Commercial Aspects of Contract Cheating

This paper analyses the monetary value of contract cheating to the different parties who play a role in the contract cheating process. The main analysis is based on a corpus consisting of 14,438 identified attempts to cheat. The corpus was collected between March 2005 and July 2012. The paper identifies several such parties and gives examples of the monetary value of contract cheating to each of them. Most notably this includes the contractors who bid for the opportunity to produce work on behalf of the students. Further, the paper identifies the role of intermediary contractors. These are people who post assignment requests on agency sites but who are not themselves students. The paper concludes by presenting the changing trends in contract cheating that the authors have observed since they started working against this form of academic misconduct in 2005. Finally, recommendations for academics towards dealing with the issues posed by contract cheating are provided.

Commercial Aspects of Contract Cheating
Robert Clarke
Birmingham City University
Millennium Point, Curzon Street
Birmingham, United Kingdom
[phone]
[e-mail]
Thomas Lancaster
Birmingham City University
Millennium Point, Curzon Street
Birmingham, United Kingdom
[phone]
[e-mail]
ABSTRACT
The process of contract cheating, the form of academic dishonesty
where students outsource the creation of work on their behalf, has
been recognised as a serious threat to the quality of academic
awards. Unlike student plagiarism, this cheating behaviour is not
currently detectable using automated tools.
This paper analyses the monetary value of contract cheating to the
different parties who play a role in the contract cheating process.
The main analysis is based on a corpus consisting of 14,438
identified attempts to cheat. The corpus was collected between
March 2005 and July 2012. The corpus was formed as part of a
manual contract cheating detection process identifying students
using online agencies. These online agencies are web sites which
enable students to contract cheat. The agencies usually benefit
from this by receiving a percentage cut of the money raised from
the contract cheating that they facilitate. This corpus is used as the
basis of an attempt to quantify the monetary value of contract
cheating to online agencies.
Other parties exist who benefit from the contract cheating
process. The paper identifies several such parties and gives
examples of the monetary value of contract cheating to each of
them. Most notably this includes the contractors who bid for the
opportunity to produce work on behalf of the students. Further,
the paper identifies the role of intermediary contractors. These are
people who post assignment requests on agency sites but who are
not themselves students. These intermediary contractors appear to
benefit by first receiving requests to complete work for students
and then re-outsourcing this work at a much lower cost than they
were paid. The group of frequent workers, that is people who
regularly work on student assignments and hence benefit
financially, is also identified.
The paper concludes by presenting the changing trends in contract
cheating that the authors have observed since they started working
against this form of academic misconduct in 2005. Finally,
recommendations for academics towards dealing with the issues
posed by contract cheating are provided.
Categories and Subject Descriptors
K.3.2 [Computers and Education]: Computer and Information
Science Education – Computer Science Education.
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ITiCSE’13, July 1–3, 2013, Canterbury, England, UK.
Copyright © ACM 978-1-4503-2078-8/13/07...$15.00.
General Terms
Economics; Human Factors.
Keywords
Plagiarism; Contract Cheating; Academic Integrity.
1. INTRODUCTION
The issues of student cheating and plagiarism have been
thoroughly explored within the Computer Science literature [5].
These issues also receive regular interest from the press [2,15],
with concerns usually raised about the threat that cheating poses
to the value of academic qualifications such as university degrees.
The problem of plagiarism appears to be well understood by the
academic community. There are many recommendations detailing
how academics can create assignment specifications to design out
plagiarism and how copying from the web and other students can
be detected using text matching tools [5].
However, such technical solutions only work for forms of
cheating that are relatively unsophisticated. Students who are
entering modern higher education arrive equipped with
experience in the Internet marketplace. Many also know about the
opportunities for cheating that such knowledge facilitates. Some
students are now not directly plagiarising, but are instead relying
on recruiting third parties online to undertake assessed work on
their behalf. This process has become widely known in the
academic literature on plagiarism as contract cheating [3,10,11].
