Crackdown on cheating at universities

Universities Minister, Jo Johnson, has called for "tough action" against the spread of plagiarism and the commercial industry it has spawned and has asked the Quality Assurance Agency (QAA) to pursue websites advertising essay-writing services for students. Mr Johnson said these essay mills could "undermine" the reputation of degrees from the UK. QAA director, Ian Kimber, said, "Essay mills are a major challenge for universities and colleges, because, unlike other forms of cheating, the practice is notoriously difficult to detect."

Last summer, the QAA, which monitors standards in higher education, published a report into the scale of the problem. It found essay services with charges, depending on length, complexity and speed of turnaround, from £15 to thousands of pounds, with many claiming to produce customised work that was "100% plagiarism free". QAA said it was difficult to estimate how widely such services were being used, but there were about 17,000 cases a year of ‘academic offences’, however, there was no breakdown of how many of these involved students who had used essay writing services. Essay-writing websites often carry disclaimers suggesting the essays being sold should be used only as examples and not passed off as students' own work.