student essay mills

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!

So you’re thinking about studying abroad? Great! Check out the range of amazing courses available through Edvoy. Click here to get started or click the button below!

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Buying College Essays Is Now Easier Than Ever. But Buyer Beware

Tovia Smith

Concern is growing about a burgeoning online market for essays that students can buy and turn in as their own work. And schools are trying new tools to catch it. Angela Hsieh/NPR hide caption

Concern is growing about a burgeoning online market for essays that students can buy and turn in as their own work. And schools are trying new tools to catch it.

As the recent college admissions scandal is shedding light on how parents are cheating and bribing their children's way into college, schools are also focusing on how some students may be cheating their way through college. Concern is growing about a burgeoning online market that makes it easier than ever for students to buy essays written by others to turn in as their own work. And schools are trying new tools to catch it.

It's not hard to understand the temptation for students. The pressure is enormous, the stakes are high and, for some, writing at a college level is a huge leap.

"We didn't really have a format to follow, so I was kind of lost on what to do," says one college freshman, who struggled recently with an English assignment. One night, when she was feeling particularly overwhelmed, she tweeted her frustration.

"It was like, 'Someone, please help me write my essay!' " she recalls. She ended her tweet with a crying emoji. Within a few minutes, she had a half-dozen offers of help.

"I can write it for you," they tweeted back. "Send us the prompt!"

The student, who asked that her name not be used for fear of repercussions at school, chose one that asked for $10 per page, and she breathed a sigh of relief.

"For me, it was just that the work was piling up," she explains. "As soon as I finish some big assignment, I get assigned more things, more homework for math, more homework for English. Some papers have to be six or 10 pages long. ... And even though I do my best to manage, the deadlines come closer and closer, and it's just ... the pressure."

In the cat-and-mouse game of academic cheating, students these days know that if they plagiarize, they're likely to get caught by computer programs that automatically compare essays against a massive database of other writings. So now, buying an original essay can seem like a good workaround.

"Technically, I don't think it's cheating," the student says. "Because you're paying someone to write an essay, which they don't plagiarize, and they write everything on their own."

Her logic, of course, ignores the question of whether she's plagiarizing. When pressed, she begins to stammer.

"That's just a difficult question to answer," she says. "I don't know how to feel about that. It's kind of like a gray area. It's maybe on the edge, kind of?"

Besides she adds, she probably won't use all of it.

Other students justify essay buying as the only way to keep up. They figure that everyone is doing it one way or another — whether they're purchasing help online or getting it from family or friends.

"Oh yeah, collaboration at its finest," cracks Boston University freshman Grace Saathoff. While she says she would never do it herself, she's not really fazed by others doing it. She agrees with her friends that it has pretty much become socially acceptable.

"I have a friend who writes essays and sells them," says Danielle Delafuente, another Boston University freshman. "And my other friend buys them. He's just like, 'I can't handle it. I have five papers at once. I need her to do two of them, and I'll do the other three.' It's a time management thing."

The war on contract cheating

"It breaks my heart that this is where we're at," sighs Ashley Finley, senior adviser to the president for the Association of American Colleges and Universities. She says campuses are abuzz about how to curb the rise in what they call contract cheating. Obviously, students buying essays is not new, but Finley says that what used to be mostly limited to small-scale side hustles has mushroomed on the internet to become a global industry of so-called essay mills. Hard numbers are difficult to come by, but research suggests that up to 16 percent of students have paid someone to do their work and that the number is rising.

"Definitely, this is really getting more and more serious," Finley says. "It's part of the brave new world for sure."

The essay mills market aggressively online, with slickly produced videos inviting students to "Get instant help with your assignment" and imploring them: "Don't lag behind," "Join the majority" and "Don't worry, be happy."

"They're very crafty," says Tricia Bertram Gallant, director of the Academic Integrity Office at the University of California in San Diego and a board member of the International Center for Academic Integrity.

The companies are equally brazen offline — leafleting on campuses, posting flyers in toilet stalls and flying banners over Florida beaches during spring break. Companies have also been known to bait students with emails that look like they're from official college help centers. And they pay social media influencers to sing the praises of their services, and they post testimonials from people they say are happy customers.

"I hired a service to write my paper and I got a 90 on it!" gloats one. "Save your time, and have extra time to party!" advises another.

"It's very much a seduction," says Bertram Gallant. "So you can maybe see why students could get drawn into the contract cheating world."

