are essay mills illegal in the uk

This blog post was published under the 2015-2024 Conservative Administration

https://educationhub.blog.gov.uk/2022/04/28/essay-mills-are-now-illegal-skills-minister-calls-on-internet-service-providers-to-crack-down-on-advertising/

Essay mills are now illegal - Skills Minister calls on internet service platforms to crack down on advertising

Skills Minister Alex Burghart has written to internet service platforms to make sure they know that essay mills - which facilitate cheating by helping academic writing, often by appearing to be legitimate - have been made illegal and to call on their support in making sure they can no longer advertise online. Here you can read that letter.

The Skills and Post-16 Education Bill has become law. Through this act, the Government has legislated for landmark reforms that will transform post-16 education and skills, including criminalising essay mills.

As you may know, Essay Mills are online platforms that facilitate contract cheating. Contract cheating happens when a third party completes work for a student which is passed off by the student as their own work. Many essay mill companies use marketing techniques which indicate they are offering ‘legitimate’ academic writing support for students. Reports also indicate that some essay mills seek to blackmail students who use these services. It is right that we have legislated against these insidious crimes.

It is now a criminal offence to provide or arrange for another person to provide contract cheating services for financial gain to students taking a qualification at a post-16 institution or sixth form in England, enrolled at a higher education provider in England and any other person over compulsory school age who has been entered for a regulated qualification at a place in England.

Similarly, it is now an offence for a person to make arrangements for an advertisement in which that person offers, or is described as being available or competent, to provide or arrange for another person to provide a cheating service. Importantly, the offence centres around the act of advertising to students, and for the offence to be committed it does not need to be seen by its target demographic.

There is now a strengthened, collaborative effort across the sector to tackle essay mills and we want you to be part of this campaign. Platforms such as yourself play an integral role in helping us to make the most effective use of the legislation; marketing and advertising are the lifeblood of any successful industry. We are aware that high numbers of essay mills have used your platform to promote their services to students in the past, paying for advertising to promote their companies. Essay mills are now illegal entities, and you should not carry their advertising. It is no longer a moral question; you will be facilitating an illegal activity. I ask you to do everything in your power to prevent the advertising these unscrupulous practices.

Removing essay mill access to online marketing will seriously hamper their efforts to target vulnerable students and I implore you to do so following the introduction of this legislation. We must now all work together to capitalise on it.

I hope that in writing to you today I have underlined the urgency of this issue and the important role that companies like yours play in stamping out essay mills once and for all and am sure I can be confident in your support.

Thank you for your support with this important matter.

Tags: cheating , essay mills , internet service platforms

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Essay mills to be banned under plans to reform post-16 education

Unscrupulous ‘essay mills’ to be criminalised as part of the Skills and Post-16 Education Bill

Services offering to provide students with essays for money, known as essay mills, are to be made illegal under plans announced by the government today (5 October).

The government intends to make it a criminal offence to provide, arrange or advertise these cheating services for financial gain to students taking a qualification at any institution in England providing post-16 education including universities.

The move is one of a number of measures being introduced to the Skills and Post-16 Education Bill , to transform the skills and training landscape and help level up opportunities across the country.

The law will also be changed to give equality to technical education in careers advice in schools, so all pupils understand the wide range of career routes and training available to them, such as apprenticeships, T Levels or traineeships, not just a traditional academic route.

Minister for Skills Alex Burghart said:

Essay mills are completely unethical and profit by undermining the hard work most students do. We are taking steps to ban these cheating services. We have also announced a new measure to make sure all young people receive broader careers guidance so everyone can get the advice that’s right for them.

Banning essay mills will help to safeguard the academic integrity and standards of post-16 and higher education in England and protect students from falling prey to the deceptive marketing techniques of contract cheating services.

This follows a number of steps already taken to tackle unscrupulous essay mills, including government working alongside the Quality Assurance Agency for Higher Education, Universities UK and the National Union of Students to produce guidance for institutions on how to combat the threat of contract cheating and guidance for students to make them better aware of the consequences, sending a clear message that these services are not legitimate.

Additional measures being introduced to the Bill include enabling sixth form colleges with a religious faith designation to become a 16-19 Academy, boosting diversity in 16-19 academies and allowing more faith school providers to open 16-19 academies with a religious character.

The Bill, which will enter its report stage in the House of Lord on 12 October, underpins the government’s transformation of post-16 education and skills as set out in the Skills for Jobs White Paper . The reforms outlined in the Bill will help to create more routes into skilled employment in sectors the economy needs such as engineering, digital, clean energy and manufacturing, so more people can secure well-paid jobs in their local areas, levelling up the nation and supporting communities to thrive.

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Essay mills explained: What they are and why you should avoid them

Essays and term papers can be stressful, especially for international students who sometimes doubt their ability to research in depth and write thousands of words in English, all to a tight deadline.  

That’s where essay mills come in, exploiting the fears of students and offering to do the hard work for them in exchange for money. 

But here’s the spoiler alert - you should absolutely avoid essay mills. All the time.

They don’t work for you. They don’t even work for the essay writers themselves, and you should see that as a big warning sign. But more on that below.

What are essay mills? 

Essay mills are pretty straightforward: You pay a company to write your essay for you. The company in turn offloads the essay to a (usually freelance) writer. A couple days or weeks later, and you get your completed essay in return. 

It’s not like a proofreading service, where someone can check your spelling, grammar and citations for a fee (though even those are controversial in universities). No, essay mills offer to write you an entire essay from scratch. 

In other words, they allow students to commit academic fraud. In fact, they exploit the worries and stresses of students and entice them into cheating. They’re considered deeply unethical, and put students themselves at risk of severe punishment if caught. 

Another business model of this kind are essay banks. Here, students can buy essays that have already been written. But there’s a much higher risk of getting caught for plagiarism, since who knows how many hundreds or thousands of people have used that very same essay. 

Are essay mills legal or illegal?

The legality of essay mills depends on where you go to university, but the unethicality is clear no matter the location. Here’s a quick rundown of essay mills’ legal status in popular study abroad countries:  

Anti - essay mill legislation in the UK was passed in the House of Commons in February 2021, and will soon be made law. It’s not totally illegal yet, but it’s just a matter of time. 

The Republic of Ireland has also passed a number of bills to help tackle essay mills, while the practice is totally illegal in Australia and New Zealand. 

As for the USA and Canada, some US states have made them illegal, while Canada is under mounting pressure to follow suit.  

But the content and nuances of these laws changes from place to place. For example, in some US states it’s illegal for the student to use them, whereas the bills in Ireland, the UK, New Zealand and Australia are an attempt to criminalise essay mill companies themselves.

However, when we talk about legality, we’re of course talking about the law. But just because you might not cause a criminal offense by using essay mills, it’s still academic fraud and/or plagiarism. And getting caught for that can come with some dire consequences. 

Long story short, you really shouldn’t use them, regardless of their legality. 

Why you should avoid essay mills

1. if it doesn’t make dollars, it doesn’t make sense.

The writer's pay is awful. I mean really bad. Trust me -- I write for a living, and I’ve seen hundreds of advertisements for essay mill jobs. Every time I see one I can’t believe how little money the writers make for so much time and effort.  

But does this affect you? Totally! Would you care about doing great work if, a) the money was terrible, and b) it wouldn’t take you anywhere in your career? I know I wouldn’t...

Let’s talk about cost and time to put this into some perspective. The price range of essay mills varies wildly depending on the writers they employ. You can pay anywhere between £10-£35 per page. Roll this out over a 10 page essay, and it could be anywhere between £100 and £350 for the final product. But you can also come across offers for much, much less money than this.

While that higher end of £350 might seem like a lot of money, trust me -- it’s really nothing for the amount of research, writing, citations, editing and proofreading required. 

