Are Essay Mills committing fraud? An analysis of their behaviours vs the 2006 Fraud Act (UK)

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

Many strategies have already been proposed to deal with the employment of Essay Mills along with other ‘contract cheating’ services by students. These services generally offer bespoke custom-written essays or any other assignments to students in return for a fee. There were calls for the application of legal approaches to tackle the difficulty. Here we determine whether great britain Fraud Act (2006) may be used to tackle a few of the activities of companies providing these types of services into the UK, by comparing their practises that are common and their Terms and Conditions, utilizing the Act. We discovered that all of the sites examined have disclaimers in connection with usage of their products or services but there are a few contradictions that are obvious those activities of the sites which undermine these disclaimers, for example all sites offer plagiarism-free guarantees for the task and also at least eight have advertising which generally seems to contradict their terms and conditions. We identify possible areas when the Act could possibly be used to follow a legal case but overall conclude that such a method is unlikely to work. We call for a new offence to be created in UK law which specifically targets the undesirable behaviours among these companies into the UK, even though principles could possibly be applied elsewhere. We also highlight other UK legal approaches that may be more successful.

Introduction

The employment of so-called ‘contract cheating’ services by students has been a source of controversy and debate within Higher Education, particularly in the decade that is last. ‘Contract cheating’ refers, basically, to your outsourcing of assessments by students, to third parties who complete work with their behalf in substitution for a fee or other benefit (Lancaster and Clarke 2016). These types of services offer ‘custom assignments’ of almost any form, although custom written essays appear to be the most frequent. Students in many cases are able to specify the grade they desire (although there is no guarantee this is delivered), request drafts, referencing styles and nearly every other custom feature (Newton and Lang 2016). Services available are quick and cheap (Wallace and Newton 2014) and students underestimate the severity with which universities penalise making use of contract cheating services (Newton 2015). Perhaps the simplest arrangements are directly between students and essay that is‘custom companies’, a lot of whom are ‘listed’ companies with sophisticated promotional initiatives. However there are numerous ways in which students may use third parties to complete work for them, with all the contract spread across continents; writers may behave as freelancers, employed in a different country to the student and their institution. These freelance article writers will make use of online auction services to promote and organise their work and these might be in yet another national country, and there may be another intermediary; a person 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 write my papers there are multiple actors in contract cheating, one or more of whom might be liable if their actions violate what the law states; students, their universities, the persons paying tuition fees, writers, people who employ writers, the web sites which host the writers, advertising companies, those who host the advertising, an such like. Here we focus primarily on UK-registered essay-writing companies.

Across education, a student who completes an evaluation to make credit towards an award is generally needed to do this regarding the explicit basis that the submission is the own independent work. Ideally, both students and staff are given guidance in what constitutes misconduct that is academic the effects of these misconduct (Morris 2015), in a manner that promotes a positive, constructive approach to fostering ‘academic integrity’ (Thomas and Scott 2016). Then that student will normally face a range of penalties, administered by their university, for academic misconduct if a student submits work that is shown to comprise, in whole or in part, material that is not their own independent work. In the UK these usually include cancellation of marks for the relevant module or perhaps the relevant component of the module subject to any mitigating circumstances (Tennant and Duggan 2008). Historically, these behaviours have not been dealt with through legal mechanisms in the UK (QAA 2016) and also this pertains to plagiarism outside academic circumstances which, within the words of Saunders,”. just isn’t by itself illegal; it is only illegal if it breaches an established legal right, such as for example copyright, or offends from the law of misrepresentation or other legal rules” (Saunders 2010).

However, a commonly used test in creating legal decisions is always to determine how a ‘reasonable person’ might view a particular behaviour. If asked to describe the purchasing of essays for submission for the purposes of gaining academic credit it seems logical to conclude that an acceptable person would conclude that such behaviour is ‘fraudulent’, particularly given the language connected with it (e.g. ‘cheating’). If another individual has knowingly assisted in that activity chances are 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 well as his / her own work then it is clear that the student commits academic misconduct, but what associated with individual or company that supplied the work in return for payment? As to what extent is the fact that individual or company (an ‘assistor’) complicit this kind of misconduct? What is the potential liability regarding the assistor and will action be used against them? Will be the assistors by their action inciting fraud that is academic? An educational institution cannot normally take action against the assistor under internal disciplinary procedures unless the assistor is a student in the same institution. In addition, as well as perhaps more to the point, can there be the likelihood of fraudulent behaviour in the relationship amongst the learning student therefore the company?

Broadly, legal wrongs committed in England and Wales may be addressed through the civil or law that is criminalUK Government 2016a). An action in civil law is taken by a individual that is wronged their initial cost. This cost can be prohibitive and also normally requires the formulation of a claim recognised because of the law that evidences loss or injury to the claimant that is individual 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 action that is civil assistors is bound.

Action pertaining to UK criminal law is normally undertaken by and at the expense of the 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 principles that are basic be followed by Crown Prosecutors if they make case decisions. Crown Prosecutors should be satisfied there is evidence that is enough provide a “realistic prospect of conviction” and that it’s the public interest to pursue a prosecution (UK Government 2013).

A purpose of this paper is to assess the extent that a small business organisation who supplies an essay or written work upon instructions from a student in return for money could be liable beneath 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 2007 by the Fraud Act 2006 (Commencement) Order 2006 SI 2006/3200 january. The Act pertains to offences committed wholly on or after 15 2007 and extends to England, Wales and Northern Ireland january.

In August 2016 the UK regulator of Higher Education, the Quality Assurance agency, considered all approaches to cope with contract cheating, a problem that they stated “poses a critical risk to the academic standards while the integrity of UK higher education” (QAA 2016). Their consideration of possible legal approaches under existing law concluded that the Fraud Act was the “nearest applicable legislation”, but they did not reach a strong conclusion on its use, stating that “Case law appears to indicate a reluctance regarding the the main courts to be engaged in cases involving plagiarism, deeming this to be a matter for academic judgement that falls away from competence associated with court (Hines v Birkbeck College 1985 3 All ER 15)” (QAA 2016).

The QAA state that the UK 2006 Fraud Act is “untested in this context” in their conclusion. Here we explore the detail associated with the Fraud Act further, and compare it towards the established business practises of UK-registered essay-writing companies, with a particular give attention to their conditions and terms.