The British universities watchdog has warned of increasing plagiarism and cheating on degree courses amid fresh revelations of an Internet service charging students as much as £50 an hour for pre-written essays and assignments for academic degrees. But the academic authorities in the United Kingdom appear powerless to shut down such services, which offer ”model” answers to students.
The warnings came as new evidence emerged of the activities of Elizabeth Hall, a retired lecturer selling essays to students over the Internet. A website promoting Elizabeth Hall Associates boasts: ”The earlier you contact us, the more help we can give you and the better the grades you will receive.” Hall insists she is providing a legitimate service, and stresses to inquirers that ”the final decision to submit any work is yours alone”.
Academic quality watchdogs, however, warned that the service signaled a worrying trend. Dr Peter Milton, director of programme review at the Quality Assurance Agency, said: ”This deplorable and probably extreme example has arisen amidst growing concerns about plagiarism in higher education institutions. With the advent of improving information and computer technology, the Internet and e-learning initiatives — all of which offer opportunities for cheating — institutional staff are having to take ever greater care to check student assignments.”
Responding to an e-mail inquiry about the service, Hall said: ”I would be very happy to write a series of essays for you, and complete the final year of your degree. I am sending to you my charges, which you may notice have risen since beginning [sic] of the year.
”I offer you absolute confidentiality and in no circumstance would I reveal to anyone our contract. You need not worry that the authorities would discover the work was not your own. In some cases I can, if felt necessary [sic] that the work I am writing might be seen as above the grade that could be attained by the student, actually build in material which I know is incorrect, so that the grade achieved does not cause any alarm or question around the authorship.
”In any case, there has never been a student who has been subjected to a viva due to concern regarding the source, or indeed questioned. Some students have achieved first-class degrees through my writing for them and they have not in any way or at any stage encountered any query from their tutors or institution.”
Hall charges £40 an hour to write essays and dissertations for first degrees, £45 an hour for masters courses and £50 for PhDs. Work required within five working days is subject to an additional charge of £10 an hour. Work required immediately, overnight, or within two days ”can at times be negotiated at an additional rate”.
Students are asked to sign a disclaimer acknowledging that ”any material provided by Elizabeth Hall Associates [is] on the understanding that it is a guidance model only”.
Hall retired from her senior lecturer post at the University of Central England, Birmingham, in 1996. Since then, several academics at the university have expressed concern about her activities, although she no longer has a connection with the university.
Diana Warwick, chief executive of Universities UK, said: ”Students should only ever seek to achieve their degrees or other higher education qualifications through their own hard work. Any form of cheating is condemned by all universities.”
She added: ”Universities are always extremely vigilant in their assessment procedures, which usually involve unseen examinations as well as assessed papers. Anyone cheating in their preparation of assessed essays is likely to be found out through discrepancies between the standard of their examination answers and essays. Anyone found to be using other people’s work or plagiarizing material would be heavily penalised by their institution.”
Universities, however, have little hope of shutting down services such as that provided by Elizabeth Hall Associates as there is no illegality involved.
In a completely different case, Universities UK last year took out an injunction to stop a website selling fake degree certificates. Yet for months afterwards the website was still up and running, promoting itself as a ”free resource of degree templates”. —