If £100 per day is considered a “just fine but not great” sum of money in the UK, a writer would have to do all the work on your essay in 2.5 days just to make it worthwhile. And they’d have to do it without the subject knowledge that you have. 

2. The writers aren’t subject experts

Think about it: if they were a subject expert, would they really be working for a shady company that facilitates cheating? Not a chance. 

The main point is that these writers are badly underpaid and they’re not experts, therefore they’re putting very little effort or expertise into your essay. They just want to do it as quickly as possible before moving onto the next one. 

3. There’s no guarantee of a good grade

None. Since the writers are underpaid, lack expertise and rush their work, it’s a recipe for a bad final product. Multiple studies have shown that essay mills do mediocre work at best. 

The essay you pay hundreds of pounds for might get you a pass grade, but you could do much better yourself. 

4. The punishment is harsh

Every university has severe laws on plagiarism and academic fraud, which is the exact result of using an essay mill. At its most lenient, a student caught breaking rules on plagiarism will receive no grade at all for the work, but at worst they can be suspended or even expelled from your university.  

But the perfect “crime” goes unnoticed, right? Well, it’s unlikely in this case. 

5. Essay mills and detection services

Most universities use pretty innovative plagiarism detection software these days, which can pick up on any hint of fraudulent work. Thus, the risk of getting caught is very high. And by the time a student does get caught, they’ve already lost their hard earned cash to the essay mill company. 

6. Essay mills don’t care about you

The company doesn’t care about you, and nor does the writer. That’s a pretty bad starting point for doing business! Once they’ve got their money and done their sub-standard work, they can move on to exploiting someone else’s fears. 

7. There’s a risk of scams 

Most essay mill sites demand a deposit of the final amount, or sometimes the entire fee up front. Either way, you won’t see your essay until you’ve paid them something. This makes it a prime opportunity for scam artists to take your money without giving anything in return. 

You see, it’s extremely easy for scam artists to launch a website advertising essays for sale, then just shut the operation down once they’ve made some quick cash without doing any work. 

Speaking of scams, here’s an article on some other international student scams to watch out for !

8. There’s a risk of bribery too

And then there’s the risk of bribery. Even if a student thinks they’re anonymous while dealing with essay mills, they’re not. There’s an email address, bank account name, even their IP address to worry about. 

So if the company or the writer decides that they want to blackmail or bribe a student by threatening to unveil the truth, they can. And they’ll always be able to.  

A final word on essay mills: Honest work is the best work

It sounds old fashioned, but there’s no replacement for smart, hard, honest work. Any student can write a great term paper or essay assignment on their own. All it takes is time, research, and some focus. 

Even if you’re under pressure or lack some confidence in your English ability, there are so many better ways to deal with it. Use a study abroad education counsellor , speak to your teachers and your friends. They’ll be able to point you in the right direction and help make that essay easier. 

As for essay mills? Forget about them. They’re exploitative, they serve no good purpose, and you can do a better job yourself!

So you’re thinking about studying abroad? Great! Check out the range of amazing courses available through Edvoy. Click here to get started or click the button below!

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'Unethical' essay mills to be made illegal under new education reform

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Paid essay-writing services will be made illegal in England under new government plans to reform education.

Services that provide students with essays for a fee, known as ‘essay mills’, have become a problem at many universities but are not yet illegal in the UK.

Skills minister, Alex Bughart, said in a statement: “Essay mills are completely unethical and profit by undermining the hard work most students do. We are taking steps to ban these cheating services.”

There are over 1,000 essay mills in operation across the country according to the UK’s university standards watchdog - the Quality Assurance Agency for Higher Education - and a 2018 survey suggested that around one in seven graduates have used essay mills.

In response to the ban, a spokesperson from collective Universities UK said: “We welcome this news. UUK has repeatedly called for essay writing services to be made illegal and we have worked together with government, the Quality Assurance Agency (QAA) and other higher education bodies to tackle their use.

They added: “While the use of essay mills by students is rare, all universities have codes of conduct that include severe penalties for students found to be submitting work that is not their own.”

A spokesperson from the National Union of Students said: “NUS firmly opposes essay mills. These private companies prey on students’ vulnerabilities and insecurities to make money through exploitation, and never more so than during the pandemic.

“NUS has called on the Government to take action against them in the past, and we hope they are finally listening. In the meantime we would urge universities to put in place academic and pastoral support so that students are never in the position of feeling they have to turn to essay mills in the first place.”

This is just one of the new measures being put in place under the post-16 education reform, with other actions including changes to careers advice and support for apprenticeship, traineeships and other forms of technical education.

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Article England: Legislation Introduced Prohibiting 'Essay Mills' in Higher Education

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On October 5, 2021, a new chapter was added to the United Kingdom (U.K.) Parliament’s Skills and Post Education Bill . If enacted, the bill would make it a criminal offense to provide for or arrange, for financial gain, services to any students studying at an institution in England providing education to students older than 16 (“post-16 education”). The bill would also make it an offense to advertise these services. The bill defines “services” as “completing all or part of an assignment on behalf of a student.” The offenses would be punishable with a fine.

These services, known as “essay mills,” have been described by Member of Parliament Chris Skidmore as “a rot that infects the very discipline of learning and has the potential to damage academic integrity beyond repair.” By banning these services, the government aims to “safeguard the academic integrity and standards of post-16 and higher education in England and protect students from falling prey to the deceptive marketing techniques of contract cheating services. ”

Despite the government calling on private industry to restrict advertising and methods of payments for these essay mills, and the fact that students can face severe academic penalties for using them, the number of essay mills operating in the U.K. has steadily increased over the past few years, rising from 635 in June 2018 to 932 in February 2021. In 2018 it was estimated that one in seven students had paid for an essay and that both students and YouTubers were being hired as influencers to promote essay mills. The cost of a standard 2,000-word essay varies from 3 pounds to 800 pounds, with the most prominent essay mill charging 279 pounds (approximately US$4, $1,085, and $380, respectively) for an essay delivered within a week. In addition, students have reportedly been blackmailed by essay mills and threatened with being exposed to their universities or employers after they have used these services.

Essay mills claim they aim to help “ increase a student’s understanding of a topic ,” while educational professionals note that these companies aggressively market their services to students toward the end of the semester, close to the deadline when papers should be submitted, when students are feeling pressure to meet deadlines.

The government is continuing to work alongside the Quality Assurance Agency for Higher Education, Universities UK, and the National Union of Students to help produce guidance for both educational institutions on how to tackle essay mills and educate students to ensure they are aware of the consequences of cheating.

This is not the first time legislation to prohibit essay mills from operating in England has been proposed. On February 10, 2021, a private member’s bill titled the Essay Mills (Prohibition) Bill was introduced in the House of Commons, and before that, on January 30, 2020, another private member’s bill titled Higher Education Cheating Services Prohibition Bill had been introduced in the House of Lords. Both failed to progress through Parliament, which is not unusual for private member’s bills, which frequently aim to highlight an issue.

The Skills and Post Education Bill also contains provisions that are not related to essay mills. The bill aims to tackle shortages in employment in areas such as engineering, clean energy, and manufacturing by requiring schools, when providing career advice , to give as much weight to technical education, such as apprenticeships, as to traditional academic education.

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• England: Legislation Introduced Prohibiting 'Essay Mills' in Higher Education

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Out-Law Analysis 3 min. read

‘Essay mills’ ban will benefit universities and students alike

26 Oct 2021, 9:05 am

The Department for Education (DfE) announced in early October that “essay mills” are to be made illegal under a new Skills and Post-16 Education Bill. This follows calls from Chris Skidmore, former universities minister, in February to impose a ban.

The measures will make it a criminal offence to provide, arrange or advertise these cheating services for financial gain to students taking post-16 qualifications at institutions in England, including universities. The DfE said this will help protect students by ensuring that they are not placed at risk by “deceptive marketing techniques of contract cheating services”.

