essay mills definition

Essay mills explained: What they are and why you should avoid them

Essays and term papers can be stressful, especially for international students who sometimes doubt their ability to research in depth and write thousands of words in English, all to a tight deadline.  

That’s where essay mills come in, exploiting the fears of students and offering to do the hard work for them in exchange for money. 

But here’s the spoiler alert - you should absolutely avoid essay mills. All the time.

They don’t work for you. They don’t even work for the essay writers themselves, and you should see that as a big warning sign. But more on that below.

What are essay mills? 

Essay mills are pretty straightforward: You pay a company to write your essay for you. The company in turn offloads the essay to a (usually freelance) writer. A couple days or weeks later, and you get your completed essay in return. 

It’s not like a proofreading service, where someone can check your spelling, grammar and citations for a fee (though even those are controversial in universities). No, essay mills offer to write you an entire essay from scratch. 

In other words, they allow students to commit academic fraud. In fact, they exploit the worries and stresses of students and entice them into cheating. They’re considered deeply unethical, and put students themselves at risk of severe punishment if caught. 

Another business model of this kind are essay banks. Here, students can buy essays that have already been written. But there’s a much higher risk of getting caught for plagiarism, since who knows how many hundreds or thousands of people have used that very same essay. 

Are essay mills legal or illegal?

The legality of essay mills depends on where you go to university, but the unethicality is clear no matter the location. Here’s a quick rundown of essay mills’ legal status in popular study abroad countries:  

Anti - essay mill legislation in the UK was passed in the House of Commons in February 2021, and will soon be made law. It’s not totally illegal yet, but it’s just a matter of time. 

The Republic of Ireland has also passed a number of bills to help tackle essay mills, while the practice is totally illegal in Australia and New Zealand. 

As for the USA and Canada, some US states have made them illegal, while Canada is under mounting pressure to follow suit.  

But the content and nuances of these laws changes from place to place. For example, in some US states it’s illegal for the student to use them, whereas the bills in Ireland, the UK, New Zealand and Australia are an attempt to criminalise essay mill companies themselves.

However, when we talk about legality, we’re of course talking about the law. But just because you might not cause a criminal offense by using essay mills, it’s still academic fraud and/or plagiarism. And getting caught for that can come with some dire consequences. 

Long story short, you really shouldn’t use them, regardless of their legality. 

Why you should avoid essay mills

1. if it doesn’t make dollars, it doesn’t make sense.

The writer's pay is awful. I mean really bad. Trust me -- I write for a living, and I’ve seen hundreds of advertisements for essay mill jobs. Every time I see one I can’t believe how little money the writers make for so much time and effort.  

But does this affect you? Totally! Would you care about doing great work if, a) the money was terrible, and b) it wouldn’t take you anywhere in your career? I know I wouldn’t...

Let’s talk about cost and time to put this into some perspective. The price range of essay mills varies wildly depending on the writers they employ. You can pay anywhere between £10-£35 per page. Roll this out over a 10 page essay, and it could be anywhere between £100 and £350 for the final product. But you can also come across offers for much, much less money than this.

While that higher end of £350 might seem like a lot of money, trust me -- it’s really nothing for the amount of research, writing, citations, editing and proofreading required. 

If £100 per day is considered a “just fine but not great” sum of money in the UK, a writer would have to do all the work on your essay in 2.5 days just to make it worthwhile. And they’d have to do it without the subject knowledge that you have. 

2. The writers aren’t subject experts

Think about it: if they were a subject expert, would they really be working for a shady company that facilitates cheating? Not a chance. 

The main point is that these writers are badly underpaid and they’re not experts, therefore they’re putting very little effort or expertise into your essay. They just want to do it as quickly as possible before moving onto the next one. 

3. There’s no guarantee of a good grade

None. Since the writers are underpaid, lack expertise and rush their work, it’s a recipe for a bad final product. Multiple studies have shown that essay mills do mediocre work at best. 

The essay you pay hundreds of pounds for might get you a pass grade, but you could do much better yourself. 

4. The punishment is harsh

Every university has severe laws on plagiarism and academic fraud, which is the exact result of using an essay mill. At its most lenient, a student caught breaking rules on plagiarism will receive no grade at all for the work, but at worst they can be suspended or even expelled from your university.  

But the perfect “crime” goes unnoticed, right? Well, it’s unlikely in this case. 

5. Essay mills and detection services

Most universities use pretty innovative plagiarism detection software these days, which can pick up on any hint of fraudulent work. Thus, the risk of getting caught is very high. And by the time a student does get caught, they’ve already lost their hard earned cash to the essay mill company. 

6. Essay mills don’t care about you

The company doesn’t care about you, and nor does the writer. That’s a pretty bad starting point for doing business! Once they’ve got their money and done their sub-standard work, they can move on to exploiting someone else’s fears. 

7. There’s a risk of scams 

Most essay mill sites demand a deposit of the final amount, or sometimes the entire fee up front. Either way, you won’t see your essay until you’ve paid them something. This makes it a prime opportunity for scam artists to take your money without giving anything in return. 

You see, it’s extremely easy for scam artists to launch a website advertising essays for sale, then just shut the operation down once they’ve made some quick cash without doing any work. 

Speaking of scams, here’s an article on some other international student scams to watch out for !

8. There’s a risk of bribery too

And then there’s the risk of bribery. Even if a student thinks they’re anonymous while dealing with essay mills, they’re not. There’s an email address, bank account name, even their IP address to worry about. 

So if the company or the writer decides that they want to blackmail or bribe a student by threatening to unveil the truth, they can. And they’ll always be able to.  

A final word on essay mills: Honest work is the best work

It sounds old fashioned, but there’s no replacement for smart, hard, honest work. Any student can write a great term paper or essay assignment on their own. All it takes is time, research, and some focus. 

Even if you’re under pressure or lack some confidence in your English ability, there are so many better ways to deal with it. Use a study abroad education counsellor , speak to your teachers and your friends. They’ll be able to point you in the right direction and help make that essay easier. 

As for essay mills? Forget about them. They’re exploitative, they serve no good purpose, and you can do a better job yourself!

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• Writing Tips

Essay Mills and Why to Avoid Them

2-minute read

• 6th July 2018

Struggling with deadlines? College life feeling stressful ? You might be tempted to take a shortcut, especially if someone points you toward an essay mill. But what are essay mills exactly?

To help out, we’re here to explain what they are and why you should NEVER use them.

Essay Mills and Essay Banks

Some online businesses offer essays to students at a price. These come in two main types:

• Essay mills provide custom essays based on a specified topic, word count and deadline
• Essay banks sell pre-written essays, which are cheaper but less tailored

These businesses sometimes say that the essays they sell are just “templates” that students can use to generate ideas. However, using an essay mill is widely seen as cheating .

The Problem

Maybe you’ve read the descriptions above. But maybe you still think it sounds like an easy way to get a paper done without all the hard work of researching and writing it. Think again.

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If you use a paper from an essay mill or essay bank, you will regret it for several reasons:

• Using someone else’s words without citing them clearly is plagiarism
• If you are caught submitting a paper from an essay mill, it will count as academic fraud
• Colleges have software, such as Turnitin, designed to spot plagiarism
• Papers from essay mills can cost hundreds of dollars and there is no guarantee of quality

As a result, using an essay mill could leave you poorer and get you kicked off your course!

Essay Mills vs. Proofreading

But what if you still need help on a paper? If essay mills are a bad idea, what is your alternative? Well, the good news is that we can help! Having your work proofread has many advantages. We can:

• Correct your spelling, grammar, and punctuation
• Make sure your vocabulary is academic and that terminology is consistent
• Check that all of your sources are referenced correctly
• Tighten up your writing to make sure it is clear and concise

And all of this without making any major changes that could count as plagiarism. You will, of course, have to do the research and writing yourself. But that is how you learn things in the first place! The key is that we’re here to support you.

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Essay mills: university course work to order

David matthews investigates the scale and threat of the custom essay industry.

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The damage contract cheating can inflict on society is clear. Graduates emerge from university with huge (and in some disciplines, potentially dangerous) gaps in their learning and knowledge

Picture the following scenario: marking an essay by one of your more underwhelming students, you grow suspicious. You would like to be pleased by the unexpected quality of the work, but instead you feel “a twinge that a sentence is too neatly framed”, as one scholar who has found herself in this position puts it. The analysis is superb, the writing style good - but is it too good? It bears little resemblance to previous work by the same student: indeed, it is in a different league. But it has been through Turnitin, the academic plagiarism checker, and come back clean. Has the student miraculously improved, or are you looking at a particularly pernicious problem afflicting today’s higher education sector: the paid- for, custom-written essay?

Custom essays, usually bought through websites known as essay mills, are in some ways an academic’s worst nightmare. Unlike standard examples of copy-and-paste plagiarism, they cannot be detected using software because they are “original” pieces of work - just not the student’s. They also arguably represent an even more cynical form of cheating than, for example, regurgitating unattributed passages in a piece of submitted work.

For many years, essay mills have been brazenly advertising their wares online, although they are always careful not to condone customers handing in bought pieces of work, arguing that the essays purchased are intended simply as useful guides or reference material.

No one knows how big the market in custom essays is, or whether universities are managing to detect those students who do hand them in. There are also concerns that in an age of mass higher education and high student-to-staff ratios, lecturers are less able to get to know their students’ work, making this form of cheating more difficult to detect. And there are fears that the pressures of the job might encourage some academics to turn a blind eye to the practice. But perhaps the most important question is whether it is possible to prevent this form of cheating in the first place.

Asking how many custom-written essays are being bought and sold in the UK is a bit like asking “how long is a piece of string?”, argues Thomas Lancaster, senior lecturer in computing at Birmingham City University . For obvious reasons (including the fact that cheats do not want to be caught, essay mills operate online, and there are no official statistics), it is difficult to come by reliable figures.

However, Lancaster, along with his former colleague Robert Clarke, has attempted to quantify the scale of the problem.

The pair studied a large sample of essay mill sites between March 2005 and June 2013, and identified nearly 19,000 attempts at contract cheating by students.

While they examined websites that could be used by anyone anywhere in the world, a more detailed study of 59 postings in 2011 on one website, vworker.com, found 18 references to assignments at UK universities.

“What we detected is the tip of the iceberg,” cautions Lancaster. No one even knows how many essay ghostwriting sites there are on the web, but five years ago Lancaster and Clarke listed 158.

In addition to the online activity, there is an unknown number of essay writers who advertise their work offline - even on campus.

“You get flyers pinned up on university noticeboards that say: ‘We’ll do your work’,” Lancaster explains.