Since contract cheating produces work that is entirely original,
standard anti-plagiarism tools used in education, such as TurnItIn
[22], will not detect this as plagiarism. Alternative methods of
detecting contract cheating using existing anti-plagiarism tools to
look for text matching that inside assignment specifications have
been proposed [4]. Methods to design out contract cheating, such
as assessment using viva voce examinations, have been suggested
[11]. Techniques for rewriting assignment specifications to make
them individually traceable by contract cheating detectives have
been documented [12]. However, these recommendations do not
seem to have yet made much headway towards implementation.
Since contract cheating is still a major academic integrity issue,
this means that students can receive academic credit for work that
they have not themselves produced. This can subsequently lead to
them being placed in employment which they are not qualified
for, reflecting badly on the academic institution and potentially
depriving a more deserving student of a job.
Whilst the methods through which contract cheating can be
undertaken by students have been explored in the literature, the
monetary implications have not been. This paper analyses the
financial role that contract cheating plays towards the different
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parties involved. This analysis includes the online agencies such
as auction sites [10,17] who take a financial cut from all cheating
that they facilitate. The role of the contractors and workers who
are being directly and indirectly paid to provide work for students
is also analysed. In both cases, the value of contract cheating will
be seen to warrant the need for the academic community to
embrace preventing and detecting contract cheating.
2. THE CONTRACT CHEATING AGENCY
PROCESS
Although the contract cheating literature has identified multiple
mechanisms through which students can undertake contract
cheating, this paper will focus on the use of agency sites, such as
those identified by Clarke and Lancaster in the 2006 paper that
first analysed the extent of contract cheating [3]. Their original
study of the agency web site RentACoder [18] showed that a
typical student found to have posted an assignment specification
online posted between 4 and 7 total items. This suggested that
work was being produced at an acceptable level to warrant
continued cheating and that this cheating was not commonly
being detected by academic staff. An analysis specific to the
Computer Science discipline [10] identified substantial use for
programming assignments, as well as for larger pieces of assessed
work such as final year individual projects.
Many agency sites operate using a form of online auction. A
standard process showing how such an auction operates is now
presented.
First a student creates a posting on the site. This is where the
student presents the details of their assignment, showing potential
contractors the work that is required.
Next, the contractors bid for the rights to complete the work for
the student. This is a competitive tender process, so contractors
can place bids as high or low as they wish. They can also talk
online to the student to try and increase their odds of being hired.
Once the student receives the bids, they can make a decision
which contractor to hire. Since ratings are available for previous
work completed by the contractor, the student may not always go
for the lowest priced bid.
The agency site takes the agreed payment from the student and
holds this in an escrow process. When the contractor completes
work that the student is happy with, the escrowed payment is
released to the contractor. The agency takes a cut of this payment.
If there is any form of disagreement between the student and the
contractor, the agency site may act as an arbitrator to decide who
gets the money.
Generally, this competitive tender process, coupled with the
availability of skilled international workers, means that students
can get contract cheating work outsourced for a cost which makes
this worthwhile to them.
An observation of the way in which contractors are using agency
sites has revealed that the contractor winning the tender process is
not always the same person who completes the assessed work for
the student. In some cases, the bid is won by a company, acting
on behalf of a group of their own workers. In other cases, the
winning contractor has been seen to then subsequently re-
outsource the same work in all or in part. Often this uses a
different agency site. To differentiate between the person winning
a process of the tender and the person actually completing the
work, the term worker will be used to refer to the individual
creating the solution on behalf of the student. In many cases, the
contractor and the worker will be the same person.
3. THE MONETARY VALUE OF WEB
AGENCY POSTINGS
During the period between March 2005 and July 2012 the authors
monitored known agency sites which students were using to
commit contract cheating. The analysis formed part of a wider
detective role, whereby the authors attempted to attribute
assignments to institutions and notify appropriate staff that one of
their students was cheating. The challenges involved with the
attributability of postings have been documented previously [13].