Julian Sladdin

The announcement provides a clear message from the government that cheating will not be tolerated in UK higher education

Why action is needed now

The move to ban essay mills is long overdue. Evidence for legislative intervention has been building over a number of years to the point where the problem of web-based essay mill services is now a global issue.

The availability of these businesses and their ability to target students in further and higher education is a major assault on academic integrity and an attack on the core values of academia. Any further delay in introducing a ban would continue to be harmful to the sector as a whole and place vulnerable students at further risk of being drawn into using contract cheating services.

The growing evidence for intervention

In September 2018, 46 vice-chancellors from some of the UK's leading universities, together with other sector leaders, felt compelled to write an open letter to Damian Hinds, the then education secretary in England, requesting that the government introduce legislation to outlaw the "provision and advertising of essay mills" before the end of that parliament. This followed a survey by Swansea University which indicated that as many as one in seven graduates may have paid someone else to write an essay or assignment for them, and that internationally up to 31 million graduates could have engaged in the practice of contract cheating – paying another party to prepare work to be submitted for assessment – during their time at university.

Another study by the Quality Assurance Agency for Higher Education QAA) found 17,000 cases of cheating by students, although no breakdown of contract cheating cases is available from the QAA research. Its most recent surveys suggest cheating has increased through the pandemic and that there are over 900 essay mills operating in the UK. This is up from 635 in 2018.

While various UK government ministers have confirmed over the past few years that legislation to address the problem was an option, it had appeared until now that the latest government policy was to put the onus on the universities sector to take action themselves to address the issue, through getting students to commit to ‘honour codes’  upon enrolment, for instance. The only other actions proposed beyond that was a request that payment providers stop processing payments to essay mills, for other online platforms to remove advertisements for essay writing services and promotional content about those services, and for the government to discuss with technology providers the better use of anti-cheating software.

Action taken by the sector

The higher education sector and online platforms do not have a role to play, and a joined-up response is required, but it is clear based on the mounting evidence that legislative intervention – like what has already happened in New Zealand and Australia – is a core part of what is needed to combat the problem of essay mills.

The higher education sector has made significant progress in combatting academic misconduct, in all its forms, over the last few years. This has included the use of better technology, more robust policies and assessment design, and better educating students as to the significant risks to them of cheating in assessed work.

In addition, guidance from the QAA in 2017, updated in 2020, on how to address contract cheating has resulted in institutions blocking access to sites which are known to offer essay writing services through their IT systems, updating their induction processes, student support and assessments as well as the wording of student undertakings regarding the integrity of work submitted for assessment to combat this issue. Universities have also been making it implicit to staff that offering their services to such companies could have serious disciplinary implications.

Real world impact 

However, the statistics from Swansea University and QAA have shown that the problem is not only worldwide but increasing despite the steps already taken by universities and online platforms and payment providers.

Anecdotally, we have heard that the lack of legal restrictions on the trading of essay services is creating a safeguarding issue in relation to the most vulnerable students. There are concerning examples of vulnerable students all too often being enticed to use the services of essay mills by assurances given by those providers that their activities are legitimate study aids only for them to be subsequently blackmailed by those providers to hand over ever increasing sums of money on threat of being exposed to their university.

Therefore, while long overdue, it is extremely welcome that the UK government is now putting forward legislation to curb the activities of essay mills. In addition to offering the protections afforded by a statutory ban, the announcement provides a clear message from the government that cheating will not be tolerated in UK higher education. This planned intervention is critical if the apparent continuing increase in contract cheating amongst university students is to be reversed. 

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Essay-Writing Services To Be Made Illegal In England

Contributor.

Essay-writing services, known as essay mills, are to be made illegal under plans announced by the government on 5 October 2021.

The government intends to make it a criminal offence to provide, arrange, or advertise any essay-writing services for financial gain to students taking a qualification at any institution in England providing post-16 education, including universities.

The move follows a number of steps already taken by the government to protect academic integrity from the effect of essay mills. In 2018, 46 university vice-chancellors wrote a joint letter calling for essay-writing services to banned, and the government worked with the Quality Assurance Agency for Higher Education, Universities UK and the National Union of Students to produce guidance on how institutions could counter the threat of contract cheating, and for students to make them better aware of the consequences (which might include removal from their course of study or expulsion from their place of study). The latest efforts to outlaw essay mills and other ‘contract cheating' has been welcomed by members of all parties and across the education industry, and hailed as safeguarding the academic integrity and standards of post-16 and higher education in England as well as protecting young people during their studies.

The  Skills and Post-16 Education Bill  (the ‘ Bill ') introduces this measure as a means to protect students from the “deceptive marking techniques of contract cheating services”. The Bill also aims to help level up opportunities across the country by transforming the existing educational landscape: alternative training and career routes, such as technical education, apprenticeships, T Levels or traineeships, are to be emphasised and given equal status alongside the traditional academic route (as set out in the  Skills for Jobs White Paper ).

Essay mills – given that they profit from committing academic fraud – are largely considered to be unethical, though they remain lawful in most countries. The UK follows in the footsteps of Australia, New Zealand, South Africa, and Ireland by taking action against contract cheating.

Ghostwriting services are active globally, and often target students who are studying in a second language. The rise in demand for such services are likely the result of increased competition for university places, especially where coursework and open-book exams contribute to pivotal final grades. Ironically, these services encourage a lack of scholarship that sets students up poorly for further education.

The online learning environment that developed as a result of stay-at-home mandates during the Covid-19 pandemic meant that students became increasingly vulnerable to the lures of essay-writing services. As campus welfare and support became less accessible to students working remotely from home and motivation throughout the academic year dwindled as Zoom-fatigue set in, levels of online cheating exploded: the Quality Assurance Agency estimated in 2021 that there are at least 932 sites in operation in the UK, up from 904 in December 2020, 881 in October 2020 and 635 in June 2018. More brazenly, there are examples of essay mill service providers taking advantage of the difficult circumstances faced by students during the pandemic by offering 2-4-1 deals and other special offers to ‘help' students navigate a difficult and unusual few academic years.

While the proposals in the Bill are welcome, the measures do not amount to a full solution to online cheating. The International Journal for Educational Integrity has highlighted the increasing number of ways in which students wishing to circumvent rules on academic honesty may do so using technology. For example, the use of file-sharing websites to request assistance from others and receive answers to exam questions – in real time and during exam conditions – has risen by an estimated 196% in the year 2020-21 in STEM subjects. The Bill does not extend to Wales or Scotland, for whom education is a devolved matter: essay mills may yet target UK schools and universities and see plenty reason to maintain operations.

Gareth Crossman, head of policy and public affairs at the Quality Assurance Agency for Higher Education, has touched on the length of the journey ahead, saying: “[the Bill] sends a clear signal but, with well over 1000 essay mills in operation, the sector must continue working together to put them out of business.” Only time will tell whether the measures, when implemented, are effective, and whether the government needs to go further to protect students from predatory academic practices in future.

The content of this article is intended to provide a general guide to the subject matter. Specialist advice should be sought about your specific circumstances.

Consumer Protection

United kingdom.

