An exclusive Student Direct investigation has revealed just how easy it is to pass off somebody else’s work as your own, with great success. It took less than a week for UKEssays.com to deliver our custom written essay, answering a complex question set for a course at The University of Manchester.
Despite having not written a word of the essay, the Student Direct team were awarded a high first for their work, receiving a mark of 75. No electronic plagiarism software was able to establish that the essay was a fake. The only clue the academic who marked it had was that it was ‘too good’, but with anonymous marking this suspicion could go no further.
Why doesn’t everybody do this? Quite simply because it would set you back £600. That’s the price of a first. The revelation that fakery is so easy is worrying on a number of levels.
Sadly university education is increasingly discussed in merely financial terms. Research published last week showed that huge numbers of potential students from lower income backgrounds are not applying to university for the fear of accumulating large levels of debt. Once at university, it now appears possible to simply buy success. This is yet another point in the education system where students will be separated out according to their financial status, with the rich inevitably at the top of the pile.
Financial concerns aside, the fake essay scandal devalues the efforts of those who are genuinely academically talented. Every person who buys their way to success is belittling the efforts of their honest course mates.
Universities need to ensure that fraudulent essays are spotted and dealt with. Students need to think carefully about the injustice they are about to embark on before digging into their overdrafts.
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