A corpus of 14,438 items that were detected as contract cheating
has been identified from these known agency sites. The number of
postings that came from each site is shown in Figure 1.
Figure 1. Breakdown Of Contract Cheating Attempts
By Agency
All figures in the paper are calculated in British Pounds. Where
the original currency was not British Pounds, the conversion from
that currency uses the exchange rates in place in January 2013
(the conversion in place for United States Dollars was $1 =
£0.62).
Some details about the agency sites identified are useful.
Freelancer [7], vWorker [23], GetACoder [8] ScriptLance [19] and
Kasamba [9] all represent general outsourcing sites, used by
legitimate businesses, as well as students attempting to contract
cheat. In a 2006 paper [3], around 88% of the items posted on these
sites were previously seen to relate to legitimate commercial
activities, although anecdotal observation suggests that today’s
legitimate figure may be slightly higher. It is believed that many
contractors on these sites would not knowingly undertake
assignments for students, although a small number of workers have
been identified who actively seek out assignment requests.
EssayBay [6] and TransTutors [21] are examples of sites aimed
exclusively at contract cheating students. A previous study of over
600 assignments posted on EssayBay showed that this was being
used particularly outside the Computer Science discipline [13].
Several agencies have changed their name during the collection of
the data. For ease of presentation, the name by which the agency
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has been most frequently known is included here. vWorker was
previously known as RentACoder [18] and referred to as such in
several initial studies [10,13]. Kasamba has since reworked its
service offerings and the previous agency site operation is now
available at LivePerson [16].
Other sites have closed down, or have been acquired by their
competition. At the time of analysis, EssayBay is not currently
offering a full service, although agencies such as
StudentOfFortune [20] and TransTutors appear to have filled that
gap in the contract cheating market. Both vWorker and
ScriptLance have since been acquired by Freelancer and these
agencies redirect there.
The operation of both Kasamba and StudentOfFortune is of
interest. At face value, these can be used to provide much more of
an online personal tutor service than a traditional agency site.
That is, students can post the problem or assignment that they
need help with and arrange for a virtual tutor to help them with
this work. However, from the type of postings being made on
those sites, it is evident that they are being used to hire
contractors who will complete work for the students. This does
indicate the dangers of allowing students to involve personal
tutors of any sort within the assessment process.
The 14,439 postings identified do not represent every assignment
placed on the agency sites. Monitoring the sites continually was
not possible and some sites restricted access to the information
needed to confirm that the posting was an assignment and not a
legitimate request from a business.
Based on studying the sequence numbers allocated by the sites to
new posts, it is estimated that around one third of all contract
cheating posts made during the stated time period are included in
the corpus. An analysis of a sample of recent posts by the authors
reveals an average accepted bid for an outsourced assignment of
around £150. This figure is also supported by data presented later
in this paper.
Taken together, these figures indicate an estimated total
commercial value of contract cheating on those agency sites
during the March 2005 to July 2012 time period. This figure
stands at around £6.5 million and equates to £906,635 per annum.
Assuming a typical cut of 10% of this amount going as
commission to an agency, and the remaining 90% being retained
by workers, this would suggest an annual direct value of contract
cheating to agencies of £90,636. The apparent trend is that this
type of cheating has been increasing over the study period, so
today’s real value may be higher. The remaining value, £815,972,
is going to the workers supplying solutions by contract cheating.
This suggests why both parties may be keen to support contract
cheating.
4. THE VALUE OF CONTRACT
CHEATING FOR INTERMEDIARY
CONTRACTORS
As part of the original study into contract cheating [3], a number
of individuals were identified who posted a large number of
requests for assignments to be completed. This was typically in
the range of 20 to 30 postings each. These assignments were often
from a range of different subject areas and attributed to multiple
universities, sometimes in different countries. The term third
party subcontractor was used for these people who, for a fee,
undertake assignments for students by subcontracting them
through agency sites. The more concise term intermediary
contractor is introduced here to more closely reflect this contract
cheating behaviour.
