Educators across the US sound the alarm: professional custom writing companies threaten the very fundamentals of higher education! Students from community colleges and top universities order academic papers online to make the grade while literally learning nothing. Teachers paint odious images of doctors and engineers with diplomas but without knowledge.
Studies and surveys confirm: on-demand academic services are on the rise. Some of the best custom writing services have a monthly turnover of several million dollars and never lack customers. The Internet is flooded with real and fake user reviews of custom writing help websites of all shapes and sizes.
But is it as bad as educators say it is? After all, cheating in various forms always was, is, and surely will be an inherent part of studying. Maybe, educators draw it too strong because deep inside they feel their share of guilt in this “digital shift”?
Custom Writers Start Slow but Ride – and Write Papers – Fast
Despite falling into the spotlight quite recently, custom writing services have been around for over a decade. For example, one of the oldest companies on the market – PaperHelp.org – has operated since 2008. Initially set up as an essay provider, it later grew into a comprehensive academic writing help agency. Nowadays, a struggling student can hire ghost paper writers for virtually any type of assignment for a reasonable price. An essay or research paper, a term paper or coursework, a case study or thesis – they claim to have experts to deliver them all.
At first, educators didn’t consider this trend too dangerous and even tried to belittle its significance. However, it then caught reporters’ attention. After several notorious investigations in the media, the academic community had to recognize that the issue with students buying papers from a custom paper writing service calls for more consideration and action. As a result, several measures were implemented to showcase commitment to academic integrity. Colleges and universities across the country started massively using plagiarism detection systems (i.e., Turnitin), installing honor codes, and toughening penalties for exposed students.
Yet, the beast was already out in the wild. Aggressive online marketing and word of mouth kept the majority of essay writing companies afloat. Moreover, they’ve started expanding and implementing new approaches. Take, for example, WowEssays.com. The service represents itself as a free sample papers database. It lures users in with a vast collection of model works of all shapes and sizes, as well as several dozens of free-to-use writing assistance tools (for instance, title and citation generators, plagiarism and grammar checker, multiple converters, counters, and calculators). However, behind this righteous façade, there’s a full-fledged essay writer website that even includes the custom dissertation writing service!
Today, hiring a professional ghost writer or a degreed field expert is not a problem for any student with a deep pocket. But why college and university goers are ready to risk their reputation and fork out hundreds of dollars for custom papers?
Glaring Reasons for Hiring a Custom Writer
Let’s briefly plow over the apparent reasons why students try to make the best of on-demand writing services.
- First and foremost, it’s a lack of time to do all assignments by themselves. This calls for prioritization – which tasks to complete on their own and which to outsource to a custom assignment writing service.
- High pressure to perform mounting from the family, peers, and society as a whole. Students often feel like they must manage everything timely and perfectly, from essays and problem solving to extracurricular activities.
- On the flip side of the coin is the fear of failure. Often, students pay outrageous money for college or university. Throwing in another hundred bucks just to avoid failing the course is an easy decision for many.
- By the way, the price of ordering a paper is not as high as many expect. Thanks to a welcome discount or a special occasion coupon code, cheap custom writing is a usual occurrence.
These are the top, easily spotted reasons why on-demand academic paper writing wins students’ hearts. But according to the industry experts, there is a much deeper motivation, often not realized by students and missed (or ignored?) by educators.
The Custom Essay Writing Service Industry and Students Are Not the Only Ones to Blame
Today, the all-out effort of the academic community in the USA to fight off custom essay writing services is focused on perfecting plagiarism detection tools and intimidating students about the legal consequences of buying papers. The former approach has a long way to go from finding borrowed content to spotting deviations in each particular student’s writing style. The latter method already proved to work poorly as writing services were fast to implement encrypted browsing and communication. These measures guarantee customers’ confidentiality and virtually eliminate any prospect of legal prosecution.
Here is an unpopular view on the issue. While even the best custom essay writing service obviously cannot benefit students as studying subjects on their own, they are not the ones to blame entirely. It’s a free market where demand breeds supply. Yet, students shouldn’t be indiscriminately blamed either – many of them are just poorly prepared for college by schools, especially public ones.
Dave Tomar, a former academic ghostwriter, points out that the vast majority of customers he ever had were desperate students: “They felt they had no other choice.” By his estimates, about 85% of his clients were looking not for the cheating opportunity but for genuine writing help. The reason for this – they simply didn’t know how to do things the right way and develop a high-quality piece in the first place: “This person couldn’t write the paper if they tried,” says Tomar.
What is the key takeaway here? High schools are letting students down and fail to prepare them for college-level writing. Tomar doesn’t offer a viable solution to the issue, but it is absolutely apparent that if the academic community wants to improve the efficiency of anti-cheating measures, it should first review the way students are taught to write at schools. Otherwise, teachers will engage in witch-hunting students who just try to even despite the risks.
So, Is Even the Best Custom Writing Service Worth It?
As mentioned previously, colleges and universities constantly improve their gear to detect ghostwriting. Today they shift from simply detecting plagiarism to identifying writing peculiarities. This allows questioning the paper’s authorship in case there are significant deviations from papers crafted by that student before. So, there are still many risks students take when opting to buy an essay or homework online. Getting caught may result in suspension or even expulsion from an educational institution – depending on its code of honor policies. However, this is extremely unlikely to happen as reliable custom essay writing companies deliver entirely original papers and ensure customers’ confidentiality. For example, the above-mentioned websites PaperHelp.org and WowEssays.com only require a valid email to register. Of course, you’ll need to provide additional information to place an order and pay for it. However, even in this case, there’s a zero chance of revealing your identity as these services employ PCI DSS-compliant payment platforms that eliminate the possibility of scam and data leakage.
Other related risks are papers’ low quality and/or plagiarism. The former is addressed by checking the service’s online reputation and customer reviews. To deal with the latter, users can order a full-fledged plagiarism report at an additional price that will be sent along with the completed paper. Alternatively, you can use one of the established commercial plag checkers and pay several bucks to run the received piece. This measure is highly recommended if you are ordering for the first time from a little-known website. Renowned writing companies don’t risk their reputation – they run default plagiarism checks and guarantee papers’ originality.
In the end, it all comes down to the moral aspect of addressing custom paper writers. If, for whatever reason, this approach is unacceptable for you, you can always opt for using free samples as writing models or trying to negotiate the deadline with the teacher. If, for whatever reason, you are ready to pay someone to write your paper tailored specifically to your individual requirements, it’s your decision and responsibility. Yes, ethically, this is not fully in line with the principles of academic integrity. But didn’t schools break this unstated arrangement when they failed to prepare students for the realities of college life and writing in the first place?
