Opinion: 'Buying your career' Through Academic Essays

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People pay someone to write and research their essays for them. They’re not so much plagiarizing as hiring someone to do their degree for them.

Is it illegal?

No.

You’re buying a service, not a morality. There’s no fundamental difference between contracting a writer for any other purpose and this service.

If you buy a copy of War and Peace, and commit a crime with it, it’s not Tolstoy’s fault, or his publisher’s.

Is it a form of fraud?

No. Given that the service provider has no control over what you do with the product, and would be insane to think or claim that they did, the people providing the service aren’t committing fraud.

Aren’t they acting in the knowledge of the use of the materials?

No, you can’t assume that, and you could be accused of defamation if you do, because you're accusing them of knowingly participating in an illegal act, or something where their commercial or social reputation could be damaged. They could be getting a request for a bona fide piece of research for publication, for all they know. That’s a perfectly legitimate commercial process, because a lot of material, (including some of mine), is bought and onsold on that basis. There’s no “duty of care” on providers of content for subsequent usage, nor would it be enforceable, even in theory, on the net.

There's another angle here: Just to emphasize the sensitivities. Say I sold a piece to someone on a commercial basis. If someone else then plagiarized or onsold my work to someone who then used it for fraudulent purposes, I wouldn't be too thrilled about getting accused of fraud, too.

What about law of contract, if a contract is implied in the service? You can’t enter into a contract for an illegal purpose.

No you can’t, and that protects the providers against abuses. It doesn’t noticeably protect anyone else, particularly not a third party. You can’t sign a contract with someone to rob a bank, and expect them to be held to it. Again, it’s all on the buyer, not the provider. Providers generally, in any form of contract or service provision situation, don’t want anything to do with any third party situation which involves them in liabilities.

Well, if it’s all so great, is buying your academic papers a good idea?

No, it’s a really lousy idea, and the basis on which it’s done needs a look, which is the reason for this article.

It’s sometimes assumed that buying your papers is some sort of lazy, cheating, way to get your degree. Things are a lot more complex than that, and it goes right to the heart of academic systems as they now are.

Scenario 1:

X is in a really lousy situation, not doing at all well with papers, and is scared to death of failing, and with a massive loan. Mom sold a kidney to pay for the upfronts, and the 100% probability is that X is going to wind up back at Square One, without any way out.

Choices: Buy a paper, sneak through, or crash and burn. The chances of making a second attempt are zero, and time’s a-wasting.

Scenario 2:

Y just happens to be a truly lousy student, with no real talent or motivation. Pushed into the degree, the parents have brought out the bullwhips, and some genuine trouble has to be avoided.

Choices: Buy a paper, avoid the whole issue. For $50, off the hook in many different directions.

Scenario 3

Z just happens to be an idiot. Very much inclined to do everything the easy way, doesn’t see why he should do anything if he doesn’t have to, and not worried about any ethical situations, or the need to understand anything about his own career. Doesn’t realize his total lack of knowledge is going to be a problem, or that his competitors will run right over him.

Choices: Simple minded soul, takes the easy option, doesn’t think about choices.

The correct answer, for academic purposes, is “Get Help”, which is available. But for these personal situations, it’s also not necessarily the surefire way out of those problems.

Cost is a big factor, and academic failure is a massive financial risk. It’s a real disaster, in terms of career and future financial horrors, and these kids can see it coming.

Rather unfortunately, there are risks in academic cheating. It can be a very naïve thing to do. Buying your papers also means you now have someone who’s able to prove you didn’t write your papers. You are now dependent on a third party to be able to solve your problems, and not create a few more, far more serious, problems.

Actually you’ve got more than one other party involved, and a few other problems.

· The service provider may be OK for you, but not the researcher/writer, who’s screaming about not being paid, and waving copyright entitlements at anyone who’s interested.
· The service provider may be a recycler, and “your” paper may be sprayed all over the English speaking world.
· The paper’s quality isn’t necessarily good. There have been cases of utterly hopeless materials being submitted as academic papers, and the buyers have bought not only Sudden Academic Death, but garbage.

Remember, you just paid $50 for practically anything. You made your stipulations, but what are you going to do about it if anything goes wrong?

Sue? Run amok with a chainsaw?

Probably not.

You could do a bit of crying, enter a monastery, or move to another country where they don’t speak English, but that’s about it.

All pretty cute so far, isn’t it?

There’s more, and it’s nowhere near as much fun.

The academic papers industry has arisen because of the sheer physical threat from the fees structure. People can’t afford to fail.

Add to this the fact that society is now getting a lot of people with degrees they really didn’t earn, for whatever reason, and hey presto, the wheels fall off the whole system.

The US isn’t the only place on Earth this happens. It’s global, and nowhere is immune.

There was a big stink about this, a few years ago, but as usual, there was outrage, “policies were implemented”, and everyone went back to sleep.

One of the most obvious results you can infer from the Buy A Career approach is the stunning lack of competence across whole sectors of the global economy.

The current financial mess, for example, has horrified people in the finance sector with proven credentials. Monetizing bad risks isn’t part of anyone’s idea of securities trading.

The people who let down New Orleans so badly and so often presumably got their qualifications somewhere, anyone wondering where?

Pseudo science, with attached political arguments, is based on “authorities” with academic credentials obtained where?

In fact, the academics themselves are now part of the plagiarism scene, not its adversaries. They’ve obviously learned how to do that from somewhere. It’s also commercially useful, as this Times article shows:

The trouble is that if the academic becomes a star, the pressure can dent his or her scruples. Take the case of Raj Persaud, the Mr Glib of media shrinks, at present suspended for three months by the General Medical Council for some pretty shameless plagiarism of other academics' work. He pleaded that he was in a “confused mental state” at the time of knocking off these particular works, because of the “pressure” of juggling media commitments and NHS psychiatric practice.

The lines have blurred, and they’re not so much being redrawn as re-yawned, according to this French Agoravox piece:

http://www.agoravox.com/article.php3?id_article=8481

"e-International Relations", at http://www.e-ir.info/, is well worth a visit, not only as a laudable and interesting initiative, but also for lots of stimulating content (not just my own contribution, either!).Of course the student essays as well as the gurus’ and others’ ’editorial comments’ offer rich pickings for student essay-writers to plunder, but then so does all Web content, and these days alert tutors have ways of tracking down plagiarism.Anyway the line between plagiarism and inspiration fired by others’ ideas is a blurred one.(Personally I would find it rather flattering to be plagiarised, although naturally I’m unlikely to know it even if I have been.)

For those of us who produce original materials, plagiarism isn’t so much flattery as bloodsucking, but if the guy’s been doing enough writing, the carbon monoxide may have been doing a bit of mental editing while he was writing that.

Hilarious as all this is, there’s slightly worrying part of the academic ramifications, too.

Buying a degree is now a generational thing. Since 1971, Careerism, the current social answer to rabid Nazism, has been notable for its lack of ethical restraint, as well as its sickening culture. Hardly a surprise is it? Its first manifesto was essentially the Greed Is Good thing, complete with Conspicuous Consumption.

Any talentless piece of trash can now buy a career, at least to some degree, and do it literally at the expense of those with the talent.

It even happens in media, can you imagine that?

Nobody would be too surprised that the academic sector, confronted with budgets to the right of them, babble to the left of them, and illiterate clowns (with academic qualifications) running their policies, might have lost the plot itself.

Coincidence, they’ve got themselves in that position?

Wouldn’t bet on it.