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• Original article
• Open access
• Published: 29 June 2021

Essay mills and other contract cheating services: to buy or not to buy and the consequences of students changing their minds

• Michael Draper   ORCID: orcid.org/0000-0003-1272-8122 1 ,
• Thomas Lancaster 2 ,
• Sandie Dann 3 ,
• Robin Crockett 3 , 4 &
• Irene Glendinning 5  

International Journal for Educational Integrity volume  17 , Article number:  13 ( 2021 ) Cite this article

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Very few parts of the world have legislation that prohibits the operation or the promotion of contract cheating services. This means that commercial companies providing such services can formally register and operate in most countries. If a student enters into an agreement with a contract cheating provider, what rights do they have to change their mind and what are the risks if they choose to do so? This paper examines the question through legal, institutional and societal lenses, showing that although a student has the consumer rights to withdraw from a contract with an essay mill, they may also be putting their future at risk by doing so. Contract cheating providers are now embedded within many institutions, using sharp practices to connect with vulnerable customers, but are also perfectly placed to blackmail students or threaten to report them to their institution if they ask to cancel their order. The paper argues that, while not condoning the practice of contract cheating, supportive processes need to be in place to help students at risk as part of standard institutional duty of care. This must be backed up by institutional policy that considers academic integrity as a core value for all.

Introduction

The contract cheating industry, those services that (offer to) supply essays and other work for students to (mis) use during the assessment process, is proactive in encouraging students to cheat. Despite the unethical nature of this industry, at the time of writing this paper, legislation prohibiting commercial contract cheating only applies in New Zealand, Australia, Republic of Ireland and in several states within the USA (Draper et al. 2017 ). Even where legislation exists, companies supplying work to students can be based anywhere in the world (Draper and Newton 2017 ).

Given that essay mills operate with apparent impunity in most jurisdictions, what are the legal rights of students who initially choose to commission a bespoke assignment, but then subsequently have second thoughts and change their mind? The right for students to withdraw has not been previously discussed in the literature, but it is necessary for student protection. The contract cheating industry is such that it preys on vulnerable students, leaving them positioned to becoming victims of unfair or illegal actions. Immediately someone makes an enquiry about using a third party to complete their assessments, they become open to threats of exposure. Extortion threats that some of the authors have encountered involve students who have not actually purchased anything or not submitted the work provided.

A student may be unaware of consequences such as these when they are seduced by contract cheating provider marketing or may later realise the benefits that come from operating with academic integrity. Can such students withdraw from the contract they have made with a contract cheating provider and what are the risks if they decide to do so?

Essay mills are defined by the UK Quality Assurance Agency as organisations or individuals, usually with an online presence, that contract with students to complete assignments for a fee (QAA 2020 ). The original definition of contract cheating, put forward by Clarke and Lancaster ( 2006 ) refers to “the submission of work by students for academic credit which the students have paid contractors to write for them”. Despite the original paper describing contract cheating examples of varied assessment types, most notably computer programming, some subsequent researchers have equated the term solely with written assessments. Commentators, such as Bretag et al. ( 2018 ) have supported Clarke and Lancaster’s ( 2006 ) original discussion by suggesting that contract cheating needs to be considered as a nuanced problem that extends beyond essay mills.

One such nuance asks when contract cheating begins. If a student puts forward a request to outsource their assessments, is this cheating? If they commission and receive work but do not submit it, have they contract cheated? Other terms are sometimes used synonymously with contract cheating, including assignment outsourcing, commissioning, also essay mills and ghost-writing, all depending if the discussion relates to the student or the contract cheating provider. There are also wider concerns such as facilitation, where students act as agents for contract cheating providers, helping to funnel more business their way in exchange for a financial reward or a discount on future assignment orders.

Contract cheating is arguably more serious than other forms of academic misconduct because there is no honest engagement or endeavour on the part of students who engage in such activities. Students who plagiarise or collude with other students also preparing assignments need to know enough about the subject in question in order to plagiarise or compile relevant material. By contrast, all contract cheating students need to know is how to share their assignment briefs and arrange any payments. All agents and facilitators need to know is how to put people in contact with each other or to simply forward contact details (Draper et al. 2017 ).

Students can have original essays and assignments produced for them without payment, for instance by relying on friends or family. They can also make arrangements with individual writers. Underground networks of writers operate in many university courses where students can ask another classmate or recent graduate to write an extra version of an assignment for them (Lancaster et al. 2019 ). Students also directly approach individual writers operating online through their own websites, social media and third-party sites (Lancaster 2019a , 2019b ).

The focus of this paper is on services arranged through commercial providers which allow students to have assignments completed for them. The paper reviews how essay mills operate, discusses how students form contracts with essay mills, students’ legal rights to withdraw from contracts and how institutions should respond whilst still respecting their duty of care to students. Sharp practices operated by contract cheating providers are explained throughout. The intention of the paper is to not only provide examples to share with students, discouraging them from engaging with the contract cheating industry, but also to ensure that institutions update their academic regulations, policies and procedures to respond to the growing complexity of contract cheating and the possible responses of academic institutions if a student wishes to terminate an agreement with an essay mill.

The contract cheating industry

To understand the legal discussion presented in this paper, an understanding of how the contract cheating industry operates is important. Although research into the operation of the industry is still in its infancy, all indications are that this industry is massive, complex and deceptive (Crockett and Maxwell 2021 ; Rigby et al. 2015 ). This section discusses the operation of the essay mill industry, from the range of types of essay mills available, addressing how they recruit and develop new customers, through the production and submission of finished original essays.

This section provides only a high-level overview and the actual operation of essay mills can be much more complex. For example, a new contract cheating provider can buy off-the-shelf software to run their essay mill and, for a price, tap into existing networks of writers and quality assurance services without needing to set up this complex business operation for themselves.

Ultimately, it has to be remembered that the raison d’etre of essay mills is to make as much money as possible. It is not about the welfare of the customers, despite what the web sites and marketing materials may claim. This is an industry where providers will exploit any angle to persuade their customers to pay them more money. For example, essay mill employees may join a student suspected of academic misconduct at their University panel or write a letter of reply to an allegation of misconduct – for a substantial fee. All this often takes place beyond the reach of any national legislation.

The spectrum of contract cheating providers

At one end of the spectrum, contract cheating can involve well-established registered companies, some of which are operating as legitimate and very lucrative businesses. As discussed earlier, in very few administrations are these companies illegal. Such companies are responding to an acknowledged strong demand for a range of services and are able to make a lot of money.

At the other end of the spectrum are individuals, typically students, graduates, academics, and some falsely claiming to be qualified, who are directly or indirectly supplying work on demand for both students and academics. The recompense is normally financial, but there can be alternative rewards for small-time players, including sexual and other favours. In some cultures, pressures about loyalty to family or social contacts can place demands on individuals that compel them to become ghost-writers (Glendinning 2020 ).

In the middle of this continuum are ghost-writing individuals and fledgling essay mills, who may be going through agents to find work or bidding for work through auction sites. Most ghost-writers and the intermediaries justify their actions by saying this is their way of making a living or supplementing their other income, as discussed for example by Shahghasemi and Akhavan ( 2015 ).

How contract cheating providers develop custom

How contract cheating providers develop connections with potential customers is of interest. The methods used are varied and can appear innovative. Services optimise their sites to appeal to students based on academic discipline or location, often with the same essay mill operating with different front ends (Lancaster 2020 ). For example, a student who searches online for “nursing essay help” could be directed to an essay mill shop-front containing photos of smiling nurses, and a student searching for “law essay help” could be sent to an essay mill shop-front with photos of graduating lawyers, but behind the fronts these are operated by the same firms relying on the same groups of writers.

Social media is heavily used by contract cheating providers (Lancaster 2019b ) with students posting even the slightest frustration with their essays on Twitter being regularly approached by companies offering these writing services (Amigud 2020 ). Often a commission payment is available to anyone referring business to an essay mill and job advertisements are posted by established mills to recruit recent graduates to go back to their campuses, infiltrate key events such as student association meetings and social events and recruit both customers and new agents. This can result in students working as agents or social media influencers, fake essay mill review sites that operate by collecting commission payments for introducing new custom to essay mills and even essay mills setting up fake student profiles to present themselves as a supportive environment for dissatisfied students.

