresso at a coffee shop in Davis, Calif. Fresh out of UC Davis, his plans for grad school fell through and he discovered a bachelor degree in anthropology was not much help in the job market.
An ad on Career Builder caught his eye—writing for cash, pick your own hours, only requires a four year degree and a writing sample. He got a quick response from the company and after a short interview over the phone Cook was starting his career as an essay mill writer.
Lately, Cook has been moving away from the big websites for his focusing on his solo career. The big money can be made through private enterprises over craigslist.com, where Cook does not have split payment to essay mills. He can also communicate directly with students, through email or text.
So far, Cook said his private practice has been successful. In his ads, he makes sure he presents himself as professional and experienced in a straight-forward way. He also plays up the pressures clients are dealing with by promising worry-free, stress-free, better grades by a qualified writer. “After nearly five years doing this, I think I know a thing or two,” Cook said.
Cook charges between 16 and 20 dollars per page in his private enterprise. He emails the paper to the client who then makes payment to a PayPal account. If he doesn’t get paid, Cook said he will track down the client and inform them he will report them to the school if they don’t pay.
Motives and Ethics
Cook said some students turn to plagiarism because of circumstances that sneak up unavoidably in lives—a death in the family, shifts at work that cannot be missed or crucial classes that cannot be dropped.
“Then you just have people who are entitled and lazy and probably on mommy’s and daddy’s dime,” Cook said. “But I’ll still take their money—a job is a job.”
Others are in over their heads, in classes they can’t process or understand. So they come to Cook looking for a fix.
“I sit there and I see clients who are hopelessly out of their depth, having not the slightest clue about anything,” said Cook. He blamed the education system.
Eventually Cook would like to move away from the essay business to other writing opportunities. He has recently started a blog to coach others on craft of essay writing. But for now, Cook continues writing term papers and dissertations for his paying customers, even though he harbors some doubts about his profession.
“To be fair, I know I’m feeding the problem.” Cook said. “There’s a part of me that goes ‘Geez, that kind of sucks.’ I don’t like that I’m undermining the education system. There’s another part that’s like ‘it’s not a bad living.’ The pragmatic opportunistic part has won the war of consciences many years ago and has held the upper hand ever since.”
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