Then there are those who arrange contract essays socially, for friends, family members or students one or two years below them, who leave no public trace at all.

Prices vary dramatically. An upper-second, five-page undergraduate history essay will set you back £70 at the cheaper end of the market, but some sites charge in the region of £150-£160. One website, which sells itself as a “premier” service, charges £50 an hour. This may sound expensive, but it is loose change compared with the cost (particularly for international students) of having to retake a year.

At the top end of the scale, postgraduate dissertations of 25,000 words cost in the region of £2,800.

Some essay writing companies are willing to provide more specific estimates of the scale of demand for their services, although the figures are self-reported and some academics say that the firms may exaggerate their popularity to attract publicity and gain more custom.

Jennifer Wiss, business development manager at All Answers (which trades under a number of names on the web, including UKessays.com), says that the company dispatched 11,470 custom essays in 2012, of which three-quarters were ordered from UK IP addresses.

This figure is difficult to verify, but the firm’s accounts appear to be consistent with a company selling essays in such quantities.

Wiss estimates that a further 4,000 custom essays are written in the UK by rival agencies each year (although students at British universities can also order from abroad).

In 2005 Barclay Littlewood, who was then chief executive of All Answers (which promoted itself as UK Essays), estimated that the business was worth £200 million a year and boasted that it had allowed him to buy a Ferrari and a Lamborghini.

Robert Eaglestone, professor of contemporary literature and thought at Royal Holloway, University of London , believes that custom-written essays are a problem, but thinks that some essay mills choose to exaggerate their size through the press “because it’s good advertising. It’s a very media- friendly problem.”

Whatever the number of essays being commissioned and the scale of the companies involved, information gathered by Times Higher Education under the Freedom of Information Act suggests that the number of custom-written essays being detected and officially reported is tiny.

THE asked UK universities to provide details of the number of students they had disciplined in the academic years 2011-12 and 2012-13 for handing in custom essays or assignments bought from essay mills. Among the universities that responded to the request within 20 days, just 29 students were disciplined in 2011-12; in 2012-13, 30 students from 15 institutions were penalised.

More than half the offenders hailed from outside the UK. Some argue that the high fees paid by international students and the need to write in English (if this is not their first language) create greater incentives to cheat.

Chasing plagiarists can be ‘too much effort’, Carroll says. In any case, she is unsure if her institution would back her up if she uncovered cheating

Wiss reports that for a significant number of All Answers’ customers, English is a second language. She claims that “many of these struggle to put their thoughts and ideas across, or to interpret their course material and lectures. I believe this is why they choose to use a service like ours.”

In Lancaster’s experience, both domestic and international students use essay writing services, but he believes that a particularly serious and related issue is the matter of students paying for the translation of an essay written in a foreign language before handing it in, a practice that can obscure plagiarism. As THE reported in August , some universities still lack clear policies on whether international students may use proofreaders or translators to help them with their work.

The damage contract cheating can inflict on society is clear. Graduates emerge from university with huge (and in some disciplines, potentially dangerous) gaps in their learning and knowledge. Lancaster even discovered one student who had attempted to outsource an assignment on nuclear engineering. One of the scholar’s presentations on the subject asks: “Do you want to live within five miles of this person?”

But there is also a more specific form of damage to the university. You need only one student to go “to a job and not be able to do it” for an employer to “write off” other graduates of that university, Lancaster argues. He believes that employers have long memories and will warn other companies that certain alumni are not to be trusted. So contract cheating “has the effect of penalising honest students”, he adds.

Given the ethical issues, who agrees to work for the sites? The companies advertise themselves as employing graduates with good qualifications: an anonymous essay writer who wrote for THE in August says he is a recent Oxbridge graduate who was asked to provide evidence of his qualifications and samples of his writing when applying for the job. Some companies claim to employ staff with at least 2:1 degrees, interview potential candidates and ask them to complete trial assignments.

Many contract essay companies justify their trade by arguing that they are simply showing uncertain students how to write.

“Many students just want to see how it’s done,” says Wiss, who also claims that the “vast majority” of All Answers’ customers do not hand in their purchased essays.

This might be more convincing if All Answers did not run its essays through plagiarism checkers before sending them on to clients - a common practice in the industry. Why do this unless customers want to hand them in? Wiss claims that this is to make sure that its writers are “spending the time they are paid for on the project and not cutting corners”.

In line with many in the business, All Answers tries to blame universities for the rise of the essay mill. Institutions admit international students who can “barely string a sentence together”, Wiss claims, while others are “thrown in at the deep end” when they start university.

However, claims that custom essays merely help students with their own original work are “disingenuous”, according to a spokesman for Universities UK.

“Such essays often cost several hundred pounds, will specify the grade they require [2:1, 2:2, etc] and are purchased invariably to meet clear deadlines,” he says.

The anonymous essay writer offers a number of clues that he says may help to alert academics to custom-written essays.

Essay writing agencies generally require writers to submit their work in a standard format, he explains, often including a contents page and chapter headings, regardless of length.

“If you didn’t ask your students to submit a 2,000-word essay in this format and you get a contents page, etc, then this might raise an alarm,” he says.

Ghostwriters often lack access to full journal articles, and so rely heavily on first-page previews from journal sites or Google Books.

“Really probe the references, because this is the weak part,” he advises.

Jude Carroll, an education consultant at Oxford Brookes University and a plagiarism expert , thinks academics should not be afraid to be aggressively “investigative” if they smell a rat. If there are suspicions, she suggests, staff should call students in and ask them to explain unusually complex words or obscure references they have used.

The “biggest worry” for academics who have such suspicions is that they lack proof, she says - but that is no excuse for inaction.

“There’s no support for the argument about proof. Students can’t question academic judgements. You don’t have to be [100 per cent] sure, you have to weigh the balance of probabilities - and be at least 65 per cent sure,” she thinks.

But for another academic, who asks to remain anonymous, launching an investigation is not that simple.

“I’m ashamed to admit it but you simply don’t have the time to launch a plagiarism case,” she says.

One colleague, the same academic recalls, had to “almost google every line” of a suspect essay and make several trips to the library to ascertain whether her fears about a piece of work were genuine.

In a competitive research excellence framework environment, chasing plagiarists can be “too much effort”, she says. In any case, she is also unsure if her institution would back her up if she uncovered cheating. Universities have a “real anxiety about the litigation culture” and are “anxious” about academics exercising their judgement.

When offenders do get caught, Carroll says, the punishments for handing in contracted essays are “highly variable”. She finds this worrying because penalties are a major determinant of how likely students are to cheat.

“I believe students should be thrown out” if caught, she says. “It’s fraud.”

However, according to the results of THE ’s FoI request, most students who cheat in this manner can expect to remain on their courses.

Of the 59 students who were caught handing in bought essays in 2011-12 and 2012-13, just 13 were expelled. In one case at Newcastle University , for example, an international student suspected of handing in work purchased from the site Essays.uk.com was given a “final written warning” but no other punishment.

Many believe that academics’ first line of defence against custom essays is to set assignments that are difficult, if not impossible, to outsource. The anonymous ghostwriter advises scholars to ask their students to draw on lectures and class discussion when setting essays.

“This is something that is either less visible or invisible to the ghostwriter,” he explains, and therefore much more difficult to achieve.

Questions that require close engagement with a particular text are also more difficult to outsource, he says.

“Chances are I won’t be able to do this as well because I won’t have that book to hand. If asked to, I have a problem.”

He also cautions against sending out lecture notes in electronic formats or putting them online, because this only makes it easier for ghostwriters to give the impression of having attended courses.

However, the Equality Challenge Unit points out that students with disabilities might find taking notes during lectures difficult or even impossible, and some departments require academics to provide lecture notes to all students for this reason.

Some essay questions appear time and time again, making them easier for contract writers to complete, so one obvious piece of advice from plagiarism experts is to avoid setting assignments on predictable topics such as “women in Dickens”.

Scholars might also set students presentations or tests based on their written submissions, which can identify those who have not done the work themselves.

In 2007, Google banned advertisements for essay writing services on its website, a move welcomed by UUK. Couldn’t the government introduce a blanket ban on the companies?

A spokeswoman for the Department for Business, Innovation and Skills suggests that this would be impossible under current law.

“Whether a student and/or ‘writing service’ have committed an offence would be for a court to decide and depend on the individual circumstances of the case,” she says. “There is no action BIS could take to address this.”

Another drastic option is suggested by the tale of a US professor, recounted by Lancaster, who set himself up as a contract essay writer to test the waters, only to find one of his own assignments out to tender. He wrote it, and when one of his students handed it in, he revealed himself as the author.

Wiss maintains that All Answers is “very keen to work with universities to provide a service that can’t be abused in the first place” - but only if universities agree that the company is “a legitimate source of academic help”.

The UUK spokesman declines to comment on this and says: “More should be done to clamp down on these essay companies.”

He adds that the body does not have any specific proposals to tackle the problem (although suggestions are welcome).

So there does not appear to be any systematic solution to essay mills on the horizon, and responsibility for detecting and dealing with the issue continues to rest with individual academics and their universities.

“If academics really want to catch these essays, they are going to have to spend more time engaging with their students’ submitted work,” concludes the anonymous essay writer. Some may be left wishing that they had more time to do just that.

Nothing to hide (except your details)

“Although using our service is not cheating, and you have nothing to hide if you use the service responsibly, we still take your privacy very seriously … We never share details of your order with your university.” Oxbridge Essays

“First class in my chemistry coursework was unbelievable!!! thanks.” - Theo, Manchester My Uni Essays

“Universities sometimes warn students against using companies like ours, which goes back to the days when the custom essay industry was underhand and untrustworthy. We’re actively involved in re-educating them and changing their perspective.” All Answers

“Just wanted to send a note to say thanks. Your paper helped me get a 2:1 for my degree!! I can now apply for my Masters! Thanks ever so much!! Do you write to Masters level?” - Lucy, Stratford-upon-Avon Ivory Research

How to exorcise the ghostwriters

• Set students short tests or presentations based on their essays.
• Ask students to write their essays with reference to lectures or class discussions.
• Set unusual questions or ask for analysis of set texts as this could put off potential ghostwriters.
• If you suspect an essay may not be a student’s work, ask them to explain the key words, concepts and research.
• Check references: ghostwriters often do not have access to full journals or books, so may be able to reference only the preview pages of online articles.
• If an essay seems overly formatted, for example, with a contents page and chapters, this could be because of a standard format used by essay companies.
• Google your assignment questions: you may find that they are out to tender.
• Click here for more on preventing plagiarism.

