Using paid services that offer essay writing help has been a growing trend in recent years. While students have had access to cheap essay writing services for quite some time, they now even have access to free essay writing services.
The growing demands of university education have made it so difficult for students to complete all their assignments on their own that they turn to essay writing services available on the internet for help.
Due to this reason, many have blamed the flawed education system and claim that students are not at fault for choosing to outsource their homework. After all, universities and colleges should be considerate of how much work a student can be expected to do on their own. However, despite the pressures faced by students, many people argue that it is unethical to use academic writing services that offer to write an essay on a student’s behalf.
Unfortunately, even though several companies and individuals pose as expert academic writers online, students fall in the trap of paying for essays which turn out to be a bundle of twisted facts, plagiarized information and at times even something ridden with grammatical and sentence structure errors.
In such a situation, the possibility of being cheated by an online essay writing content mill only adds to the agony and frustration of overburdened students. How can a student ever be sure that they are entrusting their work to a genuine essay writing service?
This dilemma along with the issue of the legality of paid essays and whether such essays fall within the purview of plagiarism have confused many students, who feel let down by their universities as well as bogus content mills.
So are essay writing services ethical?
To be honest, paying someone to write your essay is not ideal. When a student turns in a paper that has been done by academic writing services, it amounts to a misrepresentation of facts or in simple words lying. Almost every university in the world sees it thus and prevents students from indulging in such practices.
Universities argue that it is ethically improper to submit another person’s work as your own because it results in a dishonest grade being awarded. Moreover, this makes it irrelevant whether or not you had to pay for the service since even claiming someone else’s work as your own is in itself wrong. The point to understand is that when you submit ready-made work you defeat the very purpose of the assignment- which was to teach you a certain set of skills.
So, what actually happens is that the professor instructs you to write something in your own words, but you delegate the task to someone else, so the end product is not a reflection of your capabilities. In this way not only do you fake it to make it, but you also end up losing an opportunity to polish your logical reasoning and analytical skills and learn the nitty-gritty of analytical writing.
Why do students opt to pay for writing services?
As we said earlier, our education system is to be blamed. The reason essay writing services companies are thriving is our flawed system of education that places misplaced expectations in students. As universities turn into diploma mills, mechanically producing graduates for the job market, they forget to stress the importance of the sacred value of wisdom and the centrality of honesty and integrity in the pursuit of education.
Despite the demand for quality essays, getting genuine essay writing service provider is a challenging task for a student who opts to go this way. Students have countless tasks to handle every semester, for every single subject.
On top of this, every institution has its own admission requirements which may include a letter of intent outlining why you wish to join the school. The quality of this essay or statement of purpose determines if one gets admitted or not. This again encourages students to approach writing services, continuing the vicious cycle even further.
Moreover, students find it hard to write university essays on their own because it is tedious, time-consuming and very technical. In fact, rarely does the university properly instruct students on research methodology or academic writing skills. Confused about the format, line spacing, referencing and citation styles, a student is left with no option but to outsource their assignments.
Studies have shown that an alarming 70% of students in the United States alone routinely use paid academic writing services. Thus, paid writing services are like the elephant in the room; everyone knows it exists, but no one wants to admit its presence. Is it because even the strictest of moral giants have had to use paid writing services once in a while?
Students have options to select from to have their essays done. They can choose to buy custom essays done by experts through the use of superior capabilities that rhyme with what the professor’s demand. However, students hiring the services of people with such capabilities will never be in a position of developing the capabilities. The students will always buy college and university essays from essay writing services companies to ease the stress that one feels with uncompleted work.
So what’s the solution?
Since we already discussed that students are genuinely under a lot of pressure, expecting them to totally stay away from essay writing services is unrealistic. So, while you may have to take the help of such services it would be good to ensure the following:
1. Try your best to write your assignment on your own and only resort to academic writing services in case of genuine need.
2. Make sure you are choosing a genuine essay writing service and not just some bogus content mill.
3. Instead of just outsourcing your work, at least try to do involve yourself in the pre-writing, writing and referencing process. You can do this by providing the writer with an outline of which points you want to include in your essay.
4. In fact, make it a point to do some background reading on the topic. That way even if the teacher asks you about your essay, at least you will be able to say something.
5. As a best practice, try to find the references for your essay on your own and read at least the abstract and conclusion of each journal article. This way you are at least practicing the research methodology.
As long as you take care of the above, you will be paying a writing agency just for elaborating an outline you provided them with. Now, that is a lot more ethical than making someone write from scratch. Moreover, when you choose a responsible writing firm, you ensure that there is no plagiarism in your assignment.
Congratulations, by taking care of these points, you have managed to navigate your way through murky waters while avoiding fraud and plagiarism.
Can Turnitin detect essays bought online?
Ah, the question of questions. If you are asking this, at least you know about Turnitin. We advise you to make better use of the website by using it to analyze whether the essay you have been delivered is plagiarized or original. Although no software might be able to really tell if an essay has been purchased online, remember that the language of the essay can give your teacher a hint about whether or not it has been written by you.
So, with all said and done, be smart and choose an academic writing service that is reliable and professional. As long as you stay involved with the writing process, the alligators of the assignment world shouldn’t be able to grab you by the legs.
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