Cash for essays
- Buy your essays online from £500 - £20,000
- Company exploits legal loophole
- 8% of polled students willing to pay for services
An essay-writing company is actively recruiting customers at Imperial's South Kensington campus. The company, Oxbridge Essays, boasts that essays will be "written by an expert from either Oxford or Cambridge University" and that only writers in the top 0.1% of Britain's and the world's universities will craft the essays.
An intense marketing campaign has been taking place outside various entrances to Imperial College for the last week, most notably outside the Tanaka Business School. This has angered many students who feel this is providing an easy option for those willing to avoid work and unfairly increase their university classification.
The founder of Oxbridge Essays, Philip Malamatinas, a final year Geography student at Birmingham University, was recently cleared of bringing his university into disrepute by offering the essay service to the public. The charges against him were dropped as the services offered by Oxbridge Essays are legally legitimate, as the company's website states: "The client must never submit as if their own work, either in part or in total, to their university, school or any other institute of education an essay or dissertation sold by Oxbridge Essays."
However, the company boldly informs browsers of their website that they can "hand our work in as your own, and no one will probably ever know." Further information on the site outlines a `12 Point Guarantee', including claims such as "no essay will ever be re-published", "no essay will ever feature on any database anywhere in the world" and "all essays are comprehensively scanned for plagiarism".
The price of a 10,000 word dissertation tops £3,000 and there is a hefty £960 price tag associated with a simple undergraduate two-day delivery `guaranteed first class' 3,000 word essay.
Speaking to Felix, the Rector, Sir Richard Sykes said: "If students are caught buying essays, they will be expelled. It would be totally unacceptable behaviour. If naive students think they can pay for an essay and then hand it in, I think we have to make it clear that behaviour like that will not be tolerated". He assured Felix that "any lecturer marking the paper would know bloody well whether that student had written that paper or not."
Plagiarism is a growing concern amongst British universities, and there are specific worries over Oxford and Cambridge students being targeted to take part in an enterprise which might distract them from their academic work. A spokesperson for Cambridge University said, "Not only is it cheating but it goes against the entire purpose of a university education."
Helen Fisher, a third year student at Cambridge University, said, "I am amazed that any current undergraduate student has the time or inclination to write extra essays on top of their own. I find the `guarantee' of their quality extremely dubious, and I don't believe for a second that anyone who would pay that much money for an essay would use it just for `research'."
A poll of students conducted in the JCR by Felix revealed that 41% admitted to having previously plagiarised small pieces of work (less than 10% of an assignment) in university assessed coursework, 26% admitted to plagiarising more than 10%, and 8% are willing to pay for such services. 90% of the polled students were worried about the effect such companies have on academic integrity.
The Pro-Rector of Educational Quality, Rees Rawlings, told Felix: "We are very concerned at the activity of this company. We can, and will, remove any agents of that company when they are on campus. Major cases [of plagiarism] are referred to the University of London. If found guilty, the punishments include no report on the element of the examination in question, no report on all examinations that year or in some cases exclusion from examinations of the University".
The distributers operating around College are not in fact staff of Oxbridge Essays. When Felix asked one of them whether students could get away with using work from Oxbridge Essays as their own, the distributer replied, "Probably, yes. Students need to make a choice [as to] whether they hand it in as their own work or not."
Luke Taylor, a second year Aeronautical Engineering student said: "It's so pretentious, it makes my blood boil. The whole pretence of having a company employing people from a `better university' than you to write essays is extremely arrogant."
Chris Miles & John Sargent
Felix's View
If you're clever enough to get into Imperial, you should be clever enough to do your own work. If you have to resort to blatant cheating, you should seriously consider your future at Imperial.
Even if your Dad's the Sultan of Brunei you won't be able to buy your way out every time you get stuck. This is just one more example of the ease with which people can pay their way to success. In past if Daddy donated a wadge to Cambridge you could be guaranteed a place, and a bit of cash always used to give you a push up the career ladder.
Our investigations into the company revealed that there is no link to Oxford or Cambridge and it is uncertain whether your essay will be written by an Oxbridge student or just some kid out for a quick buck.
The company isn't doing anything illegal and the founder has been cleared of wrong doing by tribunal at his university. It may be legal, but it certainly isn't moral.
He is exploiting a legal loop hole that allows the essay to be supplied for information purposes, but not for handing in. Even the cheapest essay at £500 is a lot of money to ask, just for information.
The Rector told us that if students do use these essays lecturers will recognise the sudden improvement and change in style, but is this really likely?
