They Get Away with Murder! UK Lecturers’ Frustration with Students’ Use of ‘Essay Mills’

Abstract

This article analyses the phenomenological experiences of four UK lecturers with contract cheating involving students. It aimed to investigate the reasons why some students use contract cheating services and what can be done to expunge the practice. This paper further documents how to recognise some of the cheating patterns and clues observed in essay and report submissions. Participants were recruited using purposive and convenient sampling methods. NVivo software was used to analyse the transcribed data. Findings revealed that contract cheating, especially students’ use of ‘essay mills’ is still entrenched into the UK higher education fabric. Despite being able to identify cheaters using various tools at their disposal, lecturers were left frustrated as too often culprits went unpunished due to universities’ lenient policies. Cheating ‘red flags’ include refusal to meet the lecturer for verbal feedback on assignments; essays having uncommon features from what lecturers normally expect; unusual citations and references which are often outside the module’s specification, and the use of strange figures, and diagrams. Evidence from this study suggest that universities’ leniency in dealing with suspects is largely due to the commodification of education that puts profit before quality. Recommendations to properly address this practice have been suggested in this paper. The limitations of this study and future directions for similar research are submitted herein.