The intermediary contractors who post assignments through
agency sites have been observed to contact students in multiple
ways. This includes direct advertising, such as posting adverts in
shop windows, distributing flyers on university campuses and
placing notices on online forums. One such example was reported
by Lancaster and Culwin [14]. Offers to produce assignments on
behalf of students have also been spotted on web sites offering
more general writing services and on social networking sites.
Continued analysis by the authors of postings on the agency sites
vWorker [23] and Freelancer [7] has identified that there are
around 20 to 30 intermediary contractors active at any one time.
Some of these intermediary contractors have been involved in
posting between 100 and 200 items over a period of years. Other
intermediary contractors are active for only a few months.
Table 1 shows an example of the completed postings made by one
intermediary contractor (cjylondon on Freelancer). The table
shows examples of the original description titles given by the
contractor, complete with their original mistakes, as well as the
final price paid for the work, in British Pounds.
Table 1. Typical Range Of Postings Made By An
Intermediary Contractor
Description Price in £
Undergraduate Business Essay 70
Report writing - Management information system 45
4000 words Essay about Teaching 150
Undergraduate Essay - quick work in 3 days 36
Essay - risk management 100
Pre-master Essay - Social Science Principle 55
5000 words Essay about fashion management 136
1000 words essay quantitative data analysis SPSS 43
2500 words REPORT ABOUT customer relationship 70
Undergraduate Report - Organisation Reflection 75
Master Level Report - ECONOMETRICS 175
Undergraduate Report - Consultancy Project 150
RISK Capital Market 80
2500 words essay help - Strategic Management 50
3000 words essay help - risk management 80
2400words essay about Management Psychology 55
Financial Modelling 9 Tasks help needed 1000words 75
Dissertation of MA International Business 200
Write a research proposal 74
CocaCola and Pepsi Dissertation help 10,000 words 250
URGENT write an investment analysis Dissertation 326
The sample is taken from the period between March and June
2011 and is chosen to illustrate the range of types of assessments
requested by the intermediary contractor. In total, over that time
period the intermediary contractor made 59 postings, with a
cumulative value of £8,162. This price indicates that the average
price paid per project was £138.39. These postings included
assignments attributed to 18 different UK universities.
The examples given in Table 1 contain several examples of
requests for student dissertations, as well as work beyond
undergraduate level. Since this is an intermediary contractor, it
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can be assumed that they are being paid more than these figures
by the student requiring that the work is completed for them.
The intermediary contractor whose activities are outlined in Table
1 is just one example of the types of people posting requests on
agency sites. Whereas this contractor handles assignments from a
wide range of subject areas, others are much more specialised.
Examples have been observed of intermediary contractors
specialising, for instance, in engineering and mathematics. The
contractor may also be found just posting assignments from a
particular geographical region, for instance Australia, or purely
from one individual academic institution. Some intermediary
contractors have also started off working within a very specific
area, but have expanded the range of activities with which they
have been involved as they have become more experienced.
Several changes in the operation of the more seasoned
intermediary contractors have also been observed throughout the
duration of this study.
Some of those individuals requesting work have started to hide
the details of the assignments. They may have used features
provided by the agency site to restrict access only to selected
geographical regions, or to a list of predetermined potential
contractors, possibly those who have proved to create a suitable
quality of work in the past. Others have started to supply full
details of assignment specifications only through private
messages, making these pieces of coursework difficult to trace.
It is likely that these changes to requester behaviour have come
about due to the increased interest by the academic community, as
well as many of the successful detections outlined in this paper.
Other intermediary contractors have been observed who are
operating using a form of project management. They may first
post a request for an initial draft of an assignment. They may then
follow this up with a second request to add further information.