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Raising awareness of essay mills: How essay mills frame themselves as “help"

Contract cheating awareness

Turnitin is using advanced forensic linguistics and probability algorithms built on years of research to identify when work is likely not written by the student. So how does it work?

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As students, instructors, and administrators continue to increase their awareness of trends in academic misconduct, so, too, are essay mills upping the ante when it comes to extending their reach. Using predatory tactics that target stressed, struggling students, essay mills are finding a way to appeal to students in their moment of need.

It is important to understand how it is they are marketing themselves to students so that educators can mitigate their reach. It is also essential that educators support students on their learning journey and help them to feel seen, so that they are less vulnerable to these marketing strategies.

Here are some ways essay mills have framed themselves as “help” in educational settings around the world.

They advertise themselves as writing support. Under the guise of “writing help,” essay mills pretend that they are supporting struggling students. These companies are attempting to call themselves “writing assistance services” that are “trustworthy provider[s]” of material students can use to improve their own writing. Some claim to provide “thousands and thousands of free papers” which students can use “as the foundation of [their] own piece.”

A student in need may be drawn in by the supportive, empathetic tone of the article, feeling understood by these companies who are offering to help improve their writing. But this reassuring tone is, in fact, misleading: What is not mentioned is that these materials are actually ghostwritten essays that students use to represent their own work. The use of essay mills is a form of misconduct ; therefore, these services ultimately subvert authentic learning and do not, in the end, help writers seeking support.

What struggling students need in these situations are legitimate resources, supported by empathetic instructors that truly see them, identify their potential, and employ feedback loops to guide them in improving their own writing. Students and instructors alike should be wary of any essay mills parading as writing models or help in this manner.

They make themselves available where students congregate online. In addition to posting on social media–where stressed students may scroll at the eleventh hour without the presence of an educator–many essay mills are paying for advertisement spots on a variety of channels , sustaining the façade that they provide legitimate services. In fact, research suggests that contract cheating businesses employ automation tools on social media channels , like Twitter, to generate leads specific to their subject area.

This paid advertisement from an American online syndication highlights several companies that offer “expertly crafted free essay samples” to download as “models worth following or emulating.” Another online sponsored ad boasts reviewing the “TOP-3 Professional Academic Writing Services to Help You Through College” and strategically uses positive language in order to normalize the use of essay mills as a tenable writing resource, stating:

“Practical uses of this unique website include spotting new topics and content presentation ideas, creating an outline for your paper based on proper samples, and discovering new sources for your work in relevant samples. Kudos to the company for building a resource where students can find the best writing examples to learn from without violating any point in the academic integrity code.”

By advertising online in local and regional sites, these essay mills position themselves as a reputable writing resource, reaching students outside of the classroom.

They advertise themselves as an academic partner for research professionals. The cliché “Publish or perish” within academia still holds true for many around the world. When it comes to individuals seeking a promotion, increasing an institution’ s reputation, or in some extreme cases, merely keeping a position, the pressure to publish is often so great, support may be sought outside the norm.

Dr. Anna Abalkina , who focuses on academic fraud at the Free University of Berlin, has observed an increase in essay mill usage at the publishing level, saying she “believed the trade in ghostwritten journal papers was growing rapidly as scholars seeking publication by nefarious means turned away from low-quality predatory journals and towards businesses that guaranteed them publication in recognised outlets.”

Instead of merely writing a paper for a high price, these ghostwriting companies offer a “co-authorship” opportunity for those in need of a byline in a published journal. “Many scholars [are] turning to businesses such as International Publisher LLC, which offers the opportunity to become a co-author of a manuscript that is already accepted for publication by a journal.”

The papers for sale are known to utilize plagiarized materials from foreign-language PhD theses or from trade journals, then translated into English, costing upwards of €5,000 ($5,718) for a first authorship in a reputable journal. Individuals who do not grasp the true cost of contract cheating to academic integrity , may feel the pressure to seize this “opportunity” to publish. Instead of helping to facilitate innovation and share new ideas, these mills flagrantly take advantage of customers in their time of need and perpetuate a cycle of academic dishonesty. The consequences are vast and the impact of this misconduct is immeasurable: to the academic, this may result in censure by the community; to the institution, a scandal may incur; and the dissemination of such papers can endanger accurate information and overall research integrity.

They advertise themselves as “plagiarism-free.” This post reached out to a Spanish-speaking demographic, trumpeting the value of what they dubbed “‘la opción gratuita y en español de Turnitin creada por Ayuda Universitaria’ [the free Spanish Turnitin option created by University Help].”

Right away, the article makes an effort to place the business on the right side of integrity. It emphasizes “[l]a importancia de los software antiplagio [the importance of anti-plagiarism software]” and explains that it is, indeed, a crime to appropriate the intellectual property of another. It claims to offer a completely free Spanish option for ensuring originality, detailing how Ayuda Universitaria scans the internet for matches in order to detect plagiarism.

However, upon visiting the mentioned website directly, it is immediately clear that there is more available than just “plagiarism checking.” One can select what type of project is needed, the cost of that project, read reviews/ratings, and then purchase a paper for a specific degree. By utilizing key search words within the article itself (“plagiarism software” and “Turnitin”), this company not only strategically lures potential customers to their website, but also works hard to position themselves as an affordable integrity solution. And while essay mill papers are technically free of plagiarism–bespoke pieces of content written for a specific assignment or degree–students who aren’t aware that papers written by a third party are still an egregious form of misconduct may fall prey to this tactic.

Whether it’s framing themselves as “help” or simply misrepresenting their offerings in order to appeal to students and academic professionals in need, make no mistake that these essay mills are still a business. They charge a fee and sell opportunities for misconduct ; that is, when an individual involves a third party to complete an assignment, which they then represent as their own work. Especially in remote learning , it is essential for students, instructors, and administrators alike to understand the impact of these essay mills on academic integrity and differentiate between disreputable claims and legitimate resources to support writing.

Bottom line: essay mills endanger original thinking and original ideas and erode the integrity of institutions.

Essay mills are a growing market, with over 1,000 listed in the United Kingdom alone. Join members of the QAA Academic Integrity Advisory Group on the 12th of April as they discuss the risks associated with using contract cheating services.

Essay mills: What are they, and why students should avoid them

Have you ever been stuck on what to write for your university entrance essay, or felt under pressure with the numerous deadlines looming and have no time to work on your thesis?  Maybe a friend has told you how they’ve used essay mills, or perhaps you’ve seen an ad yourself popping up on your screen while surfing the internet.

Essay mills, or “essay factories” , are businesses that offer a service to write an essay or term paper for students for a fee.

These are not your basic proofreading or editing services, but businesses where essays are written for you. They do extensive research, proofreading, citations, and deliver a final essay to the customer (i.e. you, the student), which you can credit as your own.

Essay mills are nothing new in this day and age, having started in the mid-1800s when students in fraternity houses shared term papers. Later in the 1950s, the lucrative business of ghostwriting evolved where writers wrote material on behalf of authors or celebrities. 

Specialised companies were set up near university campuses where students could walk in and purchase the services of a team of writers to do their essays for them. However, with the onset of technology and the internet, the essay mills business has mushroomed in recent years. 

Some students have opted to use essay mills to get their work done without the stress and pressure of researching and working on a paper themselves. These essay mills or essay factories are easily accessible and promoted via various social media and online platforms.

Gareth Crossman from Quality Assurance Association for Higher Education (QAA), an independent body that checks on standards and quality in UK higher education, told the BBC that one in seven college students  might be cheating  on their work. 

With essay mills, there’s a risk of bribery, while there’s no guarantee that the article purchased is of excellent quality. Source: Christina Quicler/AFP

International students whose English isn’t their first language may be tempted to use essay mills due to their lack of language skills or insecurities.

Despite that, they are highly unethical and can lead to students being found guilty of plagiarism and academic fraud. Nowadays, many universities and colleges use software such as Turnitin, which can easily spot any discrepancies or plagiarism in a student’s work. 

Some are even resorting to asking students to take oral examinations if it is suspected that they have not completed the work themselves. Ultimately, it’s best for students to avoid essay mills at all costs.

Students have an obligation to submit authentic work while at university, and understand how writing and researching for a paper is part and parcel of the learning journey. 

Taking the easy option of using essay mills services is for short gain only as students are essentially cheating and taking the credit for something that another person has worked on. To boot, there’s no guarantee that the article purchased is of excellent quality or free from plagiarism.

Suppose you are struggling with writing your term paper; why not consider taking some extra classes to improve your English language skills or talk to your university professor or counsellor for some valuable advice? 

There’s nothing quite like that feeling of pride and accomplishment of submitting work that you worked on yourself. After all, as the ancient Greek philosopher Sophocles once said, “Without labour, nothing prospers.”

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• Original article
• Open access
• Published: 26 December 2019

Are essay mills committing fraud? A further analysis of their behaviours vs the 2006 fraud act (UK)

• Michael J. Draper 1 &
• Callum Reid-Hutchings 1  

International Journal for Educational Integrity volume  15 , Article number:  11 ( 2019 ) Cite this article

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Many strategies have been proposed to address the supply of bespoke essays and other assignments by companies often described as ‘Essay Mills’ with the act of supply and use being invariably described as ‘contract cheating’. These proposals increasingly refer to the law as a solution in common with other action. In this article, the lead author revisits work undertaken in 2016 as a result of recent legal and extra-legal developments to assess whether the UK Fraud Act (2006) might now be used to tackle some of the activities of the companies involved, by comparing their common practises, and their Terms and Conditions, with the Act. It was previously found that all sites have disclaimers regarding the use of their products but there were some obvious contradictions in the activities of the sites which undermined those disclaimers, for example plagiarism-free guarantees for the work. In this article, we ask and consider the question whether this is still the case having regard to the impact of a change in the law by the UK supreme court and recent action of the UK Advertising Standards Authority. We also consider whether a call for a new offence to be created which specifically targets the undesirable behaviours of these companies is still justified.

In this article we consider the development of law and policy in the area of contract cheating and in particular, whether or not recent changes in UK law, action taken by the Advertising Standards Authority and the guidance issued by the Quality Assurance Agency for the UK (QAA 2016 , QAA 2017 ) have had an impact on the knowledge and state of mind of UK registered companies engaged in supplying essays to students for financial gain and the consequences for the operation of the Fraud Act 2006.

Our findings in relation to the action taken by the Advertising Standards Authority have a wider implication for the current debate in relation to proposed legislative responses to contract cheating across the common law world, in particular Australia and the Republic of Ireland.

