Indian websites do your homework for $2

[Resurrection]

http://www.news.com.au/technology/in...2/story-e6frfr

AUSTRALIAN high school and university students are outsourcing their homework to sweatshops in India, Pakistan and Egypt which provide English essays and maths papers for as little as $2.

Websites such as canadianessays.com, realassignment writing.com and dissertation india.com offer fixed-price tariffs or auction-style services where students put work out to tender and workers, mostly graduates from India and Pakistan, bid to take on the projects.

Schools are powerless to stop cheaters using the outsourcing services because custom-made work cannot usually be detected by plagiarism software.


Matt Barrie, founder of freelancer.com, a website designed to put small businesses in touch with affordable labour in emerging economies, said homework assignments were frequently submitted to his site.

"We get them all the time," he said. "As a lecturer myself, I really don't approve, but kids will be kids - they will always find a way to cheat.

"There are students in India who will give answers for just a few dollars and I have seen maths questions answered for $2 a go."

The Sunday Telegraph tracked down one worker offering his services, graduate Mohammed Ali Khan, 23, of Islamabad, Pakistan.

He is turning out essays and papers for high school and university students, charging $2 per 100 words.

"It's my part-time job," he said. "I get work from all over the world including Australia, the US and the UK.

"I've done many jobs for Australian students," he said. "Australians mainly ask for university papers but I've done some high-school work, too."

When asked how much he would charge for a 1000-word Year 12 English language essay, he said $US10.

Academics are concerned about the new customised cheating factories on the net.

"We take this very seriously but, sadly, it's no surprise," University of Western Sydney associate dean Craig Ellis said.

"In the past five years there's been an explosion in sites where you can download pre-written assignments, but we have the mechanisms that allow us to cross-reference essays to identify this. But the trend towards custom-produced work at such low costs is particularly worrying because it is that much harder to spot."

In Australia, Ozessay.com .au offers high-school papers at $16.79 per page with a two-month deadline, rising to $54 per page for PhD-standard work with a 24-hour deadline.

It claims it is now working on essays and dissertations for 1000 Australian students.

The NSW Department of Education warned that any students caught cheating would be given zero marks.

"The Department emphasises to students the importance of the ethical use of technology both in and out of school," a spokesman said.

"Parents have a responsibility to monitor their children's computer use while at home."

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Obviously a plagiarism software can't detect a custom made work...

Only for Ozzie students though...

[SealLion]

and how many of those scholarly papers are found already on the internet or have been re-hashed over and over and over and over.....
...you get the idea??

basically, there could be the possibility that some, none, few, many, or what-ever amount are not necessarily plagiarized but re-hashed many times over with the very real possibility that none of them are really original. I mean seriously, one guy can't just keep writing and writing the same content.

Originality will come as a cost. And since the possibility of originality comes at a cost, one might come to the conclusion that a number of these essays and papers don't really meet the original criteria.
That's just one idea. I'm sure that there's many, many more.

Another thing.
Not all universities and colleges have the capability to track pre-written work.

"In the past five years there's been an explosion in sites where you can download pre-written assignments,....

Something like this could be very expensive.
Not all higher-level educational facilities have such expense capabilities. ....What with construction for expansion, meeting newer and ever increasing financial demands from students that a campus have this 'n that service, having to facilitate increased tuition and so on and so on...

A governmental department might be able to handle such things for some time but a governmental department facilitating checking in on homework assignments and the possibility that they are forgeries or plagiarized some how also comes across at a cost.

...hopefully stuff like this will pass and the college students will see that even their laziness to do their homework assignments can come at a cost to themselves. I.e., the progression of their own knowledge base....or lack thereof of a lack of knowledge base.