For a Computer Science programming assignment, this may begin
with a request for a basic source code solution and then be
followed up with requests to add more features. In both cases, a
final request can then be made for another worker to proof read
the assignment, or to carefully check the solution produced.
Whilst many academic institutions provide students with access to
TurnItIn [22] as a learning tool, this can be dangerous. There have
been examples of the project management process where a draft
of coursework has been posted along with the TurnItIn similarity
report. A request has then been made for a worker to rewrite this
material to remove any chance of a plagiarism acquisition.
5. THE VALUE OF CONTRACT
CHEATING FOR FREQUENT WORKERS
It has been observed that there are groups of workers on agency
sites who specialise in bidding for student assignments. This may
be because these are seen as easy to complete, often repeatedly
testing the same skills and requiring a similar format of work.
Table 2 shows a further analysis of the 59 postings made by the
same single intermediary contractor as originally presented in
Table 1. The table shows the aliases use by the different workers
who were contracted to complete the work, the number of times
each worker was contracted for out of these 59 postings and the
total value of the contract cheating work in British Pounds.
Out of the workers selected, 10 out of 13 (76.9%) were appointed
to complete more than one piece of work. 4 out of 13 workers
(30.85) were appointed to undertake five requests or more. This
suggests that the intermediary contractors are likely to continue to
work with people who have delivered work of an appropriate
standard for them before. Further, it implies that the work
produced in this manner is of a high standard and that the contract
cheating committed is not being detected by the academic world.
Table 2. Typical Activities Of A Frequent Worker
Worker Jobs Value in £
sdk2788 21 3,309
raiseq 9 1,354
writingspirit 6 730
hotline69 5 270
saeedyasir 3 722
waqar21081974 3 267
dmjuma 3 156
writer048 2 400
jnk87 2 286
swiftcult22 2 125
PixelBrains 1 300
noureenpenwalla 1 200
Balistap40 1 43
Totals 59 8,162
Additionally, a further analysis of the range of subject areas and
the number of concurrent tasks undertaken by some of these
frequent workers has revealed that more than one person would
need to be involved for successful completion of it all. This
suggests that these aliases must represent multiple people working
together as a team.
The aliases that appear for different frequent workers have been
observed to change over time. Likewise, the aliases used by
common intermediary contractors have also changed. It is hoped
that some of this is due to the success of anti-contract cheating
measures having moved these people out of the assignment
supplying business. However, it is equally likely that these
individuals have chosen to work within different areas, or they
may have simply set up new agency site accounts with different
aliases in place.
There are a number of aliases that have been active for several
years. This is concerning, as it shows that these people are
continually enabling students to cheat on assessed work.
In a small number of cases workers have been identified who are
also students at other academic institutions. These students are
presumably looking to make a little money by completing what
may be simple tasks. In such cases, some success has been had
during the detection process by contacting the Head of
Department of the offending worker. Completing work to allow
other students to cheat, even when they are students at a different
institution, is almost certainly to be considered an offence under
academic regulations.
This contact with the Head of Department has enabled action to
be taken against both students. There are known cases where the
student worker has been persuaded to hand over a copy of the
solution that they produced, which has then been used as evidence
against the student who commissioned the work in the first place.
6. CHANGING TRENDS WITHIN THE
CONTRACT CHEATING LANDSCAPE
Since the collection of the initial data which has led to this
analysis of the commercial extent of contract cheating, a number
of revised trends in the marketplace have been noted.
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As part of the data collection for the initial quantitative studies
into contract cheating [3,9], it was observed by the authors that
90% of postings on RentACoder [18] related to the Computer
Science subject area. Since more specialised contract cheating
agency sites have become available, this form of cheating appears
to have expanded to other academic disciplines.
A 2012 study [13] specific to EssayBay [6] identified subjects
from “anthropology to theology” being cheated upon, with the
single biggest area being classified as Business Studies. The small
sample shown in Table 1 also shows a dominance of business
related topics. Although a commercial awareness could be said to
be advantageous within that academic discipline, it is clear that
Business Schools, in particular, need to do more to prevent and
detect contract cheating.