Once a student has contacted or been referred to an essay mill, many more marketing techniques are used to ensure that students buy from them. Essay mills try to collect student email addresses by offering discounts. They use online chat to engage with students. Ritter ( 2005 ) noted how essay mills use language preying on students being dissatisfied with their courses to sell their services to them. Essay mills often present what they are doing as (‘tutorial’) support. Hersey and Lancaster ( 2015 ) discussed how some students consider assignments simply as commodities available to be bought and sold, and essay mills also rely on such student viewpoints.

The operation of a typical essay mill

Behind the scenes, many essay mills operate using a complex, software-driven writing and quality assurance process. Essay mills recruit writers, often using similar techniques to the ones they use to recruit students. In general, writing work is poorly paid with only a small percentage of the fee paid by a student going to the end-writer (Lancaster 2019a ).

One example of an internal model used by essay mills has been described in the literature (Ellis et al. 2018 ). A variant is presented here. Received orders are first checked by an administrator to ensure they are legitimate and can be completed. Some orders are rejected, but those that pass scrutiny are made available to writers. This often uses a bidding process, where writers pitch against one another to write the essay, a process similar to that seen in the earliest contract cheating study (Clarke and Lancaster 2006 ). Once completed, further internal quality checks are made, which may include the use of automated tools to ensure plagiarism is avoided or disguised. Writers can be penalised if their work is of poor quality. Once internally approved, the work is made available to the student, who either accepts it, or returns it for revisions through a back-and-forth process. If a student remains dissatisfied, they may raise their concerns with higher levels of essay mill management through a dispute process.

Even if a student accepts work from an essay mill, the end result is not risk free. The essay mill has the student’s contact details and can continue to market to them. Students can be required to continue to buy or they risk being blackmailed, an area which most students appear unaware of (Yorke et al. 2020 ). Writers disgruntled with the essay mill they work for can often figure out student contact details and their institution and may try and extort money from them directly or inform the educational institution of their impropriety. Also, once a student submits commissioned work via text-matching software, they become potentially identifiable by the company they used, whatever the precautions they had taken up to that point.

The legal grounds for students changing their mind

• Contract formation

The first question to be addressed asks when a student commissions academic work, does a legally binding commitment or contract of purchase form? This is not a trivial question. An analysis of the behaviours and wider contractual relationships involved in contract cheating was undertaken by Draper et al. ( 2017 ).

Irrespective of jurisdiction, formation of a legally binding contract normally requires an offer to contract, an unqualified acceptance of that offer and its terms without variation, with the acceptance being communicated to the person making the offer with an intention to create or enter into a legal relationship with the parties to the contract having legal capacity, including by age and mental capacity.

In major European jurisdictions the existence of an agreement is usually demonstrated by the identification of at least an offer and acceptance (Jansen and Zimmermann 2011 : 636–637). This is also the case in Australia. Some jurisdictions, such as England and Wales, also require the movement of consideration or benefit between the parties for a legally enforceable contract to be created, the usual example being the payment of money in return for the service or goods supplied. In such circumstances the student receives the completed assignment and the essay mill receives money by way of consideration.

The precise terms of the contract will depend upon the terms and conditions specified by the supplier and any other terms implied to make the contract work. Some jurisdictions, particularly in the counties identified above, intervene in the freedom to contract through the imposition of implied or imposed contractual terms to protect individuals contracting in a personal capacity, typically known as a consumer, as opposed to contracting in a business capacity. However, while the transaction may be made from the student’s end in a country with consumer protection, due to the nature and operation of essay mill sites, these rights can be compromised when the transaction occurs across international borders (Durovic 2020 ).

Intervention is needed because contracts made by a business with an individual acting in a personal capacity, known as consumer contracts, usually have the following specific characteristics:

They are pre-drafted by one party as a standard form contract. Normally this means they are drafted by the essay mill rather than the student.

The express terms of the contract, usually referred to as the standard terms and conditions, are not usually subject to negotiation. This means that a consumer such as a student must usually accept the pre-drafted terms and conditions as they are if they want to obtain the desired service such as the supply of the essay.

They are entered into in circumstances in which neither party is known to the other with unequal bargaining power and commercial sophistication. A student is at a significant disadvantage in understanding the terms of the contract compared with the essay mill that drafted them, and is bound by the terms of the contract of supply, even if they have not read or understood them, provided there is reasonable notice of and a reasonable opportunity to read the terms and conditions before the contract is made.

When a student is given reasonable notice of and a reasonable opportunity to read the terms and conditions of the proposed contract before clicking ‘ I agree to the terms and conditions’ or ‘ I accept the terms and conditions’ a binding and enforceable contract will be made on those terms at some point in the ordering process when there is a clear offer and acceptance of the terms of the contract.

Further, when a contract is made with a consumer, further additional implied or imposed contractual terms and protections for the benefit of the consumer may apply. These depend on the country or the legal jurisdiction in which the contract is made or the law which applies to the contract usually by an express term known as a governing law clause.

Durovic ( 2020 , 5) notes that “consumer law and policy is faced with two major challenges, which need to be addressed adequately on the global scale. The first one is an increasing number of cross-border transactions, whereas the second one is the rise of Internet as the leading global marketplace and the entire technological developments which have disrupted the traditional consumer law”.

As essay mills tend to operate across national boundaries it is crucial that an essay mill states, in an express term of the contract, the law and jurisdiction which is to apply to the contract having regard to its legal interpretation and enforcement, in terms of governing law and/or jurisdiction clause. However, many essay mills do not provide this.

The lack of express terms may not, in itself, prevent a national court from asserting jurisdiction if their consumer(s) are at risk. As Durovic ( 2020 ) notes, there are international conventions dealing with governing law, and consumer rights and permissible use of personal information gathered in online environments.

Express terms which are relevant to this paper are those requiring the payment of a deposit on order, the cancellation of a contract and those allowing for personal information to be taken and used in addition to a name and contact details. For example, the student may be required to provide the name of the institution at which they are studying, student number and photographic identification, none of which immediately appear relevant to the subject matter of the contract.

Contractual tricks

Many of the tactics used by essay mills could be considered unfair. They know that consumers, including students, do not usually read the terms and conditions of the contract before clicking and will not therefore know in any detail what they have agreed or indeed what their rights or obligations maybe under the terms of the contract beyond a superficial understanding that payment at some point will be required for the work (Rogerson 2017 ). For example, Berreby ( 2020 ) reported in The Guardian newspaper that hundreds of College students joining a new social network did not notice a clause where they promised to give away their first-born children.

The collection and use of other types of personal information and data beyond name and Institution etc. as a result of online contracts are a current concern. For example, the Australian Competition and Consumer Commission ( 2019 ) observed a range of practices used by platforms that did not conform with existing consumer laws, but nevertheless may not be effective at deterring conduct that is detrimental to consumers. Given the increasing value of data, some businesses engage in conduct designed to elicit data or information the collection of which may be considered unfair to consumers.

These design patterns have become known as ‘dark patterns’ because they prompt, mislead or sometimes force consumers to provide their personal data or cause them to sign up to services, often without the consumer realising (Bignull 2010 ). Dark patterns take advantage of skim reading of text and other unconscious habits through familiarity with user interfaces to procure either money or data from consumers, often without their fully informed consent (ibid). At their most benign dark patterns nudge the behaviour of consumers to a desired outcome in which the consumer unconsciously provides personal data or agree to its use by the business. These patterns can have significant impact on unsophisticated students as the next section discusses.

When does contract acceptance take place?

After placing an order for work a student may change their mind and seek to cancel the order. As a matter of general contract law, a student may withdraw their offer without liability at any time before the contract is formed by acceptance of the order by the essay mill. Depending on the terms and conditions, the offer made by the student may be accepted so that an enforceable contract arises as soon as the order is processed, or when the payment or deposit is taken, or upon dispatch of the essay to the student. However as noted above while a legal contract may exist it does not necessarily follow that it will be enforceable across international borders and this point should be borne in mind when considering the analysis that follows – particularly when there are unscrupulous operators in this area.

