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Durham students amongst the top essay cheats in the UK

Added on 02/03/2008

Durham University students have been buying essays online – often funded by parents, durham21 can reveal. Alex Marshall reports...

UK Essays. Image Copyright Alex Marshall UKEssays.com, one of the UK's leading online essay writing companies, revealed to durham21 that they had sold at least 179 essays to students at Durham University.

The company offers undergraduate, postgraduate and PhD standard essays and dissertations, guaranteed to meet a 2.1 standard or, for twice the price, will write an essay that is worthy of a 1st class mark. All essays also come complete with a £5,000 plagiarism-free guarantee.

The figures from the company's 2007 'Customer Satisfaction Survey' show that the highest number of customers come from Nottingham University, closely followed by Royal Holloway, Oxford University, Durham University and the University of Manchester. They also reveal that Durham students accounted for 34% of the company's North East customer base.

Perhaps even more worrying is the fact that many of their customers are actually the parents of students. The results indicate that 78% of parents made a financial contribution towards the purchase of an essay. The company believe that the spiralling costs of a quality education has lead to parents having to take control and ensure that their children succeed.

UKEssays owner, Barclay Littlewood, claims: "We speak to every customer, and many are turning to us because of limited university resources. It’s only natural for a parent to want to help their child to achieve their best, but the universities are forcing the parents’ hands. A falling amount of contact time and dwindling resources have meant that parents are resorting to more drastic methods to ensure success"

The survey results also show an increase of 50% of parents purchasing work for their children compared to last year, and that 90% of those claimed to be middle-class. It’s therefore an easy to make the assumption that the middle-classes are buying an unfair advantage over poorer but more able students.

Dr. Paul Redmond, head of careers at the University of Liverpool, agrees and has even coined a term for such parents - 'helicopter parents'. He reported in The Guardian earlier this year that "Parents, particularly those from middle-class backgrounds, are behaving more and more like consumers: they pay the money; they expect to see results."

It appears that these ‘helicopter parents’ are being stretched even further in their pursuit of academic achievement for their children.

When presented with these statistics Prof. Madeline Eacott, chairperson of the University’s Learning and Teaching Committee, said: "Durham University takes allegations of cheating extremely seriously, and communicates this policy to all students throughout their degree studies.

"We have a range of established procedures for detecting cheating, and the professional expertise of our academic staff as markers is the cornerstone of these. Additionally, all university departments have access to the JISC plagiarism software, Turnitin, and many now require essay plans or draft essays to be submitted in addition to coursework to provide a full audit trail.

"Allegations of cheating are fully investigated through our disciplinary procedures. If a student is found to have cheated, sanctions can have a significant impact on a student’s academic career as they can include awarding the student a mark of zero for a degree module or, the worst cases, expulsion from the university.

"To put the UKEssay statistics into perspective, the 179 essays it claims were requested by Durham students represents a miniscule percentage of the coursework that our 15,000 strong student body completes every year. We note that the company says that it does not condone cheating in university assessments so we will be asking them to give us copies of the work for our essay bank in Turnitin to ensure their products are not being used to cheat.

"We are considering blocking access to essay purchasing sites such as UK Essays from University computers, further strengthening our message that using these sites is are not acceptable."

Alex Marshall

Comments for "Durham students amongst the top essay cheats in the UK"

Some useful information about the essay writing business - http://www.EssayScam.org
Peggy
22/07/2008 20:34
yeah! i too found another one..

http://www.dissertation-help.co.uk/undergraduate_dissertations.htm
martha
14/07/2008 08:46
If these 'custom essays' are 'guides' then why do UKEssays, Custom Essays UK and other such companies place suggestive adverts on facebook clearly aimed towards the student demographic?

I'm all for more regulation against these companies, but what I strongly oppose is the university IT Service blocking access to any website. If they do go ahead to prohibit access to specific websites then what's the difference between this and the internet censorship in China?
Anon
19/05/2008 18:19
This is very disturbing to read, it is about time the government produces a legislation to stop such cheating methods.

On one hand, the site claims it is only to 'guide' the students and not to help them cheat... but then the question is why do they (essays.com) stress the fact that there essays are never sold or re-published.

This makes me sick!
Salik
05/05/2008 23:14
Fryd: I remember reading that the essays were being purchased over the phone and that parents would often confirm the details of the work being purchased before handing over their credit card details.

Also, I doubt these sites need any publicity. What needs to be publicised is the number of students who get caught cheating each year!
Dom
12/03/2008 21:37
Working through an 8,000-word undergraduate dissertation at the moment, as I am, that made my stomach turn.
To be honest though, cheating is just delaying the inevitable.
Incompetancy will out.
Even if you manage to steal a 1st or a 2;1, the sort of attitude that leads towards buying an essay will manifest itself in other more harmful ways and probably lead to a limited and frustrating career.
Or maybe I'm just being self-righteous, because my zenith of cheating is mentally re-hashing a formative essay in an exam...
ChrisJ
12/03/2008 13:32
I still occasionally glance at the old d21 boards and this article has really depressed me. I hadn't heard of this company before so took a look at the website and was simply shocked.

I think the most irritating thing about this company is the way they phrase their site:

"Working harder is not the answer
Stop! All the extra lectures, books and study in the world won’t do you an ounce of good."

Crom
12/03/2008 13:10
It's exceptionally petulant to cheat in this way. It's not even creative... just spending money to have someone write an essay... I mean, at least plagiarise and cover it up well or something.

Some desperate students out there, it seems.
Robbie
09/03/2008 19:51
If this information only comes from the company, isn't that a bit suspicious? – Lead Durham students / their parents to think that lots of students at top institutions are doing it, and it's good for sales… Though, I don't know that it's so surprising. If these companies continue to exist then they must do business.
Olivia
05/03/2008 22:47
Surprising perhaps in terms of the numbers involved but not in principle. As a well-established uni, Durham is likely to attract the kind of people who want to succeed at whatever cost (metaphorically and literally). Unfortunately for some that means playing dirty.
Maxine
04/03/2008 16:27
And in other news, the Titanic has hit an iceberg.
Tobias Beecher
03/03/2008 08:51
I wouldn't be too concerned about the free publicity: the people who actually want to use the service would search for it anyway.

I would also like to know how they are certain that parents have bought these essays (not just been bought on their cards) and, whilst I agree this is a very nice article, I can imagine the number of parents who would genuinely buy essays for their children to be very very smal indeed.
Fryd
03/03/2008 07:00
This makes me very sad. Very, very sad.
Pip
03/03/2008 02:20
The statistics are given in terms of actual customer numbers, but if measured in proportion to the number of students then I would expect Durham would be amongst the highest in the country.

It's also worth noting that "at least 179 essays" have been purchased - the actual figure may be a lot higher considering that these are the findings of just one single company (albeit one of the best, if their claims are to be believed) conducting a survey amongst a section of it's customer base. For obvious reasons some customers were reluctant to reveal which university they attend.
Alex
03/03/2008 00:20
That's disturbing - it's not as if Durham is a large uni either. Or are these statistics proportional?
Chris W
03/03/2008 00:00
I agree, a great scoop Alex! Perhaps the next instalment should find out what on earth these pathetic helicopter parents think they're achieving by funding this cheating.
Arthur
02/03/2008 23:43
Fantastic article, what a scoop!

My only concern about reporting on these sites is the free publicity they invariably lend the companies involved. With Google banning essay writers from advertising, you can bet that they're jumping at the chance to get their URLs in the news.

Liam
02/03/2008 23:33