Students paying hundreds of dollars for academic papers online may be surprised by how little they get for their money.
A recent study by Dan Ariely, James B. Duke Professor of Behavioral Economics at the Fuqua School of Business, and Aline Grüneisen, associate in research at Fuqua, investigated the quality of online essay mills, which sell papers to high school and college students. Although many of the sites claim they are supposed to help students write their own papers, Ariely wrote on his blog that “with names such as echeat.com, it’s pretty clear what their real purpose is.”
Ariely and Grüneisen bought four essays for between $150 and $216 each, but they contained significant errors and passages that made little to no sense.
“The essays were completely incoherent,” Grüneisen said. The essays cited sources from Wikipedia, and one source was in Russian, she added. There were also awkward word substitutions, like the replacement of “cheating” with “deceiting.”
When the researchers asked for a refund due to the poor quality of the papers they received, one of the essay mills threatened to turn the researchers in to a University dean for using its service, Grüneisen said.
The essays the researchers bought related to how and why people cheat. One paper read, “Cheating by healers. Healing is different.... But these days fewer people believe in wizards,” to answer the assigned cheating prompt.
“If a paper [like that] was turned in, I would fail the student and take it to the honor code council,” Ariely wrote in an e-mail.
The experiment originated from a conversation Ariely had with undergraduates about honesty and challenges they face. The students mentioned Adderall, lying on resumes, plagiarism and essay mills.
Grüneisen added that the poor quality of essays produced by essay mills should be enough to keep students away from them. Grüneisen does not think essay mills are widely used, however. She said she thinks purchasing cheaper essays from friends is more common.
The Office of Student Conduct has not seen cases of essay purchasing in a couple of years, but there have been cases in the past, said Stephen Bryan, associate dean of students and director for the OSC.
Even though essay mills are not widely used at Duke, Ariely said the mere existence of the mills is a problem.
“The existence of these sites and their popularity can create what we call ‘social proof’ where people think it is okay to do this, particularly when they hear that other people are doing this,” Ariely said.
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