Freelancer [7] has emerged as one of the major players in the
online outsourcing business. In 2012, Freelancer took over the
activities of two large sites, ScriptLance [19] and vWorker [23].
Freelancer provides a web page with statistics related to all
projects posted since its formation in February 2004 [1]. As of
January 2013, Freelancer quotes a total of 4,121,036 posted
projects, with a total project value of $1,033,295,000
(£640,642,900). This gives an average project value of £155.46,
which is in line with the figure of £138.39 observed from the data
in Tables 1 and 2 and the estimate of £150 applied in Section 3.
If just 1% of all the projects posted on Freelancer translate into
payment for illegal student activity, this represents £718,478 per
annum. The actual figure may be higher, since this assumes an
even distribution of work placed on Freelancer since 2004. With
the acquisition of other agency sites and natural growth, it is more
likely that work run through Freelancer is increasing. Assuming a
10% cut for Freelancer, this would indicate that they received
direct commissions for contract cheating of £71,848 per annum.
This value appears to be in line with the estimate made from
14,438 postings and obtained in Section 3. However, stating that
1% of projects posted on Freelancer represent student work may
also be an underestimate; a previous study of RentACoder [18]
observed this figure as 12.3% [3].
Some agency sites have introduced policies whereby they ban the
posting of homework tasks that count towards and academic
award. An observation of the assessed tasks that still appear on
those sites suggests that such policies are not rigorously enforced.
Although it may be possible for a lecturer to get a post removed
under such a policy, previously enquiries to agency sites whose
assignments have been posted has led to responses claiming
“client confidentiality”. An alternative approach may be to
request that such posts are removed due to breach of copyright.
However, this may drive cheating underground, making detection
harder.
The longevity of many of the intermediary contractors and also
the frequently used workers whose actions assist students to
defraud their academic institution may also indicate that many
agency sites are unwilling or unable to deal with this problem.
From the few cases where it can be proven that a solution has
been obtained as a result of contract cheating, such solutions are
generally observed to be of a low quality. This may not always be
an issue; students may be wary of handing in an assignment of a
quality far beyond that they are usually capable of since this may
potentially raise red flags when the work is assessed.
A study conducted by the BBC [2] in collaboration with the
authors of this paper and documented in November 2012 is of
interest, since it may contradict the belief that outsourced work is
always of a low quality. The BBC posed as students to obtain
three bespoke assignment solutions by directly contacting
companies providing contract cheating services and advertising
these services around universities or on the Internet. The solutions
requested were all based on real assignment specifications that
had been issued to students in the past. They included a Business
Studies essay and Computer Science programming assignment.
All three solutions obtained were independently double marked
and all markers stated that they would pass. Although two out of
three of the solutions would likely only receive a mark in the third
or lower second class band, the third assignment, for which £70
was paid, was judged by both markers as being of upper second
class standard. This also passed a check through TurnItIn [22],
again indicating that this service would not detect contract
cheating. The reasonable quality of this solution showed that
work of a good standard can be obtained through contract
cheating.
A change as to the geographical locations of the universities for
which work posted on agency sites has been traced has also begun
to be observed. Many of the assignment specifications posted on
agency sites have been traced to universities in the UK, USA and
Australia. However, a sizeable proportion has begun to be traced
to other countries offering courses taught in English. The
franchising of courses to overseas partners and the use of online
courses has also been noted through detected contract cheating.
Using such assignment specifications with international franchises
and with online universities has also been demonstrated to make
detection of contract cheating much less likely [13].
7. RECOMMENDATIONS WITHIN THE
CONTRACT CHEATING FIELD
Detecting contract cheating is becoming more difficult, as
students and intermediary contractors become more sophisticated
in the ways that they use to cheat. Since students are often
arriving at university with skills that are technically in advance of
their tutors, this appears to be fueling a rise in contract cheating
across academic disciplines outside of Computer Science.