In earlier work, Draper et al. ( 2017 ), and Draper and Newton ( 2017 ) considered the main actors in contract cheating: a student, their university, and a third party (often a company or ‘Essay Mill’) who completes assessments for the former to be submitted to the latter, but whose input is not permitted. They also considered the legal consequences that might apply to such arrangements. Those legal consequences focussed on the operation of the Fraud Act 2006 and the relationship with the legal test of dishonesty necessary to establish criminal liability on the part of an Essay Mill under that Act.

Since the original work was undertaken there have been several critical developments in relation to essay mills in the UK. As noted above these involve a change in the law on dishonesty, action taken by the Advertising Standards Authority and guidance published by the quality assurance agency for the UK.

We undertook further and new research to update and expand upon our 2016/2017 findings to determine whether or not these developments have had an impact in the manner in which Essay Mills operate. Given the potential consequences of continuing to operate as usual in the context of these developments we thought it reasonable to assume that a fundamental change to the business model of Essay Mills and the terms and conditions under which they operate would be evident.

Assessing guilty minds

New case law has demonstrated and reaffirmed how knowledge may be attributed to Essay Mill companies in order to determine their potential criminal liability. Criminal liability usually requires that the defendant have a guilty state of mind, a criminal mental element which lawyers call ‘ mens rea’.

The Fraud Act 2006 (UK Government E 2006 ) has 16 sections but one general offence of fraud which may be committed in 3 principal ways:

section 2 (fraud by false representation),

section 3 (fraud by failing to disclose information), and

section 4 (fraud by abuse of position).

The guilty state of mind necessary to secure a successful prosecution for the purposes of these sections is focussed on the dishonesty, intention and knowledge of the perpetrator. As Essay Mills tend to operate commercially through a company demonstrating that a company has a guilty state of mind is essential if a criminal prosecution is to succeed. The knowledge of the directors and other principal officers of an Essay Mill must be attributable to the company and this critical issue has recently been considered by the UK Supreme court.

In Jetvia v Bilta (2015, UKSC 23) the Supreme court determined when the knowledge of a director will be imputed to the company. The court held that imputation is sensitive to the particular facts of any case but as a matter of general principle the knowledge of a director will usually be imputed to a company when considering whether a company has committed a criminal offence.

Of particular relevance to our discussion are the observations of Lord Sumption:

“English law might have taken the position that a company, being an artificial legal construct, was mindless. If it had done that, then legal wrongs which depended on proof of some mental element such as dishonesty or intention could never be attributed to a company and the present question could not arise … .. It cannot be emphasised too strongly that neither in the civil nor in the criminal context does this involve piercing the corporate veil. It is simply a recognition of the fact that the law treats a company as thinking through agents, just as it acts through them.”

That the law treats a company as thinking though agents is reinforced by section 12 of the Fraud Act 2006 which provides that an offence is committed by a company if the offence is proved to have been committed with the consent or connivance of a director, manager, secretary or other similar officer of the company. Importantly the section goes on to provide that such individuals are also guilty of the offence and liable to prosecution and punishment.

Therefore human agents such as directors of an Essay Mill cannot escape liability and prosecution under the Act by hiding behind corporate personality and action claiming that the guilty mind and action is that of the company and not theirs.

Furthermore those directing the operation of Essay Mills should note that a company may take civil action against its directors for any loss suffered by the company as result of the actions of its directors.

The key question ‘When the directors of a company involve it in a fraudulent transaction, is the company barred by the doctrine of illegality from suing them and their accessories for losses caused by their breach of fiduciary duty?’ has been answered by Jetivia v Bilta with an emphatic ‘No’ .

The fiduciary duty of a director is to act in the best interests of the company in circumstances of absolute trust and loyalty. Consequently directors of Essay Mills are on notice that if a company suffers loss as a result of a breach of the law the company may take action legal against those directing or operating the company to recover its losses as they have failed to act in the best interests of the company. A Director cannot claim that their knowledge is attributed to a company and therefore provides a defence of corporate illegality in any action brought by the company against a director for wrongdoing.

Jetvia v Bilta also confirmed that s.213 of the Insolvency Act 1986 (UK Government E 1986 , which allows liquidators to seek a contribution from any person who was knowingly party to fraudulent trading by the company) has extra-territorial effect. Claims may be brought against any person across the globe “ at least to the extent of applying to individuals and corporations resident outside the United Kingdom.”

Draper et al. 2017 called for the creation of a specific criminal offence in relation to Essay Mills that had extraterritorial effect because many Essay Mills are legally established outside of the UK but operate within the UK through digital services and platforms.

The case therefore supports the argument that in cases of fraud both the law and the courts will not object on the grounds of principle and are capable of facilitating a criminal prosecution in relation to activity taking place outside of a legal jurisdiction, provided there is an established relationship or activity with the legal jurisdiction in question.

New law of dishonesty

Having established that both a company and its directors and principal officers may be held liable for criminal activity through the construct of a guilty mind, we turn now to consider how the legal test for dishonesty in the UK has fundamentally altered and the consequential potential impact on the liability of Essay Mills and their agents under the Fraud Act.

The Explanatory Note to the Fraud Act 2006 states:

“Section 2 makes it an offence to commit fraud by false representation. Subsection (1)(a) makes clear that the representation must be made dishonestly. This test applies also to sections 3 and 4. The current definition of dishonesty was established in R v Ghosh [1982] Q.B.1053. That judgment sets a two-stage test. The first question is whether a defendant’s behaviour would be regarded as dishonest by the ordinary standards of reasonable and honest people. If answered positively, the second question is whether the defendant was aware that his conduct was dishonest and would be regarded as dishonest by reasonable and honest people.”

In the article ‘Are Essay Mills committing fraud? An analysis of their behaviours vs the 2006 Fraud Act (UK) (Draper et al. 2017 ) the difficulties of using the Fraud Act 2006 to take action against Essay Mills was demonstrated primarily because Essay Mills protect themselves in their terms and conditions by stating that their products are only to be used as a ‘reference work’ or equivalent, and must not to be submitted as the student’s own work.

Thus, the second question of R v Ghosh (1982, 1 QB 1053),whether the defendant was aware that conduct was dishonest etc., would probably not be satisfied.

The UK Supreme Court in Ivey v Genting Casinos (2017, UKSC 67) has revisited the test of dishonesty with significant consequences for the Fraud Act and Essay Mills.

The court has removed the subjective second question of the test for dishonesty and adopted a refined and straightforward test: does the relevant conduct fall below an objective standard of honesty?

In our view, Essay Mills should have been alerted by this decision to the fact that behaviour will now be judged to be “honest” or “dishonest” simply by the objective standards of ordinary, reasonable and honest people. In particular, the guidance given in Ivey by Lord Hughes on the application of the test of dishonesty in relation to criminal offences should be noted:

“When dishonesty is in question the fact-finding tribunal must first ascertain (subjectively) the actual state of the individual’s knowledge or belief as to the facts. The reasonableness or otherwise of his belief is a matter of evidence (often in practice determinative) going to whether he held the belief, but it is not an additional requirement that his belief must be reasonable; the question is whether it is genuinely held. When once his actual state of mind as to knowledge or belief as to facts is established, the question whether his conduct was honest or dishonest is to be determined by the fact-finder by applying the (objective) standards of ordinary decent people. There is no requirement that the defendant must appreciate that what he has done is, by those standards, dishonest. ”

The above analysis of dishonesty was strictly speaking not a binding part of the decision but offered up by way of explanation. However the analysis is important as it points in the strongest terms to a significant change from the previous standards of dishonesty. The clear intention of the Supreme Court means that trial judges may adopt the Ivey test of dishonesty on the assumption that the Court of Appeal would prefer Ivey over Ghosh , as was acknowledged in DPP v Patterson (2017, EWHC 2820).

Indeed this approach has now been approved by the Court of Appeal in the 2019 case of Group Seven Limited & Ors v Notable Services LLP & Orsin (2019, EWCA Civ 614). As we discuss in further detail later on this means that a finding of dishonesty in relation to Essay Mills is more likely because they will simply be judged by an objective standard of dishonesty.

However will Essay Mills persist in relying on their terms and conditions as an ‘industry’ wide standard providing them with a defence against an allegation of dishonest practice?

Most likely they will but the recent case of Carr v Formation Group (2018) confirms that this will not be a viable defence. Under the old test for dishonesty, it was possible to call expert evidence to show that conduct, however dishonest, was ‘market practice’ (or that ‘everybody was doing it’) in order to demonstrate a lack of subjective appreciation that it fell below an objective standard of dishonesty.

Morgan J explained that this could result in some significant consequences for the proper conduct of business. As he succinctly put it in the judgment (at paragraph 32):

“ The history of the markets have shown that, from time to time, markets adopt patterns of behavior which are dishonest by the standards of honest and reasonable people; in such cases, the market has simply abandoned ordinary standards of honesty.”

In other words, it would be perverse to let “markets” decide their own interpretation of honesty and then be judged by that .” The defence of ‘everybody in this was doing it’ is no longer available and this will have an impact across a wide range of industries such as Essay Mills where ordinarily ‘dishonest’ or misleading working cultures and practices have developed.

These practices are often most visible by the advertising employed by businesses and we now turn to developments in this area as a result of action taken by the UK Advertising Standards Authority (‘ASA’) in relation to the advertising of Essay Mills.

ASA rulings

Since July 2016, there have been three referrals to the ASA which we will now address. It is important to keep in mind that many of the observations made are equally applicable to advertising standards in a number of countries.

The first referral to the ASA was made by the QAA in relation to certain aspects of the advertising used by UK Essays. The ASA ruling on All Answers Ltd. t/a UK Essays was delivered on 21.3.18 (ASA 2018 ) and related to not uncommon advertising:

“The home page featured text that stated “ … GUARANTEED GRADE, EVERY TIME We’re so confident you’ll love the work we produce, we guarantee the final grade of the work. Unlike others, if your work doesn’t meet our exacting standards, you can claim a full refund … LOVED BY CUSTOMERS & THE GLOBAL PRESS UK Essays have lots of press coverage from all over the world confirming that a 2:1 piece of work produced by us met this standard … We were the first company in the world to offer you guaranteed 2:1 and 1st class work”.

Additional information about the service was included on pages titled ‘WORLD CLASS GUARANTEES’ and ‘UK ESSAYS IN THE PRESS’.

The QAA asserted that:

The advert was misleading, because they believed it did not make sufficiently clear the risks associated with submitting purchased essays; and

The references to the press coverage that UK essays received misleadingly implied that they had received positive coverage or endorsement from those press outlets.

