In the procurement business world, electronic 'Reverse Auctions' are very common - quite simply, if you want to buy something, you can auction the requirement online and then award the business to the lowest bidder (sort of like eBay in reverse).Unfortunately, with the technology available today, there are online businesses using this concept and allowing high school and university students to go out to bid for their assessment requirements.
According to The Sunday Telegraph, some Australian students are doing just this, and have "outsourced their homework to sweatshops in India, Pakistan and Egypt which provide English essays and maths papers for as little as $2".
Interestingly enough, the schools are almost powerless to curb this activity by the cheaters, because the plagiarism software they use cannot detect any wrong doing - all the papers are custom-made.
There are even brokers available to assist in the tender and bidding process - these include websites like canadianessays.com, realassignmentwriting.com and dissertation india.com. Most of the workers engaged, are graduates from India and Pakistan.
The founder of freelancer.com (a website that connects small businesses with cheap labour in developing economies), Matt Barrie, is aware that homework and assignments often get submitted to his site. His response to this is, "We get them all the time... As a lecturer myself, I really don't approve, but kids will be kids - they will always find a way to cheat... There are students in India who will give answers for just a few dollars and I have seen maths questions answered for $2 a go".One graduate, 23-year old Mohammed Ali Khan from Islamabad, Pakistan admits to writing essays and papers for predominately university students at just $2 per 100 words. He does work on behalf of people in countries such as Australia, the US and the UK (among others). He can offer a 1000-word Year 12 English language essay at the going rate of just $US10.
In response to this growing trend, Craig Ellis, who is the Associate Dean of the University of Western Sydney said that "...in the past five years there's been an explosion in sites where you can download pre-written assignments, but we have the mechanisms that allow us to cross-reference essays to identify this. But the trend towards custom-produced work at such low costs is particularly worrying because it is that much harder to spot".
Ozessay.com.au are apparently able to provide PhD-standard work with a 24-hour deadline at a cost of $54 per page.
My goodness - What is this world coming to... Where is the integrity?
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