Top Stories Boston

Archive for the ‘Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center’ Category

The black market of term papers exposed
It’s never been easier for college students to hire someone else to write their term papers for them.

It’s never been easier for college students to hire someone else to write their term papers for them.

Despite school honor codes and laws in Massachusetts and 16 other states making it illegal to traffick in term papers, websites with names like Papergeeks.com, Schoolsucks.com and escheat.com advertise easy access to recycled and “customized” term papers with catchy slogans like “Download Your Workload” and “It’s Not Cheating, It’s Collaborating.”

Craigslist, that purveyor of virtually anything and everything, offers hundreds of listings from people ready, willing, and occasionally able to write term papers for students. These writers for hire come from all walks of life, with some in Boston holding down important positions in their day jobs.

Posing as a student over a three-month period from July to September, I emailed a request for a 20-page, double-spaced term paper about physician-assisted suicide to 66 individuals and companies advertising on the Boston section of Craigslist. Sixty-two responses came back, quoting prices ranging from $90 to $1,200. The average price was $370, or $18.50 a page. I also contacted a few others about writing school admissions essays.

Many of the term paper writers boasted of Ivy League pedigrees and stellar writing skills, claims that were not always truthful.  Eddie H., the founder of Ivy League Essays, a frequent advertiser on Craigslst, claimed to be a senior at Columbia University, but in an interview he came clean and admitted he was not.

Read more