The ASA considered that consumers would expect from the advert that they could submit purchased essays as their own that would meet the ordered grade without risks, which was not the case. They therefore concluded that the advert was misleading and the complaint was upheld. Furthermore, the ASA considered that the manner in which the quotes were presented was likely to give an overall impression that UK Essays received positive reviews or coverage from the sources referred to and again the complaint was upheld.

Interestingly, in relation to the point made on press coverage above, when accessed on the 16 July 2019, there is a quote on the UK Essays website on the ‘press coverage’ tab from The Guardian newspaper (a quality UK broadsheet). It reads “if you consider that the difference between a 2.1 and a 2.2 can be thousands of pounds on your starting salary, the incentives are obvious ”. This quote may suggest that using the services of UK Essays has a value. The quote is taken from a Boris Johnson article in 2006 (Johnson, 2006 written before his elevation to UK Prime minister) in which he refers to ‘ cheats ’ and that it makes him feel ‘ queasy ’.

As UK Essays stated in its response to the ASA investigation, the original press publications are readily available on their press coverage tab. However, the Boris Johnson article is available at the very end of the page, in much less bold text. Arguably, it is harder to find than other articles. The article is entitled ‘ the unbearable triteness of cheating’ . The quote they have used certainly does not seem to match the general tone of the article and a customer might think that UK Essays had received a positive review in this article.

The ASA explicitly directed UK Essays to stop presenting advertisements from press coverage and other published sources in a manner that was not reflective of the tone and content of those sources. This may not have been acted upon.

There has been another QAA referral in relation to the advertising by Essay Writing Services UK. The ASA ruling against Thoughtbridge Consulting Ltd. was delivered on 7.11.2018 (ASA 2019 a). The similar issue of being able to submit the essay as your own essay was flagged, as well the grade guarantee advertisement.

“ the home page included text on the home page which stated “Get the grades you Need and Achieve More Today! … GRADE GUARANTEE Get the grade you ordered first time, or your money back Plagiarism Free, Free plagiarism report with every order … Only for you The work you order will never be re-used or re-sold ”.

It was asserted that:

“Get the grade you ordered”, “Plagiarism free” and “The work you order will never be re-used or re-sold” misleadingly implied that consumers could hand the essay in as their own; and

“Grade guarantee Get the grade you ordered” was misleading and could be substantiated.

The ASA considered that consumers would expect that they could submit purchased essays as their own without risks from the advert, which was not the case. They therefore concluded that the ad was misleading and the claim was upheld. Furthermore, they considered that whilst the information was available on the “Guarantees page”, consumers could go through the process of purchasing an essay without being given this detailed information, and therefore it could be overlooked. It was further considered that it was not clear to consumers that the claim “Grade guarantee “Get the grade you ordered first time, or your money back” meant that if the consumer paid to have their work marked by Essay Writing Service UK and did not achieve the indicated grade they were eligible for a refund, rather than that if they handed in the essay they purchased it would achieve the grade for which they had paid. Therefore, the ASA concluded that the claim was misleading.

In our research the terms and conditions on Essay Writing Services UK could not be accessed. It is assumed one would have to put ‘additional info’ in on the order page to get to the terms and conditions. Given the fact it is hard to find any trace of any terms and conditions, it is considered that this would be an impediment for a student who is not actively looking for them.

The most recent ruling by the ASA was delivered on 9 January 2019 against The Oxbridge Research Group Ltd., known commonly as Oxbridge Essays (ASA 2019 b). There were two separate issues, both being upheld. The website included claims on the home page which stated “With Oxbridge Essays, it has never been easier to get the grades you’ve always wanted … First class? 2:1? No problem. We work with over 1,900 of the UK’s best academics to make sure you get the grade you want … Get better grades We’ll send you the product you have ordered on your chosen delivery date - it’s that simple ”. Further text on a page headed “Dissertation writing services ” stated “We put the time and effort into making every piece of work we write the best it can be - and the results speak for themselves … Your dissertation will include everything your university requires: introduction, research question, chapter outlines, literature review, methodology, analysis, recommendations and conclusion … Whatever standard you choose, we guarantee the work will be to that standard … Oxbridge-educated academics The vast majority of our writers have studied or taught at the UK’s two best universities, Oxford and Cambridge”.

The ad misleadingly implied that students could submit an essay they bought as their own; and

The claim “The vast majority of our writers have studied or taught at the UK’s two best universities, Oxford and Cambridge” was misleading and could be substantiated.

The ASA considered that consumers would understand from the advert that they could submit purchased essays as their own without risks, and the website did not make sufficiently clear that was not the case, concluding that the advert was misleading and the claim was upheld. They also considered that consumers would interpret the claim ‘the vast majority of our writers have studied or taught at the UK’s two best universities Oxford and Cambridge” to mean that almost all of the writers who wrote for Oxbridge Essays had either completed a degree or taught at either Oxford or Cambridge universities. Given the fact only 71% of the writers had either studied or taught at Oxford or Cambridge, it was considered not to be sufficient to meet consumers expectation based on the advertising claim, that almost all writers had a degree from, or had taught at, one of those universities, and that it was more likely than not that an essay would be written by a writer from one of those universities. The ASA therefore concluded that the claim was misleading and again the claim was upheld.

Given the potential consequences of continuing to operate as usual in the context of the change in the law relating to the legal test of dishonesty and the ASA rulings it is reasonable to assume that a fundamental change to the business model of Essay Mills and the terms and conditions under which they operate would be evident. We therefore sought to assess and test this assumption by revisiting and expanding earlier research.

Have essay Mills changed their business model?

In the first 2017 article, the commonly observed practises of some UK based essay-writing companies along with their terms and conditions of supply were compared to sections 1–7 the UK Fraud Act 2006 to determine whether or not these companies were committing an offence under these sections of the Act.

Twenty six sites operated by 21 apparently distinct companies were analysed; each had separate listings at UK Companies House. The identity of the specific companies were not included for publication for the following reasons: 1. not wanting to further advertise the services of these companies, either through publication or through any publicity associated with it. 2. there was no guarantee that the company number given on these websites was actually that of the company which ran the site. In some cases, the names were the same but in others this was not the case. 3. The content of the article was academic opinion and not the basis for legal proceedings. We have adopted the same principle in this article.

In July 2016, the websites of those companies (Table  1 ) were accessed to address a series of questions), which would then allow for consideration of the relevant sections of the Fraud Act. Questions were addressed by one author with cross checking by another. Table 1 is reprinted for ease of reference and comparison with new data.

In July 2019, we adopted the same methodology described above when updating results for the purposes of this article. The websites of those companies were accessed to address a series of questions (Table  2 ) which would then allow us to consider the relevant sections of the Fraud Act. Questions were addressed by one author with cross checking by a second. For the final question, “Is the advertising potentially misleading (compared to disclaimer/terms + conditions)?”, the authors considered the advertising to be misleading if it (for example) gave an overall impression that work purchased from the site could be submitted as if it were a student’s own work, without citing the company. A similar approach has also recently been adopted by the ASA, as we discuss below.

Our main conclusion is that UK registered essay mills have not significantly altered their terms and conditions since July 2016. However, there are some differences of note.

Six websites have either been taken down or not accessible since the original research, which explains the fewer number of sites considered by our current research.

There has been an increase in the number of websites which we consider to be misleading (gives the overall impression that work purchased from the site could be submitted as if it were a student’s own work) having regard to advice given in the ASA rulings: a rise from 31% to 68%. This is significant for our discussion on behaviours that might be objectively considered dishonest that follows later in this article.

As previously noted Essay Mills have a disclaimer in their terms of use on the website or in their terms and conditions. However, during our current research some terms and conditions could not be easily found, or personal details had to be registered in order to gain ‘additional info’ where it is assumed that terms and conditions are located. This too is an apparent change in practice and the reason for the percentage reduction in the tables from 100% to 88%.

The plagiarism free guarantee and qualified writer guarantee are inducements that these websites continue to deploy but again with a notable reduction in relation to the plagiarism free guarantee (100% offer down to 84%).

There is a reduction in the number of sites that allow a student to specify a grade. The reason for this may be explained by the fact that some companies guarantee a particular quality but not a grade. It would be inappropriate to characterise this as a ‘grade guarantee’.

A point of note is that there is now one website which no longer offers academic writing. It only provides free essays and the terms and conditions specifically state that they no longer offer academic writing services. This might be attributable to the impact of the ASA rulings. It is certainly a welcome development.

Changes in practice due to ASA rulings

The issues identified by the ASA in relation to Essay Mill websites are not unique to the UK and will have much in common with sites in other jurisdictions such as Australia, New Zealand and the Republic of Ireland.

Our Findings from Table 2 note that have been changes and we have sought to contextualise these changes having regard to the key issues identified by the ASA. Therefore Table  3 identifies the key issues addressed by the ASA in their rulings against the three essay mills noted above. We have looked at the current content of all the UK registered websites researched (so far as we able to do so) and questioned whether they clearly adopt the spirit or intention of the rulings of the ASA. We offer a reminder at this point that our interpretation is academic opinion and not a basis for further action by the ASA or otherwise.

The ASA considered it critical that Essay Mills should make it clear to customers at the point of order that they cannot submit purchased work as their own without risks. Our review indicates that this crucial recommendation has not been adopted in the manner intended (bringing this to the attention of students at point of purchase) and that the companies continue to rely on their terms and conditions to avoid liability or to carry key injunctions in areas of the website away from the order page (and therefore potentially unread by a purchaser) whilst also using familiar inducements in relation to guarantees and press coverage but in a revised format.

In our academic opinion, UK registered Essay Mills may be non-compliant in varying degrees with the ASA guidance in their current format as Table 3 demonstrates. If so and having regard to the change in the law relating to the legal test of dishonesty the question arises whether or not Essay Mills are operating in a dishonest manner.

Are essay Mills operating dishonestly?

The first point to note that although the majority of UK registered Essay Mills may have a website or advertising considered misleading for the purposes of advertising standards this does not of itself necessarily amount to dishonest behaviour for the purposes of the Fraud Act.

Essay Mill websites in the UK continue to provide familiar guarantees, for example, ‘100% plagiarism free’ and they do not appear to prioritise on their order page a clear warning that that the essay should not be submitted as the customers’ own work. Some websites draw attention to ‘model answers’ or are to be used ‘to inspire one’s own work’. However, this warning is not given prominence. Many outline this important injunction in the FAQ section or refer to it once in a small part of the home page. Having regard to the ASA rulings, such critical warnings should appear on the order page so that the student can clearly see it before committing to purchase. Does a failure to do so matter?

