How to Get the Grade Without the Hassel

Have you ever heard of the term Ghost Writing or Ghost Writer? If not, it is someone who is paid to write an article or paper but the person who pays to have the writing gets all the credit. This form of writing can be a very useful tool, but students have turned this tool into something a little less ethical.

This form of writing is not the most popular, but it is on the rise in high schools and universities. Even one of High Point University Panthers has used an online ghost-writing service and passed the paper off as her own work.

For the fear of getting suspended, I will refer to the student as Panther so they will remain anonymous. Panther “was running out of time on (her) assignment and had a bunch of other things that (she)  needed to do,”. This is one of the many reasons students may use an online writing service instead of writing the paper themselves.

Panther had the writer write a paper for her Literature class claiming, “the writer had already read the book I was writing a paper on.”

Her paper had to be five pages long with at least three different sources not including the book. Panther did not want to disclose how much she spent on the paper but later said that she spent almost $200 throughout the process.

One of Panther’s friends (we will call Cub) actually introduced her to the site and said that he has also spent more money than he would like to admit for someone else to write his papers. Cub, upon further questioning, told us that he estimates that he has spent more than $2,000 for various writings through high school and college.

No matter how many “contracts” we make students sign or threaten to give them a failing grade, they will continue to cheat. At least 63% of undergraduate students have admitted to cheating on a written assignment or test according to the International Center of Academic Integrity.

While I do not recommend this form of work/ cheating I do understand that sometimes time management is hard and for all the double majors out there the workload can be horrendous.

EssayShark is one of many sites that allows students or whomever to go online and type their prompt and then have writers place bids on the assignments. Which the student then can discuss the specifies with the writers in a chat before selecting the writer that they want to complete their assignment. Each individual writer has their own profile and rating which helps the student to narrow down who he or she wants.

Students who engage in this are cheating, however,  Mulla2013, a writer on the site, has a different opinion. Mulla2013 has been a writer for the website EssayShark since 2013. This “job” is his only source of income and allows him to make a pretty good living. He does not consider this to be cheating but rather laziness. Mulla added, “if these people are too lazy to do their work then, I would be happy to get paid to do it for them.” For the writers, it is a simple business transaction and for the students, it is an easy way to avoid actually completing assignments. 

While the idea of having someone else writer your papers for you sounds amazing I would think twice before actually purchasing them.

For one thing, Turnitin.com is coming out with a new application called Authorship Investigate that is helping detect ghostwriters so teachers may be able to start detecting if the writing is actually your work.

But you need to think about the consequences that may follow you if you choose this path. You spend so much money going to school where you are assigned papers for a reason so why would someone spend even more money to not do the assignment? So, if you want to spend money on ghostwriters you should stop and think about how much money school is actually going to cost you.

Sources:

3. International Center of Academic Integrity.
1. https://academicintegrity.org/statistics/