Education at a price · Issue 859

T he older I get, the more resigned I become to the fact that little in this life is beyond a price-tag.

As university students we know only too well that education comes at a cost, with the vast majority of undergraduates leaving their degrees approximately £20,000 in debt. But recent research has found that some students are willing to pay out even more to ensure they get optimum academic results – they are buying coursework online (or at least model examples of their essays to use as ‘guides’ for their own work). What’s even more worrying is that a substantial number of these students’ parents are funding the habit.

UKessays.com – one of the leading essay companies in the country – claims to have approximately 6,000 customers, and the results of a survey suggested that a third of these considered their parents a ‘major factor in [making] purchases’.

I’m not sure about you, but paying for certain things smacks of unseemliness. Sex. Freedom. Peerages. And though essays might not be of the same moral or political magnitude of the former suggestions, for me, it still feels instinctively wrong.

Of course, the students acquiring these ‘model’ answers are not permitted to submit the essays in place of their own coursework – that would be intentionally passing off another’s work as your own – or as a university might say in a booming voice, PLAGIARISM.

Cardiff University, as with all universities, has strict guidelines on this issue. Described in the Unfair Practice guide, plagiarism is defined as ‘work that uses the words or ideas of others without acknowledging them as such. It includes attempts to pass off work that has been produced by others, or unattributed words or ideas taken from textbooks, articles, the Web, or in any other format…’ Penalties for detected cases of plagiarism can be severe, ranging from formal reprimands, to the cancellation of marks, and even a recommendation to the Vice-Chancellor to disqualify the student from any future examinations.

According to UKessays.com, their essays are sold not as a method of cheating, but as ‘learning aids’ for students seeking ‘inspiration’ for their own work. Interesting concept, though surely a flawed one. Even if the essay is ‘rewritten’ in the physical sense (and I seriously doubt that many even go to this trouble), the essay – in its ideas and thought processes – is essentially another’s work, and plagiarism of ideas, although equally liable to regulation as noted in Cardiff University’s Unfair Practice guide, I suspect, is much more difficult to recognise, and latterly, prove.

Mind you, it’s not as if these ‘learning resources’ come cheap. According to UKessays.com’s tariff, a 2,000-word undergraduate essay with next-day delivery, at the level of 2:2 would cost £630. Firstly, that’s almost 3 months rent for me. And secondly, do people really fork out for a ‘model’ 2:2 answer? In fact, isn’t the combination of ‘model answer’ and ’2:2’ something of an oxymoron? At the other end of the scale, a first would total £1680. And (you might want to sit down for this) a first-class, 20,000-word full Masters dissertation with next-day delivery would leave a £22,400 dent in the bank balance. Surely you could buy a small island for that? Or, at least – and for a lot less – bribe the coursework marker?

For me, it seems to be a matter of two worst-case scenarios. Worst-case scenario number one, an increasing number of students are passing off professionally-written essays as their own work. Or, worst-case scenario number two, an elite group of affluent students have access to a significant learning resource, which the less well-off majority can nigh-on never afford; in other words, a familiar cyclical situation of better off, better grades, better job, better off…

Beyond the unfairness of it all (in either the cheating or the wealthy-having-access-to-better-resources sense), there is also an element of educational atrophy to this notion of buy-your-way-through degrees. For many students, university is one of the first opportunities to prove (to ourselves and our families) independence, determination, commitment and many other life skills. We might not all understand Foucault, combinatorics and graph theory or the meaning of post-postmodernism to a first-class standard, but we try our damn hardest. What’s the point in coming to university only to pay someone else to think on your behalf? The fact that many parents are putting up some, if not all, of the cash for their child to attend university, only to provide more when it comes to a little hard work, is just baffling to me. But then, perhaps I’m missing the point.

One thing for certain is that opinioncolumns4u.com does not currently exist (trust me, I searched hard). So for the time-being, it seems I’m going to have to stick to the old-fashioned method when it comes to putting together this column. Write it myself.