The answer is Yes. Although not inherently dishonest the above would be factors to be taken into account when making an objective finding of dishonesty. It should be remembered that any finding will depend upon the facts of and evidence available in any particular case.

Removing the entirely subjective second part of the two-stage test of dishonesty removes or at least lessens the possibility that an Essay Mill of questionable moral standing with their own personal code of honesty will escape liability under the Fraud Act. The key question then is would the behaviour and practice of an Essay Mill in a particular case be considered dishonest by the standards of ordinary decent people?

The answer to this question will depend not simply on terms and conditions of business or nuanced judgements as to the overall ‘misleading’ tone of the website. Significant weight will be attached to the direct inducements and ‘chat’ that often takes place between students and Essay Mill prior to purchase as to how the student may use the essay. It can be said with some certainty that statements or ‘chat’ as to permitted use or other inducements which contradict terms and conditions of business are likely to be viewed as dishonest. We tentatively suggest that the change in the law of dishonesty which took place at the end of 2017 does not appear to have had a significant impact on the terms and conditions of UK registered Essay Mills as evidenced by Tables  2 and 3 above.

However a cautionary note is that the test in Ivey takes into account the defendant’s knowledge and belief, and therefore it is not a straightforward objective test and an outcome of a finding of dishonesty is not therefore entirely certain.

Whilst dishonesty is important for establishing the section 2 offence, another option that could be used to prosecute Essay Mills is Section 7 of the Fraud Act which makes it an offence to make, adapt, supply or offer to supply any article knowing that it is designed or adapted for use in the course of or in connection with fraud, or intending it to be used to commit or facilitate fraud. Section 8 extends the meaning of “article” so as to include any program or data held in electronic form. This should include an essay stored or supplied electronically by an Essay Mill. For a section 7 offence to be committed dishonesty on the part of the Essay Mill is not required, only knowledge of or an intention to commit or facilitate fraud will suffice.

“Knowledge” in Section 7 (1) (a) is a strict requirement although in practice, the use to which the article (essay) can be put is likely to provide sufficient evidence of the Essay Mills state of mind. Furthermore, as noted above, the publicity and media attention over student use of supplied essays would lead to a reasonable conclusion that an Essay Mill has relevant knowledge for the purposes of the offence ie that the student will beyond doubt submit it is as their own work.

However, the manufacture of articles (essays) that are capable of being used in or in connection with fraud but have other innocent uses (eg study aids tutoring or proof reading services) will probably not fall foul of this section unless the manufacturer intends that the essays should be used in a dishonest way (Section 7 (1) (b)). The terms and conditions of business will mitigate against the commission of an offence as essays are usually required to be used in a legitimate manner although again publicity in connection with how students are actually used and some of the advertising used by some of the Essay Mills may mean that s.7 is a viable prosecution option particularly again having regard to the ‘chat’ and other inducements prior to purchase noted above.

The key issue here relating to a guilty mind is that liability under s.7 depends on knowledge and intention rather than dishonesty. Does this matter? We have noted above that Ivey takes into account the defendant’s knowledge and belief in concluding whether or not dishonesty exists so the concept of knowledge is as important for section 2 as it is for section 7 of the Act.

So, what is knowledge for the purposes of the criminal law? Stephen Shute, ( 2002 ) states that all (criminal) offences which incorporate ‘knowledge’ of a specified proposition as a necessary element for their commission appear to require that the ‘known’ proposition be true. Shute also makes reference to the doctrine of wilful blindness, set out in Roper v Taylor’s Garage (1951 2 TLR 284, supported by R v Hall, 1985 81 Cr App 260), which suggested that ‘shutting one’s eyes to an obvious means of knowledge or deliberately refraining from making inquiries, the result of which the person does not care to have’ is in law ‘actual knowledge’. When supplying an essay does an Essay Mill refrain from making inquiries as to its use because they do not want to hear the answer that it will be used as a submission for an assessment – particularly given the common knowledge that must now exist as to likely use?

Deliberately not asking the question because you might not like the answer can be distinguished from merely neglecting to make inquiries. Neglecting to make inquiries is not knowledge (i.e. not asking a student what they intend to do with the essay will not amount to knowledge of the student’s intention to submit the essay as their own if they do so).

However, Shute concludes that the doctrine of wilful blindness is and should be treated as anomalous, he makes reference to the decision in R v Moys, (1984, 79 Cr App R 72) which seems to confirm that suspicion, even great suspicion, should not be held equivalent to belief. A belief must be correct in order to be considered knowledge. Otherwise, the exact definition of knowledge is not certain, and allows for flexibility depending on the context of the offence it is applied to.

Therefore, it is unclear what level of knowledge is required to establish criminal liability and it is unclear whether the doctrine of wilful blindness (I didn’t ask whether the student was going to submit the purchased essay and therefore I didn’t ‘know’ as my terms and conditions state that a student must not take this action) could be applied to knowledge in a criminal context.

This all means that liability under the first limb of section 7 for writing or supplying an essay for use in connection with fraud may be difficult to establish in relation to an Essay Mill although each case would turn on its own facts and in particular the ‘chat’ that may have taken place between the Essay Mill and student before or at the time of transacting in relation to the use of the essay.

Section 7 in its second limb relies upon intention (an intention that the essay be used in connection with fraud) as the basis of liability. R v Woollin (1999 1 AC 82) sets out the generally accepted definition for intention. It has been accepted that intention means either acting to bring about a particular result or acting in the face of the acknowledged virtual certainty that a particular result will come about (direct/indirect intention). However, Lord Steyn clearly states that “it does not follow that ‘intent’ necessarily has precisely the same meaning in every context in the criminal law. This means that intention may be taken to mean something other than purpose/foresight of virtual certainty in other contexts, such as under the Fraud Act. The key question here is whether or not Essay Mills intend an essay be used by a student in submission for an assessment.

In the context of media and other attention and the information required from students in relation to grade and essay title, then whilst arguably Essay Mills are wilfully shutting their eyes to the obvious it is by no means certain that there is sufficient proof for criminal liability under the second limb of section 7 on the basis that they intended the submission of the essay by the student. Their terms and conditions say something very differently but again, each case would turn on its own facts and the ‘chat’ that may have taken place between the Essay Mill and student before or at the time of transacting in relation to the use of the essay. These evidentiary challenges in relation to knowledge and intention are likely to mitigate against a prosecuting authority taking action under section 7 of the Fraud Act 2006.

Is criminal prosecution likely?

We have demonstrated that recent legal rulings make it easier to impute the knowledge of human agents to corporate Essay Mills and the context of QAA guidance and ASA rulings, as well as associated media attention, may assist in making a finding of dishonesty under the revised objective Ivey test in relation to the Fraud Act more likely. We have also demonstrated that other offences requiring knowledge and intention may be brought into play having regard to the chat and inducements that frequently occur prior to student purchase although the evidentiary challenges remain significant hurdles.

Furthermore action under the Fraud Act is on a case-by-case basis and requires the Crown Prosecution Service to bring a prosecution. The Crown Prosecution Rervice is a UK government agency employing lawyers who are responsible for examining police evidence, deciding whether to take criminal proceedings through to court prosecution stage and preparing cases for court and conducting prosecutions.

There are still a number of practical obstacles and questions to the use of the Fraud Act. The competing priorities of the Crown Prosecution Service is one such obstacle. An academic marking an essay becomes suspicious that a student has used an Essay Mill, does that academic become an investigator of a possible criminal offence? Should staff now call the police? How long would a case take and what would happen to the students and staff in the meantime? Where and how would evidence be collected; Does a university virtual learning environment become a crime scene? Many of these questions and practicalities arise because when the Fraud Act is applied; it would necessarily involve the student concerned and staff in determining whether there was a prima facie case and subsequently a successful prosecution.

These practical and evidential obstacles will militate against a criminal prosecution. If criminal prosecutions are unlikely due to practical and evidential challenges then these difficulties support the creation of a new criminal offence that is directed at the supply side and not the student demand side of the business model of Essay Mills.

Argument for a new law

For all of the above reasons, we maintain that a change in the law is required and that the central argument of the article ‘ A legal approach to tackling contract cheating? holds good.

Draper and Newton ( 2017 ) detailed a draft law, which could be used to outlaw the provision and advertising of essay writing services and would address the limitations identified above by targeting contract cheating at source; the Essay Mills themselves. This proposed new criminal offence relies on the legal principle of ‘Strict Liability’, which would simply make it an offence to offer contract cheating services, regardless of dishonesty, knowledge or intent.

There remains a strong public interest in ensuring that (for example) the doctor, engineer or lawyer has obtained their qualifications via learning they undertook themselves rather than bought from an Essay Mill. Essay Mills should not be able to obfuscate that ‘the terms and conditions say students should only use our bespoke custom written plagiarism-free guaranteed grade assignments as a ‘reference work.’

Strict Liability would ensure that the following is an offence:

“completing for financial gain or financial reward in whole or in part an assignment or any other work that a student enrolled at a Higher Education provider is required to complete as part of a Higher Education course in their stead without authorisation from those making the requirement”.

This principle would be extended to include the arrangement and advertising of such services. A Strict Liability offence would reverse the burden of proof and place the cost of the defence on the Essay Mill – a mill would be guilty of a criminal offence by mere fact of supply unless they establish a defence which is a much stronger deterrent and an provides an easier route to prosecution.

To establish a defence of due diligence we suggest that an Essay Mill would as a minimum have to remove plagiarism free guarantees, cease writing to a specific title and grade and give a clear warning at the point of purchase as to permitted use of the essay and the risks of failing to comply. All pre-purchase chat and reassurances as to use which contradict terms and conditions of business would have to end. An Essay Mill might even be required to submit the essay to a database which could be searched by text matching software of the type used by educational institutions and advise a student purchaser that this would be done.

Recent research published by Newton ( 2018 ) in Frontiers in Education, demonstrates that Essay Mills continue to thrive with students continuing to use their services. Anna McKie writing in the Times Higher Education (Mckie 2018 ), notes that UK registered essay mills wilfully continue to trade as:

“ … … essay mills are not illegal in the UK – as the UK Essays website points out, ‘we would have been shut down a long time ago’ if they were … …

The article by Draper and Newton ( 2017 ) was the only research cited to the then UK Education Minister in a 2018 letter signed by over 40 Vice Chancellors of UK Universities, calling for Essay Mills to be banned by the law.

Australia is seeking to pass new legislation (Amigud & Dawson 2019 ) and the Republic of Ireland has recently done so. Both countries operate similar criminal offences in relation to fraud as the UK and both have elected to adopt new legislation to combat Essay Mills because of the challenges faced with using existing fraud laws.