A legal analysis of the typical order process discussed in the background section would conclude that acceptance likely occurs when the order status is made available to writers within an essay mill or upon the status of the order being made available to the student for review. The precise moment of the creation of an enforceable contract will depend in the main upon the terms and conditions of supply. Options to revise or embark on dispute resolution are likely to be interpreted as express contractual rights which operate after the formation of the contract.

Thus, a student would be legally entitled to withdraw their offer to purchase work and without liability, because there is no contract, before the change in status of the order. After change in status of the order it is possible that the contract contains an express term allowing for cancellation subject usually to loss of any deposit or some other sum which genuinely represents the loss suffered by the essay mill, for example payments made to a writer. In such circumstances it is important that a student follow the terms of cancellation precisely in order to legally terminate the contract and limit the loss under the contract.

Without an express term allowing for termination of the contract, for example after a change in the status of the order to ‘available’, any attempt by one party to cancel a contract before performance of that contract will usually amount to a repudiatory breach of contract entitling the innocent party to damages in respect of any loss suffered if and when that breach is accepted. From the point of view of an essay mill that will usually be payments contracted to be made to a writer for their work and other administration costs.

Consumer contracts will usually have implied rights of cancellation attached to them by legislation and/or regulations. In England and Wales this will mean the Consumer Rights Act 2015 and the Consumer Contracts (Information, Cancellation and Additional Charges) Regulations 2013 .

Information about the rights of a consumer to cancel a contract should be detailed by the supplier and made available to the consumer before the contract is made. Failure to provide the information to a consumer as required by the regulations will allow a consumer to claim that a breach of contract has occurred and to seek an appropriate remedy. However as noted above these rights and protections may not be available or enforceable in a cross-border context.

Consumer protection and rights of cancellation

In England and Wales as the contract between the essay mill and student will normally be concluded remotely, namely online, a student’s rights to cancel the contract are to be found in the Consumer Contracts (Information, Cancellation and Additional Charges) Regulations 2013. These are more generous than if the contract had been concluded face-to face. These regulations also apply to all auctions including online auctions. Online auctions result in contracts created at a distance rather than face to face.

As considered earlier the formation of a contract requires an offer and acceptance of that offer. It is likely that the website of an essay mill is treated in the same way as a shop window. The website is not an offer of a service or goods, but an invitation to treat, or in other words an invitation to another to make an offer to buy or order on stated terms and conditions. A student placing an order online is making an offer to buy an essay and not to accept the offer of the essay mill to supply an essay.

Depending on the terms and conditions the offer made by the student may be accepted so that an enforceable contract arises as soon as the order is processed or made ‘available’ or the deposit is taken or upon dispatch of the essay to the student as discussed above. As a matter of general contract law, a student may withdraw their offer without liability at any time before the contract is formed by acceptance. Once the contract is formed then a student will have statutory rights of cancellation without giving any reason for cancellation within a specified time. These rights can only be excluded in very limited circumstances which require the express and fully informed consent of the consumer. This means that they cannot be excluded by standard terms and conditions.

Rights of cancellation differ if the contract relates to goods or digital content or services. Both allow for cancellation within a 14-day period but the calculation of that period will be different if the contract relates to goods or digital content or services. If the supply of an essay is treated as the supply of goods then under the regulations a student has a right to cancel an order for an essay as soon as the order is placed up until 14 days from the day after the student receives the essay with a right to a refund within 14 days of either the supplier getting the goods back or the consumer providing evidence of having returned the goods. If the supply of an essay is treated as the supply of digital content, not supplied on a tangible medium or a service, then a student has 14 days starting from the day after the contract was made in which to cancel that contract with a right to a refund of money paid.

The regulations do allow for service to be started within the cancellation period and for a charge to be made providing that the consumer has expressly requested this. A consumer loses their right to cancel a service contract that has been performed fully within the cancellation period, providing they requested this and acknowledged that they would lose their right to cancel once the contract had been performed fully. It is likely that a contract for the supply of an essay will be treated as a contract for the supply of goods.

Additional rights are available under the UK Consumer Rights Act 2015 to reject a product if not of satisfactory quality or fit for purpose. In the context of a paid for assignment this will be difficult to establish against assignment briefs as marking has a degree of subjectivity. Essay mills seek to mitigate such problems through terms and conditions allowing for rewriting or some other form of offer or compensation. Similar consumer rights apply across Europe as the Act and Regulations are based on European Directives.

As Sutherland-Smith and Dullaghan have observed ( 2019 ), purchasers of contract cheating don’t always get what they pay for. Therefore, cancelation rights are a particularly useful addition to any express dispute resolution provided by the terms and conditions of the essay mill. Furthermore, a student may simply change their mind and cancel the order because of the risks attached to submission or their conscience gets the better of them or because of an institutional campaign or peer pressure or support.

The danger for a student is that they may forget, or may not feel they have been told at the outset when the contract is formed, that strict time limits normally apply to the use of statutory cancellation rights. This can limit their ability to raise a dispute with the essay mill.

In summary therefore, and subject to the point that rights and protections may not be available or enforceable in a cross-border context, a student has a right:

To cancel the order at any time before it is accepted and a contract formed

To cancel the contract under express cancellation rights but normally at a financial cost through loss of deposit or other recoverable loss

To cancel the contract under jurisdictional cancellation rights without financial cost unless expressly excluded in the circumstances described above

Institutional responses to the student right to withdraw

Although the paper has established that students have the legal rights of cancellation, it cannot be assumed that the essay mill will simply demur to the exercise of those rights. Therefore, it is recommended that institutions have their own responses prepared ready for when students wish to withdraw from contracts with essay mills.

Students do run the risk of blackmail and extortion if they proceed with a contract. They may discover the risk, ask to withdraw from their contract, but have such a request declined or ignored. They may also have used a contract cheating provider previously, not realising they would be expected to continue to purchase future pieces of work from them.

Universities should provide a mechanism for students to confess and to seek support. Students should be encouraged to use this. Such a mechanism would also be a welcome development for universities. Not only would it save considerable time and resources in investigations and hearings, but there is potential for accessing new intelligence about essay mills that would not otherwise have been found.

Sanctions to negate an unfair advantage are often unavoidable in such a situation. Students cannot be seen to be rewarded for assessments they did not complete themselves. However, in return for their cooperation, students could perhaps be taken through a less formal process, combined with a programme of support, guidance and monitoring, to ensure they are not tempted to do this again (QAA 2020 : 12–17). This might include, for example, a situation in which a student who confesses shortly after submitting a single commissioned assignment could be provided with the opportunity to redeem themselves, for instance by repeating the work, subject to measures such as grade caps designed to neutralise the potential for an unfair advantage.

In some cases, a light touch approach may not be possible. Consider, for example, a situation involving a final-year degree student confessing to having routinely commissioned over three or four (or more) years of study, with a progression dependent on pre-requisites from one year to the next. In addition, there might be course-specific regulations arising from professional institutional accreditation that over-ride more general regulations.

If a student does not confess, then they face serious and complicated risks. Put simply, once a student communicates with an essay mill, even if only making an enquiry, then that essay mill has some version of their identity and contact details on a database (possibly overseas) which is potentially available to other parties. Any commissioning and payment would provide additional details, irrespective of any subsequent change of mind. Even if a student manages to conceal their identity and their institution when commissioning an assignment, once that assignment is submitted through similarity checking software, then the student is potentially traceable. All a blackmailer needs to do is submit the assignment to the same similarity checking software themselves, possibly via a facilitator’s account or an account that’s been compromised, see which institution is identified as the main result, and then go ‘phishing’ at that institution, possibly with the assistance of a staff or student facilitator at that institution, Of course, if they’ve already unsuccessfully tried to blackmail the student, they might simply ‘whistle-blow’ to that institution with sufficient evidence to support the allegation. Essay mills are not famous for their ethical principles: they are interested in making money. A database of student details is a marketable commodity that could be traded to unscrupulous third parties, who themselves can engage in extortion.

