Forget plagiarism: there’s a new and bigger threat to academic integrity.

Adele Thomas doesn’t work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that will reap the benefits of this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.

University of Johannesburg provides funding as a partner of this Conversation AFRICA.

The Conversation UK receives funding from all of these organisations

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Academic plagiarism is no longer just sloppy “cut and paste” jobs or students cribbing large chunks of an assignment from a friend’s earlier essay on the topic that is same. These days, students can visit any of simply a number of paper or essay mills that litter the world-wide-web and buy a completed assignment to provide because their own.

These shadowy businesses are not going away any time in the future. Paper mills can’t be easily shut or policed down by legislation. And there’s a trickier issue at play here: they offer a site which an alarming quantity of students will happily use.

Managing this newest form of academic deceit will need hard work from established academia and a renewed commitment to integrity from university communities.

Unmasking the “shadow scholar”

In November 2010, the Chronicle of Higher Education published an article that rocked the academic world. Its author that is anonymous confessed having written more than 5000 pages of scholarly work each year with respect to university students. Ethics was on the list of issues https://www.ultius.ws/ that are many author had tackled for clients.

The practice continues five years on. At a conference about plagiarism held in the Czech Republic in June 2015, one speaker revealed that as much as 22% of students in some Australian undergraduate programmes had admitted to buying or intending to buy assignments on the net.

It emerged that the paper mill business was booming. One site claims to get two million hits each month for its 5000 free papers that are downloadable. Another allows cheats to electronically interview the folks who can write their papers. Some even claim to use university professors to ensure the grade of work.

A typical example of one of many many paper mills that a simple Google search brings up.

Policing and legislation becomes quite difficult as the company selling assignments may be domiciled in the US while its “suppliers”, the ghostwriters, are based elsewhere on earth. Your client, a university student, could possibly be anywhere in the globa world – New York City, Lagos, London, Nairobi or Johannesburg.

No quick fixes

In the event that companies and writers are all shadows, just how can paper mills be stopped? The answers most likely lie with university students – along with the academics who teach them.

The writer that is anonymous paper mill tales shocked academia explained in the piece which kinds of students were using these services and merely exactly how much these people were willing to pay. During the right time of writing, he was making about US$66,000 annually. His three client that is main were students for whom English is a second language; students who will be struggling academically and people who will be lazy and rich.

His criticism is stinging:

I live well regarding the desperation, misery, and incompetence that your educational system has generated.

Ideally, lecturers when you look at the system of which he’s so dismissive ought to know their students and therefore be able to detect abnormal patterns of work. But with large undergraduate classes of 500 students or maybe more, this level of engagement is impossible. The chance for greater engagement that is direct students rises at postgraduate levels as class sizes drop.

Academics should also carefully design their methods of assessment because these could serve to deter students from buying assignments and dissertations. Again, this choice is much more feasible with smaller numbers of postgraduate students and live dissertation defences.

It isn’t foolproof. Students may still make the time to familiarise themselves utilizing the contents for the documents they’ve bought to allow them to answer questions without exposing their dishonesty.

Some academics suggested that students should write assignments on templates supplied by their university which will track when work is undertaken and when it’s incorporated into the document at the conference. However, this kind of remedy continues to be being developed.

There is another problem with calling on academics alone to tackle plagiarism. Research suggests that many may themselves be guilty of the same offence or may ignore their students’ dishonesty because they feel investigating plagiarism takes time that is too much.

It has in addition been proved that cheating behaviour thrives in environments where you can find few or no consequences. But perhaps herein lies a remedy that could assist in addressing the problem of plagiarism and paper mills.

Universities exist to advance thought leadership and moral development in society.

As such, their academics needs to be role models and must promote behaviour that is ethical the academy. There ought to be a zero tolerance policy for academics who cheat. Extensive instruction should be provided to students concerning the pitfalls of cheating and additionally they needs to be taught techniques to enhance their academic writing skills.

Universities must develop a culture of integrity and continue maintaining this through ongoing dialogue in regards to the values on which academia is dependent. They also need to develop institutional moral responsibility by really examining how student cheating is dealt with, confronting academics’ resistance to reporting and dealing with such cheating, and taking a difficult get up on student teaching.

Should this be done well then institutional values will become internalised and practised given that norm. Developing such cultures requires determined leadership at senior university levels.

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