YouTube has been cracking down on essay mills; it says it has pulled thousands of videos that violate its policies against promoting dishonest behavior.

But new videos constantly pop up, and their hard sell flies in the face of their small-print warnings that their essays should be used only as a guide, not a final product.

Several essay mills declined or didn't respond to requests to be interviewed by NPR. But one answered questions by email and offered up one of its writers to explain her role in the company, called EduBirdie.

"Yes, just like the little birdie that's there to help you in your education," explains April Short, a former grade school teacher from Australia who's now based in Philadelphia. She has been writing for a year and a half for the company, which bills itself as a "professional essay writing service for students who can't even."

Some students just want some "foundational research" to get started or a little "polish" to finish up, Short says. But the idea that many others may be taking a paper written completely by her and turning it in as their own doesn't keep her up at night.

"These kids are so time poor," she says, and they're "missing out on opportunities of travel and internships because they're studying and writing papers." Relieving students of some of that burden, she figures, allows them to become more "well-rounded."

"I don't necessarily think that being able to create an essay is going to be a defining factor in a very long career, so it's not something that bothers me," says Short. Indeed, she thinks students who hire writers are demonstrating resourcefulness and creativity. "I actually applaud students that look for options to get the job done and get it done well," she says.

"This just shows you the extent of our ability to rationalize all kinds of bad things we do," sighs Dan Ariely, professor of psychology and behavioral economics at Duke University. The rise in contract cheating is especially worrisome, he says, because when it comes to dishonest behavior, more begets more. As he puts it, it's not just about "a few bad apples."

Felicity Huffman And 12 Other Parents To Plead Guilty In College Cheating Scandal

"Instead, what we have is a lot ... of blemished apples, and we take our cues for our behavior from the social world around us," he says. "We know officially what is right and what's wrong. But really what's driving our behavior is what we see others around us doing" or, Ariely adds, what we perceive them to be doing. So even the proliferation of advertising for essays mills can have a pernicious effect, he says, by fueling the perception that "everyone's doing it."

A few nations have recently proposed or passed laws outlawing essay mills, and more than a dozen U.S. states have laws on the books against them. But prosecuting essay mills, which are often based overseas in Pakistan, Kenya and Ukraine, for example, is complicated. And most educators are loath to criminalize students' behavior.

"Yes, they're serious mistakes. They're egregious mistakes," says Cath Ellis, an associate dean and integrity officer at the University of New South Wales, where students were among the hundreds alleged to have bought essays in a massive scandal in Australia in 2014.

"But we're educational institutions," she adds. "We've got to give students the opportunity to learn from these mistakes. That's our responsibility. And that's better in our hands than in the hands of the police and the courts."

Staying one step ahead

In the war on contract cheating, some schools see new technology as their best weapon and their best shot to stay one step ahead of unscrupulous students. The company that makes the Turnitin plagiarism detection software has just upped its game with a new program called Authorship Investigate.

The software first inspects a document's metadata, like when it was created, by whom it was created and how many times it was reopened and re-edited. Turnitin's vice president for product management, Bill Loller, says sometimes it's as simple as looking at the document's name. Essay mills typically name their documents something like "Order Number 123," and students have been known to actually submit it that way. "You would be amazed at how frequently that happens," says Loller.

Using cutting-edge linguistic forensics, the software also evaluates the level of writing and its style.

"Think of it as a writing fingerprint," Loller says. The software looks at hundreds of telltale characteristics of an essay, like whether the author double spaces after a period or writes with Oxford commas or semicolons. It all gets instantly compared against a student's other work, and, Loller says, suspicions can be confirmed — or alleviated — in minutes.

"At the end of the day, you get to a really good determination on whether the student wrote what they submitted or not," he says, "and you get it really quickly."

Coventry University in the U.K. has been testing out a beta version of the software, and Irene Glendinning, the school's academic manager for student experience, agrees that the software has the potential to give schools a leg up on cheating students. After the software is officially adopted, "we'll see a spike in the number of cases we find, and we'll have a very hard few years," she says. "But then the message will get through to students that we've got the tools now to find these things out." Then, Glendinning hopes, students might consider contract cheating to be as risky as plagiarizing.

In the meantime, schools are trying to spread the word that buying essays is risky in other ways as well.

Professor Ariely says that when he posed as a student and ordered papers from several companies, much of it was "gibberish" and about a third of it was actually plagiarized.

