The waterproof cheating – get yourself a ghostwriter

Instead of writing the essays by themselves the students choose to pay a ghostwriter to do the job. The cheating is close to impossible to detect.

In addition, the law is on the ghostwriter’s side and the ghostwriters can run their business openly. Students paying thousands of kronor instead of writing their essays by themselves is not new, but nowadays there are also companies offering to do the writing for money. A student who hands in a bought essay could be punished by the Disciplinary Board if it is revealed, but the company who sells the essay doesn’t commit any crime.

”It is not illegal, but highly immoral”, says Pontus Kyrk, lawyer at Högskoleverket. His opinion is also that the likelihood of a student being revealed is very small. ”It is next to impossible to reveal if somebody’s bought the job. We do have a system to reveal cheating, Urkund, but then it has to be plagiarism. In this case it’s an original text”, says Pontus Kyrk.

”An unexplored market”

How common it is that students hand in bought essays is, from this point of view, also difficult to say. At one company, that offers newly written essays as needed by the client, they get around 40 requests every day.

”This is an almost unexplored market. There are some copywriters who can offer similar services if asked, but we are the only company actively promoting our services”, says Peshwas, operation’s officer at the company. And the number of requests to buy an essay is expected to grow. The company is paying student ambassadors to spread advertisements at all the universities in Sweden and all high schools in Stockholm.

The company doesn’t take any responsibility what so ever for students facing the possibility of being punished after buying their essays. ”As soon as we have delivered the text we renounce all rights. Then again we are well aware that some students don’t hand in their essays at once, but it’s the client who makes that choice. It tells you something about the education in general. According to Peter Kyrk the problem is not only the responsibility of the company.

”It’s of course highly immoral, but the question is what it says about a course if somebody who has not taken it can write an essay for somebody who actually has”. Peshwas doesn’t want to discuss the competence of the ghostwriter, but assure that all the company’s employees are experienced professionals. The company also offers a guarantee on the results. If the essay receives a lower grade than the client ordered, money is refunded.  Furthermore, Peshwas thinks that the company does a philanthropic achievement. ”I would be extremely happy if our company wasn’t needed, but today we face a huge lack of knowledge when it comes to writing an essay. Even if students for some reason is not able to express themselves in writing, they should have the same possibilities as everybody else to finish the education”.

Pontus Kyrk doesn’t have the same opinion. Even if he thinks it’s relatively unusual in Sweden so far, his opinion is that this kind of cheating in the end would stop the modern educational system. ”Absolutely! In the long run this could undermine how knowledge is assessed” 

The Disciplinary Board is unaware of the cheating

The Disciplinary Board has never had a case where a student is suspected of having bought an essay. Not to our knowledge. ”It has never happened, as far as we know”, says Hanna Stam, the Board’s lawyer. But, on the other hand, she admits, they wouldn’t know if it had happened. And there are actually no ways to reach the eventual cheaters. ”The only way to catch the cheaters is to develop a system like Urkund that would recognize the cheating, but I don’t know if it would work”

If somebody, against all odds, would get caught Helena Stam thinks that the Disciplinary Board’s punishment would be considerable. ”This kind of cheating is on purpose. It is not about somebody being stressed and not being able to write an essay”.

Generally, the Disciplinary Board will not suspend a student for more than six months.

text Tor Gasslander

translation Lars Jansson