Don’t let ‘essay mills’ devalue university degrees – Chris Skidmore

Yet in the UK those services and their operations currently remain entirely legal. It is that unacceptable feature of the British education system that my Essay Mills (Prohibition) Bill seeks to change. These so-called essay mills are a rot that infects the very discipline of learning and has the potential to damage academic integrity beyond repair.

It is sad to say that it is a rot that is spreading, not only in higher education but across all forms and levels of education. The online presence of essay mills and their websites, which encourage contract cheating, is all-pervasive.

Three years ago, it was estimated that 115,000 students at UK universities were buying essays. Then, 46 vice-chancellors wrote a joint letter calling for these websites to be banned. This call is now supported by Universities UK, the Russell Group, GuildHE, the Quality Assurance Agency for Higher Education and most, if not all, of the institutions that I have had the privilege of working with both as Universities Minister, and now as co-chair of the All-Party University Group.

For me, the most passionate advocates of ending essay mills have been the students themselves and student unions, which have campaigned determinedly against their operation. For each week that passes during the Covid pandemic, the situation is only growing worse. The QAA has revealed that there are at least 932 sites in operation in the UK, up from 904 in December 2020, 881 in October 2020 and 635 back in June 2018.

It is not just the number, but the nature of the threat. Recent research by Professor Thomas Lancaster and Codrin Cotarlan in the International Journal for Educational Integrity points to the extremely concerning phenomenon of students using file share websites to request exam answers in real time and to receive answers live during the course of an examination. Indeed, the number of STEM – science, technology, engineering and maths – student requests for this practice has risen by 196 per cent over the past year.

In this year of all years, be in no doubt that essay mills are seeking to take advantage of the pandemic. One site is even offering cut-price deals for essays, declaring that “to help you fight these tough conditions caused by the coronavirus outbreak, we have reduced the price of our services by up to 50 percent – grab the offer now”. That website boasts of offering services in 21 university towns or cities in the UK, and this is the point: essay mills are becoming normalised.

This point was underlined in several Zoom conversations I have had after I put out my own call for evidence. I heard stories of students now being recruited on campus as influencers and being paid to leaflet student halls with fliers offering essay mill services.

Time and again in this dark underworld of essay mills and the companies that seek to make a profit out of the insecurity and desperation of students, the common theme that emerged was of exploitation.

There is the exploitation of students, particularly vulnerable students under pressure to do well in their studies, and students who are the first in the family to attend university, on whom the pressure to succeed is immense.

There is the exploitation of international students away from home for the first time, not to mention the exploitation of graduates abroad, who in some of the poorest countries in the world, are forced to work 12-hour shifts writing essays for $1 an hour. There is also exploitation of graduates and students at home who are so desperate for extra money that they are selling their essays for £10, which in turn will be sold on for £300.

My Bill would not seek to criminalise students for using essay mills. Instead, I propose that universities need to look at new strategies for creating second chances and educating students about their mistakes, following the example of the courageous conversations programme at the University of New South Wales, which gives students the opportunity to own their mistakes before formal investigations begin.

Chris Skidmore is a former Universities Minister who introduced the Essay Mills (Prohibition) Bill to Parliament. This is an edited version.

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