Even worse, when he complained to the company and demanded his money back, they resorted to blackmail. Still believing him to be a student, the company threatened to tell his school he was cheating. Others say companies have also attempted to shake down students for more money, threatening to rat them out if they didn't pay up.

The lesson, Ariely says, is "buyer beware."

But ultimately, experts say, many desperate students may not be deterred by the risks — whether from shady businesses or from new technology.

Bertram Gallant, of UC San Diego, says the right way to dissuade students from buying essays is to remind them why it's wrong.

"If we engage in a technological arms race with the students, we won't win," she says. "What are we going to do when Google glasses start to look like regular glasses and a student wears them into an exam? Are we going to tell them they can't wear their glasses because we're afraid they might be sending the exam out to someone else who is sending them back the answers?"

The solution, Bertram Gallant says, has to be about "creating a culture where integrity and ethics matter" and where education is valued more than grades. Only then will students believe that cheating on essays is only cheating themselves.

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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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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?

By completing this form, you agree to Turnitin's Privacy Policy . Turnitin uses the information you provide to contact you with relevant information. You may unsubscribe from these communications at any time.

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.

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Essay mills prey on vulnerable students – let's stamp them out

Universities alone can’t stop the rise of essay mills. We need support from the government and tech firms to defeat them

I n the 1990s, there was enormous optimism around how the internet would connect people and make knowledge available to all. Fast forward twenty years, and identity theft, cybercrime, online bullying and appalling sexual exploitation have become everyday news stories. Increasingly, it’s the perversions of the internet which dominate our thinking.

For universities, the digital world’s most concerning development is the spread of essay mills. They’re not new: it’s always been tempting for some students to pay someone to do their work for them. But the internet has vastly eased the relationship between customers and suppliers, fuelling the growth of these essay mills.

The business model is simple. You have an essay to write, you are time poor, you pay a fee for the essay to be written. The fee these crooks charge depends on the length, the standard you are looking for, and the deadline you are facing. I don’t use the term “crooks” here lightly. They are frequently found mis-selling their services, assuring students that the assignments they provide are “plagiarism free” (they are not) and that universities endorse their services (definitely not). We have even seen such horror stories as these companies threatening their “customers” with exposure to their university or future employer if they do not pay a further fee.

Learning is based on integrity and scholarship: showing that students have read, understood and been influenced by the work of others, and can explain how their thinking is new or different. Education is not about getting grades, it’s about being an active participant in learning opportunities. If some of that is difficult, well, difficulty is the point.

At my university we are putting in place serious consequences for students who are found to have used essay mills. But we are also working closely with our Students’ Union to understand how and why a student would find themselves in such a situation. As a result we’re developing assessments which also help students improve their time management skills. We have also blocked access to essay mill websites from the university servers, so that if students inadvertently come upon them, a message advises them to seek alternative support.

But no matter how hard we try, the advertising of these companies continues via social media, posters and leaflets appearing throughout our campus buildings, or direct messages sent to students and staff offering their services. Rooting out the manipulative and targeted advertising of these services is absolutely essential. If it’s difficult for the university to police fly-posted advertisements, it’s impossible to police social media advertising. During a routine search for an academic paper the other evening through my home internet service provider, I landed on an essay mill site.

I wholeheartedly endorse the current movement in the higher education sector to stamp out this pervasive practice. I recently joined 40 other university leaders in signing a petition urging government to make operating or advertising an essay mill illegal.

The Secretary of State for Education’s announcement that tech firms should block payments to essay mills and students should report on their peers is a step in the right direction. We need to work together to preserve the integrity of the UK higher education system from these unscrupulous companies, and the way they prey on vulnerable students who don’t fully understand the implications of their actions.

Chris Husbands is the vice-chancellor of Sheffield Hallam University

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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: 29 June 2021

Essay mills and other contract cheating services: to buy or not to buy and the consequences of students changing their minds

• Michael Draper   ORCID: orcid.org/0000-0003-1272-8122 1 ,
• Thomas Lancaster 2 ,
• Sandie Dann 3 ,
• Robin Crockett 3 , 4 &
• Irene Glendinning 5  

International Journal for Educational Integrity volume  17 , Article number:  13 ( 2021 ) Cite this article

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Very few parts of the world have legislation that prohibits the operation or the promotion of contract cheating services. This means that commercial companies providing such services can formally register and operate in most countries. If a student enters into an agreement with a contract cheating provider, what rights do they have to change their mind and what are the risks if they choose to do so? This paper examines the question through legal, institutional and societal lenses, showing that although a student has the consumer rights to withdraw from a contract with an essay mill, they may also be putting their future at risk by doing so. Contract cheating providers are now embedded within many institutions, using sharp practices to connect with vulnerable customers, but are also perfectly placed to blackmail students or threaten to report them to their institution if they ask to cancel their order. The paper argues that, while not condoning the practice of contract cheating, supportive processes need to be in place to help students at risk as part of standard institutional duty of care. This must be backed up by institutional policy that considers academic integrity as a core value for all.

