Essay Cheating at Universities: Why the “Open Secret” Is Undermining Academic Integrity. A BBC investigation has found that cheating on essays is still common at UK colleges, even though a rule was passed to ban it.
It has been against the law in England to give essays to students in post-16 education since April 2022. But no one has been charged with a crime yet.
The BBC has talked to a former teacher who calls essay cheating a “open secret” and a businessman who says he made millions selling “model answer” essays to college students.
Universities UK, which speaks for 141 schools, stated that students who turned in work that wasn’t theirs would face “severe penalties.”
A student from another country remarked that getting to study for a master’s degree at a British university was a dream come true.
Alia, whose name has been changed to protect her identity, stated that she and her 20 classmates from other countries had a hard time writing extensive essays at the University of Lincoln, and several of them stopped participating soon after.
She claimed, “It was because they didn’t know English well and didn’t care about the lesson. They were talking to each other or playing on their phones.”
Alia says that a lot of the students went to essay-writing companies, which were easy to find online and priced roughly £20 for 1,000 words.
She was determined to do her own work, but some of her students made fun of her and called her stupid. They told her, “You’re losing sleep, missing meals, and getting so tired—just pay someone.”
Alia said that by the second module, nearly a third of her classmates missed every lesson. “Some would just stand behind the class door, say they were there, and leave.”
It is not against the law to cheat at college, but from 2022, it has become a crime to offer, set up, or promote cheating services for money to students who are getting a degree at any post-16 school in England.
The BBC identified many examples of organisations still advertising their essay-writing services to UK students on their own websites and on social media.
The BBC spoke with both the Crown Prosecution Service and the Department for Education, both of which have the jurisdiction to prosecute. They said that they had no recorded offences that had gone to a magistrate’s court for the first time under the Skills and Post-16 Education Act.
Barclay Littlewood, who is from Huddersfield but lives in Dubai, believes he has made millions in the business.
In 2003, Mr. Littlewood was a lawyer and began writing articles for other people. His company currently asserts that it has a global network of 3,000 freelance writers who write about law, business, and sociology, among other things. Some of these authors are teachers, he says.
He added that his pricing started at £200, but that bigger orders for essays for a master’s or doctorate degree might cost “up to £20,000.”
When the BBC asked him about it, he said he hadn’t broken any English laws and that his essays were “model answers” that pupils might use to write their own.
Mr. Littlewood said he had now created his own AI using hundreds of thousands of articles written by his company. This meant that consumers might have an essay with a “guaranteed grade” in a matter of minutes.
The BBC had Steve Foster, a former teacher, grade an essay we wrote with Mr. Littlewood’s tool, which they said was of a 2:1 degree-grade level.
For eight years, Mr. Foster taught English at the International Study Centre, which is part of the institution of Lincoln. After that, he taught business at the institution for four years.
He said the essay wasn’t written by a student because it didn’t have a “human touch.” He added it was of a 2:1 standard and had “no mistakes whatsoever.”
Mr Foster added that the degree of essay cheating was a “open secret” and one of the reasons he left the field in 2024.
One time, as his coworker was grading an essay, he witnessed a receipt from an essay-writing business fall out of a piece of paper.
Mr. Foster said he thought cheating was more common among overseas students since some of them didn’t speak English well enough.
He talked about one student from another country who got a 2% on an exam and a 99% on an essay.
He remarked, “When the marks are that different, it’s obvious the student has been cheating.”
“When you see a student who clearly had trouble with the language turn in an essay that would have made William Shakespeare proud, that’s going to raise red flags right away.”
Mr. Foster said that a lot of teachers “turned a blind eye” to cheating, which made the problem “snowball.”
He questioned, “Would you want to cross a bridge that one of these students made?” “Would you like this accountant to run your business?”
Universities UK said in a statement that the Home Office defined the level of English that students needed to speak in order to get a student visa.
The statement went on to say, “All universities have codes of conduct that say students who turn in work that isn’t theirs will face harsh penalties.”
In recent years, universities have relied more and more on increased fees from international students because tuition prices from UK students have not kept up with inflation.
A survey from earlier this year said that more than four out of ten universities would soon be having money problems, largely because fewer overseas students are coming to the UK.
In the most current year of statistics (2023-24), there were 730,000 non-UK students registered at UK universities, which is 25% of the overall student population.
The BBC sent Freedom of Information requests to every university in the UK asking how many formal investigations into essay cheating had been done in the academic year ending in the summer of 2024 and how many of those investigations involved international students.
48 of the 53 higher education institutions that gave meaningful answers said that international students were more likely to be involved in academic misconduct investigations.
If you cheat, you could get a warning, a zero on your test, or even be suspended or kicked out of school.
Universities UK wouldn’t say why so many international students were being looked into. But one university told the BBC that this was probably because many of the misconduct cases were about lousy behaviour, including sloppy reference, rather than purposeful wrongdoing.
The University of Lincoln was one of the worst cases. 78% of the 387 investigations included students who were not from the UK, even though they only made up 22% of the school’s student body.
A university official indicated that cheating in school was a “sector-wide challenge.” We thoroughly looked into and dealt with the alleged violations through our established procedures, and we took necessary action when wrongdoing was proven.
Colleges and universities use programs like Turnitin to check essays for plagiarism and bogus authorship.
Turnitin’s chief product officer, Annie Chechitelli, remarked that the rise of AI has made detection and deterrent “more important than ever.”
Turnitin reported that in more than one out of ten articles it looked at since 2023, its detection algorithm determined that AI wrote at least 20% of the text.
Turnitin claimed essay mills were still popular because more and more people wanted services that could avoid AI detection, which preyed on students’ fear of getting discovered.
Eve Alcock, the Quality Assurance Agency’s director of public affairs, claimed that essay mills were still a “threat to academic integrity across the UK.” The agency’s goal is to raise standards in higher education.
She told institutions to think about getting rid of essay-based tests because of the rise of generative AI tools. This would make tests more “authentic.”
Alia, who has since finished her course, said she was disappointed with how everything went.
“I’ve learnt a lot and done a lot, but how will the employer know the difference between me and these people?” She asked.
“When the marks came out, they earned better grades on most of the modules and laughed at me.
“I’m not proud of this degree anymore.”
Source: Credits BBC