University essays for £132

Portfolio: www.clippings.me/tomcalver

A recent Times investigation found that 50,000 students at British universities have been caught cheating in the past three years.

Collating responses to freedom of information requests from 129 universities, they discovered that, between 2012–15, Kent, Westminster and East London Universities were the worst offending institutions with 1,947, 1,933, and 1,828 cheats respectively.

Curious about City University, I asked the Times journalists who worked on the investigation. Unfortunately, they said that City gave a “Section 12” exemption to the FOI request, meaning that it would take longer than the maximum required time to gather the evidence.

So, how easy is it for City students to cheat?

A few weeks ago I found a sign in Northampton Square, right outside the University, for “GradEasy Academic Consulting”, complete with tear-off contact slips.

GradEasy’s website claims to offer “The Support You Need To Graduate”. Here are some impressed customers:

What kind of “Academic Consulting” do these services offer? Is it, as “Olivia” suggests, merely the support of a “good tutor”, or something far more substantial?

“Rose” from Customer Support was keen to talk:

John Pilger* sent Rose a sample Tort law essay question, ethically sourced from essayzone.co.uk.

Ten minutes later, they replied with a quote of £132:

£132 sounds like a lot for a one-off 2,000 word essay, so I asked if they could guarantee a mark of at least 65. They explained:

While Universities are supposedly getting better and better at detecting plagiarism, the tools they use remain useless against so-called “essay-mill” services like GradEasy.

Geoffrey Alderman (University of Buckingham), responding to the Times’s findings, said: “What I’d call type-1 plagiarism, copying and pasting, is on the wane because it’s so easy to detect … But my impression is that type-2 cheating, using a bespoke essay-writing service, is increasing.”

Although it’s unlikely that many students can afford to use GradEasy on a weekly basis, it’s not surprising that use of these services is increasing — especially if £132 could potentially make the difference between someone passing their degree, or failing it.

UPDATE. GradEasy can’t spell “assignment” and that comma on line 3 is quite unnerving:

Portfolio: www.clippings.me/tomcalver