Raising students’ awareness about these in-built dangers of engaging in contract cheating is not just part of the deterrence measures for educational providers, it is also part of their duty of care.

This paper serves to emphasise that a decision by a student to resort to contract cheating can be changed. That change of mind or heart is supported by the law and should be reflected in institutional regulations and policies. The right of students to change their mind is not a message that has been addressed in the literature or heard often in conferences or within institutions; but, nevertheless, it is important and needs to be discussed with students.

It should be possible for a student to change their mind and do so in way that offers them a degree of protection from the sharp and unscrupulous practices of essay mills, as identified in this paper. To benefit from that protection the student must disclose to the institution the arrangements they made with the essay mill. To do this will take a significant amount of courage on the part of a student. It is therefore critical that institutional regulations and policies provide a framework to enable and support such a decision, ideally with support from student organisations. In so doing, institutions need to uphold the fundamental aim of fostering academic integrity as a core value for all.

Availability of data and materials

No data was used in the writing of this article.

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Draper, M., Lancaster, T., Dann, S. et al. Essay mills and other contract cheating services: to buy or not to buy and the consequences of students changing their minds. Int J Educ Integr 17 , 13 (2021). https://doi.org/10.1007/s40979-021-00081-x

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QAA publishes new guidance to help tackle the use of essay mills

QAA has today published new guidance for UK higher education providers  to help them protect academic integrity and combat the use of essay mills in their institutions.

Essay mills are commercial entities that make money by encouraging students to cheat. While some are based in the UK, they are a global phenomenon impacting on higher education systems and providers around the world. Their use has the potential to damage the reputation of UK higher education. Typically, they will charge a student to write their assessment, which the student will then submit as their own work. They will often use sophisticated marketing techniques, and some will resort to blackmail or extortion once students have used their services. Research indicates their use by students has increased in recent years (such as published by Swansea University  and Channel 4 ).

Contracting to Cheat: How to Address Essay Mills and Contract Cheating , which is published with the support of governments across the UK, shows that many UK higher education institutions have designed effective institutional strategies and academic integrity practices to educate staff, support students, reduce opportunities to cheat and detect academic misconduct. However, more needs to be done.

Key findings and recommendations are:

• Identifying a strategic lead with responsibility for staff training and institutional coordination can help improve detection of essay mill use.
• Assessment design can help reduce opportunities to cheat, but no assessment should ever be considered cheat proof.
• Technology can help detect the use of essay mills, but is most effective when used by experienced staff with knowledge of the student.
• Essay mill marketing seeks to exploit students who are feeling vulnerable or anxious, particularly during the COVID-19 pandemic. Effective institutional and peer support can help.
• Staff and students should be aware of, or be able to easily access, information and procedures to follow to report a suspicion of academic misconduct.

The guidance has been written following extensive consultation with universities, colleges, expert academics and students from across the UK. It updates earlier guidance with new advice, intelligence and good practice in response to the ever-evolving threat of essay mills.

Douglas Blackstock, QAA CEO, said : 'The essay mill industry has become increasingly sophisticated, and exists to make money by encouraging students to cheat. Students at every university or college in the UK will be targeted by them. In developing this guidance we’ve been encouraged by the many examples of innovation and effective practice in place to combat academic misconduct. A sector-wide response, working with governments and regulators, can help us get on the front foot in putting an end to the contract cheating industry'.

Universities Minister Michelle Donelan said: 'This is a difficult time for students, and those who are feeling particularly worried about their studies could be more vulnerable to essay mills marketing right now. It is abhorrent for these companies to take advantage of students in this situation and profit from anxiety during a global pandemic.

'I know universities are working hard to respond to coronavirus, to continue delivering their courses and supporting students. I hope this guidance, along with innovations in technology, will help them protect the integrity of our world-leading higher education and prevent students turning to contract cheating'.

Richard Lochhead, Scotland’s Minister for Further Education, Higher Education and Science said:  'Protecting the integrity of our higher education sector is vital and we must be vigilant in cracking down on those who actively engage in academic misconduct. I welcome the new guidance published by QAA which will help our institutions combat the use of essay mills, particularly in the context of the COVID-19 pandemic'.

Kirsty Williams, Wales’ Minister for Education said: 'I welcome the publication of this new guidance from QAA to help our higher education sector combat the pernicious effects of contract cheating and essay mills. In Wales and across the UK we pride ourselves on the integrity of our higher education institutions, and we cannot allow that to be undermined by predatory essay mill companies which often exploit the most vulnerable students.

I hope that universities in Wales consider this guidance carefully and take further steps, in partnership with HEFCW and students’ unions, to reduce the opportunities and incentives for students to cheat, particularly during the challenging circumstances that have been created by Covid-19'. Related information In March, we published a Blog entitled  Innovative Steps in Tackling Contract Cheating at the University of Northampton , written by Dr Robin Crockett, Reader in Data Analysis and University Lead on Contract-Cheating at the University of Northampton. More about our work in this area, including the Academic Integrity Advisory Group and all publications and guidance, can be found in the Academic Integrity section of our website .

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Essay-writing services to be made illegal in England

22 February 2022 | Applicable law: England and Wales

Essay-writing services, known as essay mills, are to be made illegal under plans announced by the government on 5 October 2021.

The government intends to make it a criminal offence to provide, arrange, or advertise any essay-writing services for financial gain to students taking a qualification at any institution in England providing post-16 education, including universities.

The move follows a number of steps already taken by the government to protect academic integrity from the effect of essay mills. In 2018, 46 university vice-chancellors wrote a joint letter calling for essay-writing services to banned, and the government worked with the Quality Assurance Agency for Higher Education, Universities UK and the National Union of Students to produce guidance on how institutions could counter the threat of contract cheating, and for students to make them better aware of the consequences (which might include removal from their course of study or expulsion from their place of study). The latest efforts to outlaw essay mills and other ‘contract cheating’ has been welcomed by members of all parties and across the education industry, and hailed as safeguarding the academic integrity and standards of post-16 and higher education in England as well as protecting young people during their studies.

The Skills and Post-16 Education Bill (the ‘Bill’) introduces this measure as a means to protect students from the “deceptive marking techniques of contract cheating services”. The Bill also aims to help level up opportunities across the country by transforming the existing educational landscape: alternative training and career routes, such as technical education, apprenticeships, T Levels or traineeships, are to be emphasised and given equal status alongside the traditional academic route (as set out in the Skills for Jobs White Paper ).

Essay mills – given that they profit from committing academic fraud – are largely considered to be unethical, though they remain lawful in most countries. The UK follows in the footsteps of Australia, New Zealand, South Africa, and Ireland by taking action against contract cheating.

Ghostwriting services are active globally, and often target students who are studying in a second language. The rise in demand for such services are likely the result of increased competition for university places, especially where coursework and open-book exams contribute to pivotal final grades. Ironically, these services encourage a lack of scholarship that sets students up poorly for further education.

The online learning environment that developed as a result of stay-at-home mandates during the Covid-19 pandemic meant that students became increasingly vulnerable to the lures of essay-writing services. As campus welfare and support became less accessible to students working remotely from home and motivation throughout the academic year dwindled as Zoom-fatigue set in, levels of online cheating exploded: the Quality Assurance Agency estimated in 2021 that there are at least 932 sites in operation in the UK, up from 904 in December 2020, 881 in October 2020 and 635 in June 2018. More brazenly, there are examples of essay mill service providers taking advantage of the difficult circumstances faced by students during the pandemic by offering 2-4-1 deals and other special offers to ‘help’ students navigate a difficult and unusual few academic years.

