2008 Woodie Awards
Cheating the cheaters
Web sites promising cheap term papers are often more trouble than they're worth
By: By Alexia Elejalde-Ruiz / The Chicago Tribune
Issue date: 11/2/06 Section: News
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For students too bored, too busy or too burdened to write their own term papers, it's tempting to turn to the Web for a little help.
As teachers wise up to the popular cut-and-paste method of Internet plagiarizing and the use of myriad online essay banks, some students determined to outsource their papers are taking a more unusual route: paying for custom jobs.
For as little as $9.95 per page if you give advance notice, to as much as $44.95 per page for same-day delivery, dozens of Web sites offer to write your paper for you, guaranteeing original, unplagiarized essays they say are written by professionals with master's degrees or Ph.D.'s.
Buying custom papers is clearly cheating. But beyond the obvious ethical problems, can a custom-written paper even get you a good grade?
It didn't for a 19-year-old DePaul University junior who told RedEye, an edition of the Chicago Tribune, he paid $80 for a custom 12-page paper on ancient Israel the fall semester of his sophomore year. He ordered it from a Web site four days before it was due in his religion class.
The student, who asked that his name not be published because he didn't want people to know he cheated, received the paper in his e-mail inbox the morning it was due. He looked it over, deemed it OK and handed it in as is.
And then he got an F.
"It was such a waste of money," the student said. "I'm never going to do that again."
RedEye had a similar experience. To test the quality of custom term-paper services, RedEye purchased two-page papers from three different Web sites on the following assignment: Discuss the themes of marriage and money in Jane Austen's "Sense and Sensibility."
Loyola University English professor Thomas Kaminski, who suggested the topic because it's one he would assign, graded the finished products at RedEye's request.
He was not impressed.
Only one of the papers - from http://www.customresearchpapers.us - addressed the topic, but it was so poorly written that Kaminski said he'd give it a D, and then only if he were feeling generous.
As teachers wise up to the popular cut-and-paste method of Internet plagiarizing and the use of myriad online essay banks, some students determined to outsource their papers are taking a more unusual route: paying for custom jobs.
For as little as $9.95 per page if you give advance notice, to as much as $44.95 per page for same-day delivery, dozens of Web sites offer to write your paper for you, guaranteeing original, unplagiarized essays they say are written by professionals with master's degrees or Ph.D.'s.
Buying custom papers is clearly cheating. But beyond the obvious ethical problems, can a custom-written paper even get you a good grade?
It didn't for a 19-year-old DePaul University junior who told RedEye, an edition of the Chicago Tribune, he paid $80 for a custom 12-page paper on ancient Israel the fall semester of his sophomore year. He ordered it from a Web site four days before it was due in his religion class.
The student, who asked that his name not be published because he didn't want people to know he cheated, received the paper in his e-mail inbox the morning it was due. He looked it over, deemed it OK and handed it in as is.
And then he got an F.
"It was such a waste of money," the student said. "I'm never going to do that again."
RedEye had a similar experience. To test the quality of custom term-paper services, RedEye purchased two-page papers from three different Web sites on the following assignment: Discuss the themes of marriage and money in Jane Austen's "Sense and Sensibility."
Loyola University English professor Thomas Kaminski, who suggested the topic because it's one he would assign, graded the finished products at RedEye's request.
He was not impressed.
Only one of the papers - from http://www.customresearchpapers.us - addressed the topic, but it was so poorly written that Kaminski said he'd give it a D, and then only if he were feeling generous.
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