The Republic of Ireland passed an Amendment Bill in July 2019, which introduces changes to the Qualifications and Quality Assurance (Education and Training) Act 2012. Section 43A of the Amendment Bill will provide a statutory basis for the prosecution of those who facilitate cheating by learners; who advertise cheating services and who publish advertisements for cheating services.

The Amendment Bill does not directly provide for extraterritorial effect but will enable conversations with platforms such as Google and Facebook that continuing to host ‘marketing’ and ‘advertising’ material for Essay Mills will be in breach of that platforms operational terms and conditions in relation to posting illegal material. Indirectly therefore extraterritorial effect is achieved.

In circumstances in which Essay Mills frequently operate across national boundaries this indirect outcome and the in-principle support offered by Jetvia v Bilta (2015) for the creation of an offence that has extra-territorial effect will alleviate concerns over displacement and off-shoring of Essay Mill services.

The continued complexities of the Fraud Act: the precise nature of the new objective test of dishonesty, the meaning of knowledge and intention for the purpose of certain offences and the application of these concepts alongside the terms and conditions of Essay Mill websites and the direct marketing and ‘chat’ to which students are subjected (often contradicting key terms and conditions), are strong arguments for bespoke legislation that avoids these complexities through utlilising the principle of strict liability in order to address contract cheating for financial gain. This is particularly the case if we are to avoid students being the subject of criminal prosecution (students could be caught by the revised test of dishonesty and thus commit fraud through submission of a purchased essay) and in order to focus the resource and attention of prosecuting authorities on Essay Mills.

Although welcome, we have also demonstrated through Tables 2 and 3 , that the ASA rulings have not significantly changed the behaviours of UK registered Essay Mills. The only reasonable conclusion is that if we are to stop the activity of Essay Mills in the UK then we have to adopt the solution hinted at by UK Essays 2018 website – we have to make their services illegal.

We therefore submit that not taking action to create a new bespoke offence targeting Essay Mills in the UK in relation to contract cheating for financial gain and the advertising of such services is no longer an option.

Availability of data and materials

The original research data upon which the Tables in this article are based is held by the Lead Author. The data will not be shared for the following reasons:

1. The data is based on academic opinion of publicly accessible documentation linked to UK registered companies. 2. We do not want to further advertise the services of these companies, either through publication or through any publicity associated with it. 3. We had no guarantee that the company number given on these websites is actually that of the company which runs the site. 4. The content of our article is academic opinion and not the basis for legal or other proceedings.

Abbreviations

Advertising Standards Authority

Crown Prosecution Service

Quality Assurance Agency

Amigud A, Dawson P (2019) The law and the outlaw: is legal prohibition a viable solution to the contract cheating problem? Asses Eval Higher Educ. https://doi.org/10.1080/02602938.2019.1612851

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ASA (2018) Advertising Standards Authority Ruling on Complaint Ref: A17-4. Retrieved November 23, 2019, from https://www.asa.org.uk/rulings/all-answers-ltd-a17-394574.html

Google Scholar  

ASA (2019a) Advertising Standards Authority Ruling on Complaint Ref: A18 -7 . Retrieved November 23, 2019, from https://www.asa.org.uk/rulings/thoughtbridge-consulting-ltd-a18-452244.html

ASA (2019b) Advertising Standards Authority Ruling on Complaint Ref: A18-10. Retrieved November 23, 2019, from https://www.asa.org.uk/rulings/the-oxbridge-research-group-ltd-a18-458914.html

Draper MJ, Ibezim V, Newton PM (2017) Are Essay Mills committing fraud? An analysis of their behaviours vs the 2006 Fraud Act (UK). Int J Educ Integrity 13(1):3. https://doi.org/10.1007/s40979-017-0014-5

Draper MJ, Newton PM (2017) A legal Approach to tackling contract cheating. Int J Educ Integrity. https://doi.org/10.1007/s40979-017-0022-5

Johnson, B. (2006) ‘The unbearable triteness of cheating’. In The Guardian October 17 2006 Retrieved from https://www.theguardian.com/education/2006/oct/17/highereducationuk

McKie, A. 2018. ‘Can Universities beat contract cheating?. In Times Higher Education September 13 2018 Retrieved from https://www.timeshighereducation.com/features/can-universities-beat-contract-cheating

Newton PM (2018) How Common Is Commercial Contract Cheating in Higher Education and Is It Increasing? A Systematic Review. Front Educ. https://doi.org/10.3389/feduc.2018.00067

QAA. (2016) ‘Plagiarism in Higher Education - Custom Essay Writing Services: An Exploration and next Steps for the UK Higher Education Sector’

QAA (2017) “Contracting to Cheat in Higher Education – How to Address Contract Cheating, the Use of Third-Party Services and Essay Mills”

Shute S, Simester AP (2002) Criminal Law Theory. Oxford University Press; https://doi.org/10.1017/S0261387500013234

UK Government E (1986) Insolvency Act 1986 https://www.legislation.gov.uk/ukpga/1986/45/contents . Accessed 23 Nov 2019

UK Government E (2006) Fraud Act 2006 https://www.legislation.gov.uk/ukpga/2006/35/contents . Accessed 23 Nov 2019

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Acknowledgements

The authors acknowledge the contribution of Hannah Hutchison a law student intern in 2018 to the investigation of essay mill websites and background law upon which the data in this article is based.

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The authors are solely responsible for this article. Both authors read and approved the final manuscript. This article was written by the lead author with support from the second author who undertook the most current primary investigation of the essay mill websites upon which the data in this article is based. The methodology is described in the main body of the article.

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Draper, M.J., Reid-Hutchings, C. Are essay mills committing fraud? A further analysis of their behaviours vs the 2006 fraud act (UK). Int J Educ Integr 15 , 11 (2019). https://doi.org/10.1007/s40979-019-0050-4

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https://educationhub.blog.gov.uk/2022/04/28/essay-mills-are-now-illegal-skills-minister-calls-on-internet-service-providers-to-crack-down-on-advertising/

Essay mills are now illegal - Skills Minister calls on internet service platforms to crack down on advertising

Skills Minister Alex Burghart has written to internet service platforms to make sure they know that essay mills - which facilitate cheating by helping academic writing, often by appearing to be legitimate - have been made illegal and to call on their support in making sure they can no longer advertise online. Here you can read that letter.

The Skills and Post-16 Education Bill has become law. Through this act, the Government has legislated for landmark reforms that will transform post-16 education and skills, including criminalising essay mills.

As you may know, Essay Mills are online platforms that facilitate contract cheating. Contract cheating happens when a third party completes work for a student which is passed off by the student as their own work. Many essay mill companies use marketing techniques which indicate they are offering ‘legitimate’ academic writing support for students. Reports also indicate that some essay mills seek to blackmail students who use these services. It is right that we have legislated against these insidious crimes.

It is now a criminal offence to provide or arrange for another person to provide contract cheating services for financial gain to students taking a qualification at a post-16 institution or sixth form in England, enrolled at a higher education provider in England and any other person over compulsory school age who has been entered for a regulated qualification at a place in England.

Similarly, it is now an offence for a person to make arrangements for an advertisement in which that person offers, or is described as being available or competent, to provide or arrange for another person to provide a cheating service. Importantly, the offence centres around the act of advertising to students, and for the offence to be committed it does not need to be seen by its target demographic.

There is now a strengthened, collaborative effort across the sector to tackle essay mills and we want you to be part of this campaign. Platforms such as yourself play an integral role in helping us to make the most effective use of the legislation; marketing and advertising are the lifeblood of any successful industry. We are aware that high numbers of essay mills have used your platform to promote their services to students in the past, paying for advertising to promote their companies. Essay mills are now illegal entities, and you should not carry their advertising. It is no longer a moral question; you will be facilitating an illegal activity. I ask you to do everything in your power to prevent the advertising these unscrupulous practices.

Removing essay mill access to online marketing will seriously hamper their efforts to target vulnerable students and I implore you to do so following the introduction of this legislation. We must now all work together to capitalise on it.

I hope that in writing to you today I have underlined the urgency of this issue and the important role that companies like yours play in stamping out essay mills once and for all and am sure I can be confident in your support.

Thank you for your support with this important matter.

Tags: cheating , essay mills , internet service platforms

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Essay mills to be banned under plans to reform post-16 education

Unscrupulous ‘essay mills’ to be criminalised as part of the Skills and Post-16 Education Bill

Services offering to provide students with essays for money, known as essay mills, are to be made illegal under plans announced by the government today (5 October).

The government intends to make it a criminal offence to provide, arrange or advertise these cheating services for financial gain to students taking a qualification at any institution in England providing post-16 education including universities.

The move is one of a number of measures being introduced to the Skills and Post-16 Education Bill , to transform the skills and training landscape and help level up opportunities across the country.

The law will also be changed to give equality to technical education in careers advice in schools, so all pupils understand the wide range of career routes and training available to them, such as apprenticeships, T Levels or traineeships, not just a traditional academic route.

Minister for Skills Alex Burghart said:

Essay mills are completely unethical and profit by undermining the hard work most students do. We are taking steps to ban these cheating services. We have also announced a new measure to make sure all young people receive broader careers guidance so everyone can get the advice that’s right for them.

Banning essay mills will help to safeguard the academic integrity and standards of post-16 and higher education in England and protect students from falling prey to the deceptive marketing techniques of contract cheating services.

This follows a number of steps already taken to tackle unscrupulous essay mills, including government working alongside the Quality Assurance Agency for Higher Education, Universities UK and the National Union of Students to produce guidance for institutions on how to combat the threat of contract cheating and guidance for students to make them better aware of the consequences, sending a clear message that these services are not legitimate.

Additional measures being introduced to the Bill include enabling sixth form colleges with a religious faith designation to become a 16-19 Academy, boosting diversity in 16-19 academies and allowing more faith school providers to open 16-19 academies with a religious character.

The Bill, which will enter its report stage in the House of Lord on 12 October, underpins the government’s transformation of post-16 education and skills as set out in the Skills for Jobs White Paper . The reforms outlined in the Bill will help to create more routes into skilled employment in sectors the economy needs such as engineering, digital, clean energy and manufacturing, so more people can secure well-paid jobs in their local areas, levelling up the nation and supporting communities to thrive.

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7.3: Definition Arguments

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What is a definition argument?

A research-based argument may have as its goal to describe the nature of something, whether it be an abstract concept like justice, a historical event, or an ongoing trend. Definition arguments like this are arguments because they seek to shape our vision of reality. We can think of them as answering the question "What is it?"