While the proposals in the Bill are welcome, the measures do not amount to a full solution to online cheating. The International Journal for Educational Integrity has highlighted the increasing number of ways in which students wishing to circumvent rules on academic honesty may do so using technology. For example, the use of file-sharing websites to request assistance from others and receive answers to exam questions – in real time and during exam conditions – has risen by an estimated 196% in the year 2020-21 in STEM subjects. The Bill does not extend to Wales or Scotland, for whom education is a devolved matter: essay mills may yet target UK schools and universities and see plenty reason to maintain operations.

Gareth Crossman, head of policy and public affairs at the Quality Assurance Agency for Higher Education, has touched on the length of the journey ahead, saying: “ [the Bill] sends a clear signal but, with well over 1000 essay mills in operation, the sector must continue working together to put them out of business. ” Only time will tell whether the measures, when implemented, are effective, and whether the government needs to go further to protect students from predatory academic practices in future.

This document (and any information accessed through links in this document) is provided for information purposes only and does not constitute legal advice. Professional legal advice should be obtained before taking or refraining from any action as a result of the contents of this document.

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I run an essay-writing company for students – this is how it works

There have been fresh calls to make so-called essay mills illegal - but what are the actually like.

More than 40 university chiefs have called on the Education Secretary to ban so-called “essay mills” amid fears they are undermining the integrity of university courses.

In a letter to Damian Hinds , those backing the call urged him to tackle those who provide the services, rather than the students that use them.

Essay-writing services have long been accused of facilitating cheating – but what is it actually like to work for one of them?

One such company providing students with model answers for a fee is UK Essays, an essay-writing service owned by the company All Answers.

Ten-day turnaround

Chief operations officer Daniel Dennehy spoke to i about what it’s like to run such an operation, which he says is used by a couple of thousand students every year.

The essays themselves, he explained, are written by a team of freelance researchers.

At any one time they have a few hundred researchers working on live projects, though their wider database of potential writers comprises more than a thousand.

Jobs are passed on to researchers with the relevant knowledge and experience, with the typical turnaround for an essay about 10 days.

He argues some students will go to a private tutor or family member when they don’t understand a topic and that using a model answer is just another way of seeking help.

And he said that those writing the essays also had faith in the service. “Our researchers believe in it too, that the work they are providing is a model answer, that they are helping the students. They will sit down and explain it.”

According to Mr Dennehy, there are two types of company in the essay-writing industry. “Those that don’t promote cheating and try to stop it like ourselves and those who promote cheating and couldn’t care less about academic integrity.”

He said the latter tended to be overseas companies or lone-operators, adding UK Essays sets out clear guidelines in their ‘fair use’ policy as to how their answers should be used.

These state that students should not submit the model answer as their own work and instead use it as a “basis for your own further research” to create an entirely original work.

Mr Dennehy told i they regularly rejected students should they give the impression they simply want to hand in the essay as it is.

‘We turn people away on a daily basis’

“If they don’t understand and say ‘I just need to hand it in’ then we turn them away. We turn people away on a daily basis,” he said

But he admits there is little they can do if a student who does receive an essay chooses to go against their advice.

It is a problem which has already prompted a number of other countries, such as New Zealand, Ireland and Australia, to make essay mills illegal.

Mr Dennehy said that the best way to deal with issues arising from essay-writing services would be to “regulate” the industry, adding he was “more than happy” to work with universities and the government to address their concerns.

He claimed that making students declare they have used a service would allow universities to use plagiarism-detection technology to check final essays against model answers purchased.

‘This is about academic integrity’

Last year academics at Swansea University Medical School called on the government to impose fines on firms providing custom-written essays following a study that looked at 21 such companies.

Michael Draper, associate professor at Swansea’s College of Law and Criminology and co-author of the research, said any fine would need to be large enough to hurt the company’s bank balance.

“It can’t be something that could be looked at as an added overhead, it must be big enough to hit their profits,” he said.

“But the challenge is also about changing students’ behaviour, this is about academic integrity and ensuring students learn.”

The signatories of this week’s letter, who include university vice chancellors, the chief executive of the Russell Group of universities and the former head of Ucas . also consider the essay mills cheating.

They state: “This form of cheating is particularly hard to detect and, whilst universities must continue to do their part, it is clear to us the time has come for the Government to give legislative backing to the efforts to shut down these operations.

“Legislation will not be a magic bullet; it is, however, a vital part of the broader package of measures.”

Universities minister Sam Gyimah said work was ongoing to tackle the problem by other means, saying that essay-writing services were “normalising and enabling cheating”.

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UK ‘falling behind’ in essay mills fight without legislation

As ireland reports success from ban on advertising, campaigners say uk risks reputation of its degrees by not following suit.

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The UK risks jeopardising the integrity of its degrees unless it follows in the footsteps of other countries that have outlawed advertisements for essay mills, experts have said.

Previous education secretaries and higher education ministers had indicated their increasing concern about the growing market in essay mills after a 2018 paper found that it was likely that as many as one in seven recent graduates worldwide had engaged in contract cheating.

However, Times Higher Education understands that there are no current plans to introduce legislation in the UK, in contrast to the Republic of Ireland, which has passed a law banning advertising by essay-writing services, and Australia, which is proposing to outlaw contract cheating itself.

“We thought we were on the way to something. But aside from increased guidance and media attention, we haven’t got anywhere,” said Michael Draper, professor of legal studies at Swansea University , offering his assessment of the British situation.

In 2018, Sam Gyimah, who was then universities minister, said legislative options “were not off the table” after more than 40 higher education leaders called for the government to introduce a ban. In March 2019, the education minister, then Damian Hinds, said it was time to “stamp out essay mills” and called on PayPal to stop processing their payments.

However, Professor Draper has since published research on how the increased publicity and governmental pressure had changed the behaviour of essay mill companies. The findings, published in the International Journal for Educational Integrity , concluded that there had been no change.

“We’ve been having this conversation for years, but without legislation that disrupts their business model in the UK, why would [essay mills] behave any differently?” he said. “The UK is supposed to be a global leader in higher education – we must be able to guarantee the quality of our degree awards – but I fear the government’s attention is elsewhere.”

In July 2019, a private member’s bill was laid before Parliament by Lord Storey, the Liberal Democrat education spokesman in the House of Lords, that would have made it an offence to advertise cheating services for higher education assessments in England and Wales. However, Parliament was then prorogued, halting further progress.

According to Thomas Lancaster, a senior teaching fellow at Imperial College London , “the legal movement in the UK has completely stalled, and we are falling a long way behind countries like Australia, Ireland and Montenegro”.

“The key legislative approach we have to make is to stop firms being allowed to advertise to students within the UK. The advertising is blatant, persuasive, and students can’t avoid it. We need to make it as difficult as possible for contract cheating firms to do business,” he said.

Deirdre Stritch, approval and monitoring manager at Quality and Qualifications Ireland, which enforces the country’s legislation, said that the law had already passed “obvious measures of success” and that 13 adverts had been removed since it came into force last November.

The legislation also prompted work that will allow universities to block essay mills’ websites from their servers and has led to the creation of the academic integrity network.

It has not only disrupted the business model of essay mills but also “commenced a coordinated, concerted national conversation on this topic and given impetus to move at a quicker pace”, Dr Stritch said.

A Department for Education spokeswoman said that the UK government was clear it was “simply unethical for online essay writing companies to profit from a dishonest business which exploits young people”.

“We have…called on online giants to block payments and advertisements for these services,” she said. “We are not ruling out legislating, but there are a number of obstacles to eliminating essay mills through legislation, and we are working with the sector on effective ways of tackling this problem.”

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