Introduction

The contract cheating industry, those services that (offer to) supply essays and other work for students to (mis) use during the assessment process, is proactive in encouraging students to cheat. Despite the unethical nature of this industry, at the time of writing this paper, legislation prohibiting commercial contract cheating only applies in New Zealand, Australia, Republic of Ireland and in several states within the USA (Draper et al. 2017 ). Even where legislation exists, companies supplying work to students can be based anywhere in the world (Draper and Newton 2017 ).

Given that essay mills operate with apparent impunity in most jurisdictions, what are the legal rights of students who initially choose to commission a bespoke assignment, but then subsequently have second thoughts and change their mind? The right for students to withdraw has not been previously discussed in the literature, but it is necessary for student protection. The contract cheating industry is such that it preys on vulnerable students, leaving them positioned to becoming victims of unfair or illegal actions. Immediately someone makes an enquiry about using a third party to complete their assessments, they become open to threats of exposure. Extortion threats that some of the authors have encountered involve students who have not actually purchased anything or not submitted the work provided.

A student may be unaware of consequences such as these when they are seduced by contract cheating provider marketing or may later realise the benefits that come from operating with academic integrity. Can such students withdraw from the contract they have made with a contract cheating provider and what are the risks if they decide to do so?

Essay mills are defined by the UK Quality Assurance Agency as organisations or individuals, usually with an online presence, that contract with students to complete assignments for a fee (QAA 2020 ). The original definition of contract cheating, put forward by Clarke and Lancaster ( 2006 ) refers to “the submission of work by students for academic credit which the students have paid contractors to write for them”. Despite the original paper describing contract cheating examples of varied assessment types, most notably computer programming, some subsequent researchers have equated the term solely with written assessments. Commentators, such as Bretag et al. ( 2018 ) have supported Clarke and Lancaster’s ( 2006 ) original discussion by suggesting that contract cheating needs to be considered as a nuanced problem that extends beyond essay mills.

One such nuance asks when contract cheating begins. If a student puts forward a request to outsource their assessments, is this cheating? If they commission and receive work but do not submit it, have they contract cheated? Other terms are sometimes used synonymously with contract cheating, including assignment outsourcing, commissioning, also essay mills and ghost-writing, all depending if the discussion relates to the student or the contract cheating provider. There are also wider concerns such as facilitation, where students act as agents for contract cheating providers, helping to funnel more business their way in exchange for a financial reward or a discount on future assignment orders.

Contract cheating is arguably more serious than other forms of academic misconduct because there is no honest engagement or endeavour on the part of students who engage in such activities. Students who plagiarise or collude with other students also preparing assignments need to know enough about the subject in question in order to plagiarise or compile relevant material. By contrast, all contract cheating students need to know is how to share their assignment briefs and arrange any payments. All agents and facilitators need to know is how to put people in contact with each other or to simply forward contact details (Draper et al. 2017 ).

Students can have original essays and assignments produced for them without payment, for instance by relying on friends or family. They can also make arrangements with individual writers. Underground networks of writers operate in many university courses where students can ask another classmate or recent graduate to write an extra version of an assignment for them (Lancaster et al. 2019 ). Students also directly approach individual writers operating online through their own websites, social media and third-party sites (Lancaster 2019a , 2019b ).

The focus of this paper is on services arranged through commercial providers which allow students to have assignments completed for them. The paper reviews how essay mills operate, discusses how students form contracts with essay mills, students’ legal rights to withdraw from contracts and how institutions should respond whilst still respecting their duty of care to students. Sharp practices operated by contract cheating providers are explained throughout. The intention of the paper is to not only provide examples to share with students, discouraging them from engaging with the contract cheating industry, but also to ensure that institutions update their academic regulations, policies and procedures to respond to the growing complexity of contract cheating and the possible responses of academic institutions if a student wishes to terminate an agreement with an essay mill.

