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International Journal for Educational Integrity volume 13, Article number: 3 ( 2017 ) | Download Citation

Many strategies have now been proposed to address making use of Essay Mills and other ‘contract cheating services that are students. These services generally offer bespoke custom-written essays or any other assignments to students in return for a fee. There has been calls for making use of legal approaches to tackle the issue. Here we determine whether the united kingdom Fraud Act (2006) could be used to tackle some of the activities of companies providing these services when you look at the UK, by comparing their common practises, and their conditions and terms, with all the Act. We discovered that all of the sites examined have disclaimers concerning the use of their products or services but there are some contradictions that are obvious the actions regarding the sites which undermine these disclaimers, for instance all sites offer plagiarism-free guarantees for the work and at least eight have advertising which appears to contradict their terms and conditions. We identify possible areas when the Act could be used to follow a legal case but overall conclude that such a method is unlikely to be effective. We call for a offence that is new be created in UK law which specifically targets the undesirable behaviours among these companies within the UK, although the principles could possibly be applied elsewhere. We also highlight other UK approaches that are legal may be much more successful.

Introduction

Making use of so-called ‘contract cheating’ services by students has been a way to obtain controversy and debate within Higher Education, particularly within the decade that is last. ‘Contract cheating’ refers, basically, to your outsourcing of assessments by students, to third parties who complete work on their behalf in substitution for a fee or some other benefit (Lancaster and Clarke 2016). These types of services offer ‘custom assignments’ paper writing service of almost any form, although custom written essays seem to be the most frequent. Students are often able to specify the grade they want (although there isn’t any guarantee this is delivered), request drafts, referencing styles and just about any other custom feature (Newton and Lang 2016). Services available are cheap and quick(Wallace and Newton 2014) and students underestimate the severity with which universities penalise the application of contract cheating services (Newton 2015). Possibly the simplest arrangements are directly between students and essay that is‘custom companies’, nearly all whom are ‘listed’ companies with sophisticated promotional initiatives. However there are numerous ways that students can use third parties to work that is complete them, using the contract spread across continents; writers may behave as freelancers, involved in a different country into the student and their institution. These freelance writers could make utilization of online auction services to market and organise their work and these may be in still another national country, and there may be another intermediary; someone who receives your order from the student and then posts the task on an auction site (Newton and Lang 2016; Sivasubramaniam et al. 2016). Thus you can find multiple actors in contract cheating, a number of of whom might be liable if their actions violate what the law states; students, their universities, the persons tuition that is paying, writers, those who employ writers, web sites which host the writers, advertising companies, those who host the advertising, and so forth. Here we focus primarily on UK-registered essay-writing companies.

Across education, a student who completes an assessment to earn credit towards an award is usually expected to do this on the explicit basis that the submission is the own work that is independent. Ideally, both students and staff are given guidance about what constitutes misconduct that is academic the consequences of these misconduct (Morris 2015), in a fashion that promotes a positive, constructive approach to fostering ‘academic integrity’ (Thomas and Scott 2016). If a student submits work that is proven to comprise, in whole or in part, material that’s not their particular independent work then that student will normally face a range of penalties, administered by their university, for academic misconduct. In the UK these usually include cancellation of marks when it comes to relevant module or perhaps the relevant element of the module susceptible to any mitigating circumstances (Tennant and Duggan 2008). Historically, these behaviours haven’t been dealt with through legal mechanisms in the united kingdom (QAA 2016) and this relates to plagiarism outside academic circumstances which, when you look at the words of Saunders,”. just isn’t in itself illegal; it really is only illegal if it breaches a proven legal right, such as copyright, or offends from the law of misrepresentation or other legal rules” (Saunders 2010).

However, a widely used test in creating legal decisions is always to determine how a ‘reasonable person’ might view a behaviour that is particular. If asked to explain the purchasing of essays for submission when it comes to purposes of gaining credit that is academic seems logical to summarize that a fair person would conclude that such behaviour is ‘fraudulent’, particularly because of the language connected with it (e.g. ‘cheating’). If another individual has knowingly assisted in that activity then they might reasonably be said to have assisted, conspired or colluded this kind of academic fraud, cheating or dishonesty.

If a student has purchased written work from another individual or a business for the purpose of passing it off as his / her own work then it is clear that the student commits academic misconduct, exactly what associated with the individual or company that supplied the task in substitution for payment? To what extent is the fact that individual or company (an ‘assistor’) complicit this kind of misconduct? What is the liability that is potential of assistor and can action be taken against them? Will be the assistors by their action inciting academic fraud? Unless the assistor is a student in the same institution an educational institution cannot normally take action from the assistor under internal disciplinary procedures. In addition, and maybe more importantly, is there the alternative of fraudulent behaviour when you look at the relationship amongst the student while the company?

Broadly, legal wrongs committed in England and Wales might be addressed through the civil or law that is criminalUK Government 2016a). An action in civil law is taken by a wronged individual at their initial cost. This cost is normally prohibitive as well as normally requires the formulation of a claim recognised because of the law that evidences loss or problems for the individual claimant caused by the defendant as well as for which a fix is sought. Thus the ability of educational institutions (or a student for example) to take civil action against assistors is bound.

Action in relation to UK criminal law is normally undertaken by as well as the price of their state through the Crown Prosecution Service (CPS) but requires a criminal offence to have been committed (private prosecutions at private cost are possible but relatively rare). The Code for Crown Prosecutors sets out of the basic principles to be followed closely by Crown Prosecutors once they make case decisions. Crown Prosecutors should be satisfied that there’s evidence that is enough provide a “realistic prospect of conviction” and therefore it is the public interest to pursue a prosecution (UK Government 2013).

A purpose with this paper is always to measure the extent that a small business organisation who supplies an essay or written work upon instructions from a student in return for money may be liable under the criminal law of England and Wales for an offence beneath the Fraud Act 2006 (The Act) (UK Government 2006). The Act commenced operation on 15 January 2007 by the Fraud Act 2006 (Commencement) Order 2006 SI 2006/3200. The Act applies to offences committed wholly on or after 15 2007 and extends to England, Wales and Northern Ireland january.

The Quality Assurance agency, considered all approaches to deal with contract cheating, a problem which they stated “poses a serious risk to the academic standards and the integrity of UK higher education” (QAA 2016) in August 2016 the UK regulator of Higher Education. Their consideration of possible legal approaches under existing law concluded that the Fraud Act was the “nearest applicable legislation”, but they failed to reach a strong conclusion on its use, stating that “Case law seems to indicate a reluctance regarding the the main courts to be concerned in cases involving plagiarism, deeming this to be a matter for academic judgement that falls outside the competence associated with court (Hines v Birkbeck College 1985 3 All ER 15)” (QAA 2016).

In their conclusion, the QAA suggest that the UK 2006 Fraud Act is “untested in this context”. Here we explore the detail for the Fraud Act further, and compare it into the established business practises of UK-registered essay-writing companies, with a focus that is particular their conditions and terms.