Melbourne students forking out hundreds of dollars for contract cheating services
Lazy university students across Melbourne are forking out hundreds of dollars to contract cheating companies to write their assignments, lured by the promise of “plagiarism free” work. But experts warn “weird mistakes” will see them easily caught.
South East
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University students are paying big bucks for contract cheating services to write their assignments.
There are dozens of companies on websites and online classifieds sites, which promise “plagiarism free” assignments and guarantee top marks.
Posing as a student, the Leader found the process of ordering assignments was simple — and expensive.
One site, au.edubirdie.com, which states its address is in Delaware, United States, promises “100 per cent plagiarism-free custom assignment writing and uses “programs that detect copied or plagiarised sentences”.
“Sierra”, from the website’s live chat service, said the company’s writers were proficient in topics such as Australian history, with students having the option to choose writers of varying levels including beginners, intermediate, advanced and expert.
“With an over 95 per cent success rate, one out of every two students comes back to hire these writers again and again,” Sierra said.
When asked to guarantee work wouldn’t be plagiarised, Sierra said “the writer wouldn’t be able to upload the paper until it goes through our plag-checker”.
A quote was then emailed within minutes of passing on an email address, saying it would cost $259 for a nine-page essay on indigenous history.
Other websites Leader found targeting students included All Australian Essays, My Assignment Help, Expert Writing Help and Cool Essay.
Classifieds website Gumtree was also found to be swarming with assignment writing services in Greater Dandenong, Cranbourne and Monash.
One ad said: “Our team can write, research and edit at all levels from certificate to masters and have helped students from Monash, La Trobe, Deakin, Melbourne University and ACU successfully improve their grades”.
A 2018 survey by the Department of Education and Training found 6 per cent of 14,086 students from eight Australian universities had engaged in cheating and 2.2 per cent had submitted an assignment that was not their own work.
In another study by Deakin University last year, a research team bought and graded 54 assignments from 18 cheat sites for business, health and science subjects.
The assignments cost an average of $156 and more than half (52 per cent) of them received a fail grade.
Fourteen assignments were bought at a “premium” rate of $178.95, on average, which was meant to guarantee a better writer.
Only 15 per cent were usable for assessment.
Deakin University centre for research in assessment and digital learning Associate Professor Phillip Dawson said the university had conducted several research studies in the area to identify contract cheating.
“These sites hire generic people who haven’t taken a course or aren’t experts in the field and they make really weird mistakes such as not engaging with the correct materials compared to someone studying the subject,” he said.
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A Monash University spokeswoman said the university upheld a rigorous standard of academic integrity for all students at all levels.
“Breaches of the university’s student academic integrity policy may lead to a loss of marks, a complete resubmission of the paper, or, in serious cases, a fail for the unit or exclusion from the university,” she said.
au.edubirdie.com has been contacted for comment.