The offshore outsourcing of student term paper writing services

¶ … companies operating inside the United States attempt to conduct this business legally have become far and few between. The issues that will be investigated will include outsourcing the work offshore by these to places such as Pakistan, the Ukraine and the Philippines, the legal and ethical issues facing the students who use the service and the mechanics of the term paper writing industry. Frankly, due to these legal and cost issues, it is becoming less and less profitable for stateside companies to exist and this as much as legal pressure is propelling the offshore exodus. While the laws may have not been totally effective, the lure for these companies for cheaper operating costs overseas is making the decision to leave the borders of the U.S. easier and making student term-paper cheating an international phenomenon.

Analysis

Detection Tools

Simple cut and paste plagiarism is an issue that technology has dealt with easily. Tools and software packages are available for the use of teachers and professors to see if the students have plagiarized their work from Internet sources. Sites such as "Dustball.com" offer the service for free ("Dustball"). However, more effective for pay services are also available to check. However, such services do not detect original one-time works written by an author for a specific student. This is much harder for schools to detect, hence the proliferation of overseas outsourcing companies in the wake of stateside laws and legal injunctions.

Ethical Issues/State Laws Forbidding the Practice

The fact that students have been outsourcing their paper writing to others is as old as fraternity and sorority rumpus rooms. The old school method of cheating originated in the halls of the fraternities and sororities or from the files of relatives and friends. At the time of the writing of a 1973 Political Quarterly article, the problem was old and many times overlooked or acquiesced by school faculty and staff. Only the most publicly documented cases of cheating from publicly available sources were caught and punished with expulsion, grade reductions, warnings, probation or other types of punishments. State laws had generally failed to stop or stem the tide of what even at that time was rampant cheating (Stavisky 445). Certainly, the Internet and Google have made life even easier for cheaters.

There are no federal laws dealing with the issue, but many state laws in about a dozen states make the practice illegal. Probably the most draconian is Pennsylvania. This statute has been on the books since 2007. Under Pennsylvania Statute § 7324, which states that "Any person who violates the provisions of this section shall be guilty of a misdemeanor of the third degree ("Law.oncle")."

Pennsylvania is not the only state that has been getting tough on cheaters and the U.S. companies that service them. Earlier in 2011, New York considered S1940-2011which is similar to the Pennsylvania Law passed the New York State Senate. The sale of dissertations, theses and term papers over the Internet was already illegal under New York state law and this law simply extended the coverage in an amendment to the state's educational law ("New York Senate"). It is also illegal in Massachusetts (Shvartsman).

Those who buy the papers face a number legal problems. Students who buy the term papers and then turn them in as their own or buy or resell a paper are in violation of copyright infringement laws if they do so without the author's permission. In addition to the legal problems, the students have academic and ethical responsibilities that they are violating in contravention of documents and agreements that they have signed in getting into college or a school.

These relationships may be to themselves, their institutions, or to their classmates. Students who engage in the use of someone else's term paper could face severe penalties at their school, up to and including expulsion from the institution. More and more such institutions have rules against buying term papers and essays. The key legal issue for the term-paper mills is to make sure that they have the authors' permission before the sale of their term papers to students (ibid).

The way that the essay writing services are getting around this is that many term-paper writing services advertise their written products as writing guides. Theoretically, the guides into ethical behavior when composing their own essays. This is especially the issue in the case of foreign language speakers, where a writing guide is helpful tool to better the understanding of English composition and grammar. This responsibility of the students to use the products wisely lets the paper writing services off the hook legally. The students are responsible if they commit academic fraud with the materials The online companies are not responsible for this. Morality is relative in the laissez faire society and economy of capitalism (Steward).

Conclusion

Happily, it is getting more difficult for the cheaters as states such as Pennsylvania and New York have introduced tough new legislation to punish the cheaters and those remaining companies in the United States engaged in the practice, although the laws do not solve everything and are not a panacea. As we have seen, it is getting more difficult to buy and sell dissertations, theses and term papers inside the borders of the United States and students engaged in the practice are increasingly turning to offshore options (usually without their direct knowledge) to get around the tough laws. Lawsuits and higher stateside costs are propelling the business offshore. Unfortunately, this is making it increasingly easy for students who think that they are purchasing the papers from a United States company, usually due to a fake address. Until this is dealt with in some kind of international strategy, cheating is likely to continue and probably become even more prevalent than it is now.