The consistency of the detection of contract cheating needs to be
improved. More attributability of contract cheating to an
institution and designated staff member is needed [13]. All
assignment specifications need to be made accessible to search
engines, and the use of stock questions, for which attribution has
been shown to be nearly impossible, needs to be avoided.
Individualised assessments, which may include student projects,
also need to be made available wherever possible.
It is still not widely accepted that non-originality engines such as
TurnItIn [22] will not detect the production of contract cheating.
When questioned by the media, many institutional representatives
still simply state that they use TurnItIn and so their institution
cannot have a problem with contract cheating. The work produced
through contract cheating is original, it is just not work produced
by the student. Whilst the use of TurnItIn is still important to
avoid traditional forms of plagiarism, new solutions are needed to
detect contract cheating.
Despite that, TurnItIn can still play a role in the attribution
process. Staff should be encouraged to upload their assignment
specifications to TurnItIn along with the solutions provided by
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students. This means that those people trying to detect contract
cheating can also run assignments that they find through TurnItIn,
so as to improve the attributability of contract cheating attempts.
Such similarity checking can also assist staff when they are
setting assignment specifications, so as to make sure that they do
not accidentally use tasks for which previous solutions or model
solutions are available.
The increasing internationalisation of agency sites and the
activities of intermediary contractors can pose problems with the
current localised operation of TurnItIn. Since different
international databases are used to store work submitted by
students and staff, there are geographical restrictions as to
whether or not all cases of similarity will be shown. Consideration
should be given towards exchanging data across these different
implementations of these services used to detect plagiarism.
Discussion is needed towards whether students should be
educated about contract cheating and shown how this is
unacceptable behaviour. Although some would argue against
publicising the availability of agencies and other services, most
students appear to already be aware of them. Success has been
noted in educating students that plagiarism is unacceptable, and it
is hoped that the same levels of success would be evident were
students to be educated about contract cheating.
Contract cheating is not a victimless crime. It is certainly
unethical. Some would argue that these activities amount to a
conspiracy to defraud an academic institution. They would say
that criminal proceedings should be invoked.
At a departmental level, academics should consider including
anti-plagiarism and anti-contract cheating measures is part of the
quality control process when setting assignments. They should
also be encouraged to more widely identify and disseminate the
good practice that is happening at every academic institution.
Agency sites need to play a greater role in preventing contract
cheating. They should be encouraged to police requests for work
before they go live and to not allow anything that appears to be a
piece of assessed work. They should also be more ready to
respond when they are notified of illegal activities.
A concerted effort across all the players involved with contract
cheating is needed. Without this effort, it is clear that financial
considerations will ensure that contract cheating remains a serious
threat to the quality and integrity of academic qualifications.
8. REFERENCES
[1] About Freelancer.com. 2013. freelancer.com/info/about.php.
[2] Chakrabarti, R. 2012. When Essays For Sale Become
Contract Cheating. BBC News.
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/education-20298237.
[3] Clarke, R. and Lancaster, T. 2006. Eliminating The
Successor To Plagiarism? Identifying The Usage Of Contract
Cheating Sites In Proceedings Of 2nd Plagiarism:
Prevention, Practice and Policy Conference 2006,
Newcastle, UK, June 2006.
[4] Clarke, R, and Lancaster, T. 2007. Establishing a Systematic
Six-Stage Process for Detecting Contract Cheating In
Proceedings Of The Second International Conference on
Pervasive Computing and Applications (ICPCA07),
Birmingham, United Kingdom, July 2007.
[5] Culwin F. and Lancaster T. 2001. Plagiarism Issues for
Higher Education. Vine, 31, 2, 36-41. DOI=
http://dx.doi.org/10.1108/03055720010804005.
[6] EssayBay. Term Papers And Custom Essays | The World’s
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