Are essay-writing firms devaluing degrees?

The heads of more than 40 UK universities have written to the Department for Education to demand a ban on so-called essay mills.

Education Secretary Damian Hinds is being urged to make third-party essay-writing services illegal amid fears that they are “undermining the integrity of degree courses”, says ITV News.

According to the BBC, there has been an increase in students paying for bespoke, original assignments that “cannot easily be detected by anti-plagiarism software”. A recent study found that as many as one in seven recent graduates may have cheated by using these third-party services during the last four years, adds the ITV site.

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Students who get caught faking an essay face internal punishment by their university, including possible expulsion, but it is not currently illegal for companies to sell the pre-written essays.

The letter demanding a legal ban has been signed by 46 vice-chancellors and heads of higher education bodies. They also want the Government to support efforts by Quality and Assurance Agency (QAA), the higher education standards body, and the Office for Students (OFS) to tackle the issue.

OFS chief executive Nicola Dandridge says essay mill firms have “sought to turn cheating into an industry” as demand for their services increases.

“Essay mills are deeply unethical, and their operation is unfair on the vast majority of students who hand in their own work,” she continued.

“The Office for Students has a central role to play in ending essay mills. Universities and colleges wishing to register with us must demonstrate that they are protecting the reliability and credibility of degree standards.”

Universities Minister Sam Gyimah has said that outlawing the services completely remains an option, although work is ongoing to tackle the problem in other ways.

“I expect universities to be educating students about these services and highlight the stiff, and possibly life changing, penalties they face,” he said.

“I also want the sector to do more to grip the problem, for example by tackling advertising of these services in their institutions and finally blocking these services from sending an alarming number of emails to the inboxes of university students and staff.”