Academic Cheating and The Ambition Machine
With an explosion in academic cheating, and education becoming a commodity, we draw our line in the sand with contract cheating and outsourced essay writing - there’s more to this world than money, views, and influence.
In our darkest hour, we’ve all been through this rigmarole - applying for a writing job, completing the majority of a long-winded application, only to discover what the job really is. A question in the application always gives it away – Which of the following subjects are you able to discuss to a degree-level standard? Biology, Maths, English Literature…
This is not the writing gig you thought it was. Of all the low-grade work doing the rounds, this is truly the lowest of all. It’s not an underpaid blog post, it’s not a job writing bland website copy comprising 140 words in total, and it’s not even a fake product review. This job is academic writing - assisting students by helping them cheat.
The explosion of academic fraud in content writing
Some sources suggest as many as 1 in 7 students are now resorting to cheating in academia. That’s around 4 students in the average class. This is mostly in the form of contract cheating, a term used to describe cheating where a writer is commissioned to write an original piece to order, be it an essay, thesis or presentation.
When I think back to my time at University, this doesn’t surprise me at all. Most of my fellow academics were there for the drunken hi-jinks, with very few engaged or interested in the subjects they studied. This was a time when education was cheap in the UK, and a degree, any degree, gave you a good chance of getting a decent job following graduation.
I was of the same mindset in many ways - disinterred in the subject matter, and desperate to do my own thing. Fortuitously, my own thing was writing, for which I had discovered a great passion. The lectures and seminars bored me, but the writing - constructing engaging arguments with a lofty, considered turn of phrase - was truly thrilling. I happily bluffed my way through each essay with stylish and engaging prose, which conferred knowledge that I, frankly, did not possess. My writing was crafted with care, but with laughably limited substance.
Contract cheating and a culture of entitlement
I’m certain that my peers didn’t share this passion for the written word, but, in many ways, they were just as lazy as I was. What was to stop them from paying someone else to write their thesis for them, instead of wasting their own time ticking the boxes of formulaic points on a syllabus? Evidently, not too much.
Contract cheating has gone from a rumoured, black market practice in my day, to a mainstream industry, turning over millions of pounds a year. I don’t blame students for doing this – it’s just another shortcut in a world that now celebrates shortcuts. It’s the quick-fix solution of a society that tells us to outsource our lives, free up our time and make every second count. It’s the culture apparent in a student body that won’t protest for political change but will kick up a stink when they can’t find the macros for the food they are served. This is a world where terms like ‘AI blog writer’ has increased in search engines by 900% in recent months, a damning sign that we are simply willing to outsource everything we can’t be bothered to do. Fiverr content writers, too, are thriving in this new illicit market.
Should paying for education guarantee a good grade?
The rising cost of university has meant that education is now a commodity, funded by students who are the most valuable product of all. Interactions between students and staff are becoming increasingly transactional – students are paying for their education and feel they are owed good grades in return. Indeed research has suggested that this may actually be the root cause of cheating – when universities don’t know their students well enough to do more than the bare minimum to unearth academic fraud, why should students respect these rules beyond those of any other game of cat and mouse?
And what about us as professional copywriters? Taking an ethical stance in this business is rare, and probably extremely naive. How many of us have written disingenuous reviews before, or optimised SEO for a site that exists to just leach off others with affiliate links? How many of us have completed UX copy for a site that is clearly intent on fleecing a target audience of the naïve or the bewildered? Currently, it’s AI rewriting that’s increasing in popularity, and more and more people need native English speakers to rewrite the copy they churned out with software tools.
There is a line we all have to draw in the sand regarding what we are willing to do, and the world of sales-based copy has never been murkier. Even using Surfer-SEO feels dirty to me – crowbarring keywords into a passage of writing to manipulate a search engine, rank the site higher, grab eyes, and flog tat. As we all know, this work pays very well. All work that generates money for someone else pays very well. Does that make it worthwhile?
Education and the value of ideas
In the case of academic writing, I will draw my line in the sand. The world may now be enslaved to a digital capitalist system of clicks and views, and this is where writers are forced to exist, but you can still make a choice. I can write something beautiful if I want. I just have to accept that it’s unlikely to ever be read or considered - it’s just for me to enjoy.
It’s the same reason I wrote my own essays at university – most barely earned me a passing grade but the truth is they were just for me. I don’t want to write someone else's essay because it will make the education system more of a commodity than it already is. What used to be a place for passion and the sharing of ideas has become, more and more, a career-driven input for the money and ambition machine. Universities need to return to what they were – havens for the disenfranchised and the rebels; places where ideas could thrive and writing could be writing for writing's sake. They must rekindle their relationships with the students there, and teach them the value of thought as a practice, not just a means to an end.
Writing can be beautiful, destructive and illuminating, and this is where its value lies. There’s more to this world than money and views, and influence.
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