Definition arguments may attempt to explain what is meant by a particular term. Take the following claim:

Organic, in terms of food, means plants and animals raised without additives or artificial growing conditions.

The argument here hinges upon understanding the definition of the word “organic.” In this case, organic is the subject of the argument. The claim goes on to base the argument on definition criteria. The claim states that two definition criteria of “organic” are “raised without additives” and “raised without artificial growing conditions.” "What do they mean by ‘artificial’?” If you find yourself questioning other terms used in the claim, that might mean your argument will need to dedicate a paragraph or more to defining those terms. An extended argument on organic food would need to explain in detail what distinguishes artificial growing conditions from natural ones. Can greenhouse-grown food be organic?  In such a situation, it may benefit the argument to offer the dictionary definition of “organic” as a way to confirm that writer and the readers’ assumptions are the same.  

There are a number of online dictionaries that student authors can derive a definition from, but should the writer wish to ensure trust (ethos) with the audience, the source of the dictionary definition might matter.  The dictionary.com site offers this definition for “organic”:

Organic: pertaining to, involving, or grown with fertilizers or pesticides of animal or vegetable origin, as distinguished from manufactured chemicals” (“organic”).

Readers who respect the history and legacy of the Oxford English Dictionary (OED) might consider its definition more credible. Considered the most definitive and complete dictionary available, the OED offers differentiated definitions of different uses of the word.  In the case of “organic,” we’d need to look at sub-definition 8c to find one that works for our purposes:

Organic: of food: produced without the use of artificial fertilizers, pesticides, or other artificial chemicals.

A definition argument can put a more specific subject into a category based on criteria, as in the following:

Though it omits hormones and antibiotics, organic ice cream remains unhealthy because it contains high levels of fat and sugar, while offering little nutritional value.

Here we have a subject – organic ice cream – and a category – unhealthy. Presumably, unhealthy things often contain similar criteria – high levels of fat and sugar, low nutritional value, and industrial additives. Organic ice cream might not contain industrial additives, but, because it meets the other two criteria, it can still be considered unhealthy. A good way to test your thesis is to try out examples to see if the criteria work to distinguish things that fit the category from things that don't. Are other things we consider unhealthy full of sugar and/or fat, low in nutrition, and made with industrial additives? Yes. Fast food hamburgers are unhealthy because they contain high levels of fat, low nutritional value, and are full of chemical preservatives.

Definition arguments will need to provide evidence for any generalizations they make about a subject. If they use a specific example, how can they show that the example is typical ? They may also need to justify the choice of criteria for the definition. If we argue that the Vietnam War should not be considered a "World War" even though it involved two global superpowers, the U.S. and the Soviet Union, we will need to explain why a criterion like the number of deaths should be considered more important than the number or size of the countries involved.

The benefits of definition

Once we understand the value of definition for clarifying terms in an essay, we can start to appreciate the value of definition in shaping an argument, especially one centered around a contentious term. When controversy revolves around an issue, defining terms explicitly and precisely is even more critical.  In Section 4.2: Check If the Meaning Is Clear , we saw how mixing different meanings of one term can disguise a problem with the logic of an argument (if this is done intentionally, it is called equivocation ). A definition argument can help avoid this kind of slippage, and it can clarify where disagreements lie.  Even if it doesn't resolve the disagreements, it may at least prevent misunderstandings.

One example lies in the definition of "life" in the abortion debate.  Those on the pro-life side argue "life" is defined by the initial meeting of sperm and egg, and the subsequent division of cells. On the other hand, those on the pro-choice side often argue that "life" is determined by autonomy, by the fetus's ability to survive outside the womb, and this, generally, is possible at twenty-four weeks.  Prior to that, the fetus is fully dependent for survival upon the security of the woman's womb. 

To take another example, let's say the government decides to allow health insurance providers to exclude coverage to individuals with preexisting conditions.  The question then arises, what precisely does constitute a preexisting condition?  Any diagnosis of cancer, including minor skin cancers?  Diabetes? Obesity? Hypertension?  Consider how many of our friends and family members have been diagnosed with any of these conditions. 

Laws rely on definitions.  Many of us are familiar with the purpose of Title IX, which ensured that equal funding should be applied for both male and female athletic programs in schools.  However, with the recognition of transgender students and their rights, the U.S. Department of Education offered a statement of clarification to the language of Title IX: “explaining that it will enforce Title IX's prohibition on discrimination on the basis of sex to include: (1) discrimination based on sexual orientation; and (2) discrimination based on gender identity” (“Title IX”).  Schools, students, and parents can now point to this language in debates about who is protected by Title IX status, and who can be included in the funding of gender-specific sports teams.  Legal definitions often depend upon qualifiers, as in the case of the gun debate.  Many on the pro-gun rights argument will not extend the definition of guns to include fully automatic guns; thus, they will often only agree with new gun restrictions that exclude AR 47s from such regulations. 

Definitions involve emotional associations as well as descriptions of literal meaning. Public opinion can be swayed by casting a person involved in a very public event as "famous" or "infamous," a term that has decidedly negative connotations.  In the case of Trayvon Martin, a young black man who was shot by George Zimmerman, a white man, Martin was defined alternately as a "boy in a hoodie" or as a "potential thug."  And Zimmerman was defined as "a neighborhood watch leader" or "private citizen" by some, and a "vigilante" by others.  In each case, the label implies a definition of the person and his behavior, and this extends the impression built in the mind of the audience.

St rategies for definition

Referring to existing definitions .

A dictionary definition can be helpful if the term under consideration is new or very unusual or uncommon, words which readers may be unfamiliar with, or whose definitions may have become obscured with modern use.  If an argument takes the position that reduced literacy rates in freshman college students makes them less apt to learn from a professor who leans toward sesquipedalian speech, yet, such speech is exactly the challenge these students need to pull them away from their social media feeds and engage them in the vigorous mental workout that academia provides, the author is more likely to earn the trust of the audience if a dictionary definition is provided for this uncommon and archaic word: words that are a foot and a half long (O.E.D.).

Identifying emotional associations (connotations) 

Emotional associations offer the various levels of meaning a word may have.  For example, love can have several variants, such as platonic love, romantic love, familial love, passionate love, self-love, and even more specific ones, such as spirituality, philanthropy, humanity, nationalism/patriotism, and agapé , and each carries its own emotional tone which informs the definition.  The essay "What is Poverty" offers multiple connotations of poverty through the numerous illustrations.

Defining a term based on what it’s not (negation)

Sometimes complex words are best explained by what they are not, specifically by contrasting the word to another term.  Needs are often confused with wants, but needs are anything necessary for survival.  For example, people often say "I need a vacation," when what they really mean is, "I want a vacation."  You may want coffee, but you need water.  You may want a new car, but a used one may suit your needs .  In an article about sexual predators, Andrew Vachss says that when he tells people about the individuals he prosecutes for abuse against children, people often say, "that's sick."  But he clarifies that there is a difference between "sick" and "evil."  A mother who hears voices in her head telling her to lock her baby in a closet is sick.  A man who sells a child to pornographers is evil.  "Sickness," he says, "is the absence of choice," while evil is the volition, the awareness of choice, and the intentional choice to commit a sinister act (Vachss).

Creating an original definition (stipulation)

This use of definition asks the reader to accept an alternate definition from the standard or commonly accepted one.  This is usually the best way to utilize definition in an essay, as it allows the author the freedom to put his or her own spin on a key term.  But the author must do it responsibly, providing supportive examples.  For example, many young people believe that true parental love is the willingness to do anything at all for a child.  However, real love isn't expressed by doormat behavior.  A parent who does his child's homework so the child receives all "A" grades isn't demonstrating love { note the use of negation here }.  Rather, true parental love is the willingness to apply fair rules and limits on behavior in order to raise a child who is a good worker, a good friend, and a good citizen.

Elaborating on a definition (extended definition)

There is no rule about how long a definition argument should be. When a simple one-line definition will not suffice, writers can develop a multi-paragraph, multi-page or multi-chapter definition argument.  For example, a newspaper article might explore at length what is meant by the phrase "cancel culture."  An entire book each might be needed to explain what is meant by the following terms: "critical race theory," "microagression," "gender identity," "fascism," or "intersectionality." When the concept under examination is complex, contentious, or weighted by historical examples and emotional connotations, an extended definition may be needed.

Sample definition arguments

This sample outline for an essay titled "When Colleges Talk about Diversity, Equity, and Antiracism, What Do They Mean?"  shows the structure of one definition argument.

The student essay "Defining Stereotypes" by Imanol Juarez can serve as another example. Annotations on this essay point out how Juarez uses several definition argument strategies.    

• Sample definition essay "Defining Stereotypes" in PDF version with margin notes
• Sample definition essay "Defining Stereotypes" accessible version with notes in parentheses . 

Practice Exercise \(\PageIndex{1}\)

How are attitudes to gender changing in today’s society?  Come up with a definition argument you think has some validity about a current trend related to gender.  What kind of evidence could be gathered to support this claim?  How would you convince readers that this evidence is typical? You could choose one of the claims below or invent your own.

• People today still associate femininity with weakness and masculinity with strength.
• Women are still more nurturing than men.
• Teenagers today see gender as a spectrum.
• Cisgender people still fear transgender people.

Practice Exercise \(\PageIndex{2}\)

Construct a definition with criteria for one of the following terms, or another term of your choice related to gender.  Feel free to research the terms to get ideas. Possible terms: masculine, feminine, androgynous, macho, femme, butch, manly, womanly, machista, metrosexual, genderqueer, third gender, transgender.

Practice Exercise \(\PageIndex{3}\)

Choose one of the following articles.  Which of the definition strategies listed in this section can you identify in the argument?  Can you think of any other strategies the author might have used?

•   "The True Meaning of the Word 'Cisgender'"  by Dawn Ennis in  The Advocate
• "The Definition of Terrorism" by Brian Whitaker in  The Guardian

Attributions

• Parts of the above are written by Allison Murray and Anna Mills.
• Parts are adapted from the Writing II unit on definition arguments through Lumen Learning , authored by Cathy Thwing and Eric Aldrich, provided by Pima Community College and shared under a CC BY 4.0 license.

Home — Essay Samples — Philosophy — Ethical Dilemma — John Stuart Mills Definition Of War

John Stuart Mills Definition of War

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Published: Mar 19, 2024

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Introduction, defining war: a multifaceted concept, the ethical dilemma of intervention, the utilitarian calculus of war, the role of public opinion and democracy.

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