First heard on the net, 2017. Retold at the bonfire in Berlin in 2024.
In 2012, a Canadian journalist posted an online advertisement offering to help students write their academic papers. He was working at a local newspaper in small-town British Columbia and seeking a way to supplement his modest income. For 20 Canadian dollars per page, he would write a paper on any topic for students struggling to meet deadlines. Soon, he had a steady stream of customers and was making over double, as a ghostwriter, of what he was earning in his day job as a reporter. One year later, he handed in his resignation, and today he has a team of twenty full-time academic ghostwriters.
Paying third parties to complete coursework is called “contract cheating” and it is a global market estimated to be worth up to 21 billion US dollars.
Why are students drawn to cheating in this form? Systemic challenges in the academic world shape the growth of the contract-cheating industry. Precarious academic teachers and larger class sizes make learning more impersonal. Studies say that when students feel disconnected from the process of learning, they are more likely to cheat.
Ghost writers say that the only thing students who cheat have in common is that they are stressed. “[Schools] are telling students they can take a program, graduate, and get a job. And what they really end up with is $50,000 in debt and no job.” Cheating is often a last resort to get by.