The contract cheating industry

To understand the legal discussion presented in this paper, an understanding of how the contract cheating industry operates is important. Although research into the operation of the industry is still in its infancy, all indications are that this industry is massive, complex and deceptive (Crockett and Maxwell 2021 ; Rigby et al. 2015 ). This section discusses the operation of the essay mill industry, from the range of types of essay mills available, addressing how they recruit and develop new customers, through the production and submission of finished original essays.

This section provides only a high-level overview and the actual operation of essay mills can be much more complex. For example, a new contract cheating provider can buy off-the-shelf software to run their essay mill and, for a price, tap into existing networks of writers and quality assurance services without needing to set up this complex business operation for themselves.

Ultimately, it has to be remembered that the raison d’etre of essay mills is to make as much money as possible. It is not about the welfare of the customers, despite what the web sites and marketing materials may claim. This is an industry where providers will exploit any angle to persuade their customers to pay them more money. For example, essay mill employees may join a student suspected of academic misconduct at their University panel or write a letter of reply to an allegation of misconduct – for a substantial fee. All this often takes place beyond the reach of any national legislation.

The spectrum of contract cheating providers

At one end of the spectrum, contract cheating can involve well-established registered companies, some of which are operating as legitimate and very lucrative businesses. As discussed earlier, in very few administrations are these companies illegal. Such companies are responding to an acknowledged strong demand for a range of services and are able to make a lot of money.

At the other end of the spectrum are individuals, typically students, graduates, academics, and some falsely claiming to be qualified, who are directly or indirectly supplying work on demand for both students and academics. The recompense is normally financial, but there can be alternative rewards for small-time players, including sexual and other favours. In some cultures, pressures about loyalty to family or social contacts can place demands on individuals that compel them to become ghost-writers (Glendinning 2020 ).

In the middle of this continuum are ghost-writing individuals and fledgling essay mills, who may be going through agents to find work or bidding for work through auction sites. Most ghost-writers and the intermediaries justify their actions by saying this is their way of making a living or supplementing their other income, as discussed for example by Shahghasemi and Akhavan ( 2015 ).

How contract cheating providers develop custom

How contract cheating providers develop connections with potential customers is of interest. The methods used are varied and can appear innovative. Services optimise their sites to appeal to students based on academic discipline or location, often with the same essay mill operating with different front ends (Lancaster 2020 ). For example, a student who searches online for “nursing essay help” could be directed to an essay mill shop-front containing photos of smiling nurses, and a student searching for “law essay help” could be sent to an essay mill shop-front with photos of graduating lawyers, but behind the fronts these are operated by the same firms relying on the same groups of writers.

Social media is heavily used by contract cheating providers (Lancaster 2019b ) with students posting even the slightest frustration with their essays on Twitter being regularly approached by companies offering these writing services (Amigud 2020 ). Often a commission payment is available to anyone referring business to an essay mill and job advertisements are posted by established mills to recruit recent graduates to go back to their campuses, infiltrate key events such as student association meetings and social events and recruit both customers and new agents. This can result in students working as agents or social media influencers, fake essay mill review sites that operate by collecting commission payments for introducing new custom to essay mills and even essay mills setting up fake student profiles to present themselves as a supportive environment for dissatisfied students.

Once a student has contacted or been referred to an essay mill, many more marketing techniques are used to ensure that students buy from them. Essay mills try to collect student email addresses by offering discounts. They use online chat to engage with students. Ritter ( 2005 ) noted how essay mills use language preying on students being dissatisfied with their courses to sell their services to them. Essay mills often present what they are doing as (‘tutorial’) support. Hersey and Lancaster ( 2015 ) discussed how some students consider assignments simply as commodities available to be bought and sold, and essay mills also rely on such student viewpoints.

The operation of a typical essay mill

Behind the scenes, many essay mills operate using a complex, software-driven writing and quality assurance process. Essay mills recruit writers, often using similar techniques to the ones they use to recruit students. In general, writing work is poorly paid with only a small percentage of the fee paid by a student going to the end-writer (Lancaster 2019a ).

One example of an internal model used by essay mills has been described in the literature (Ellis et al. 2018 ). A variant is presented here. Received orders are first checked by an administrator to ensure they are legitimate and can be completed. Some orders are rejected, but those that pass scrutiny are made available to writers. This often uses a bidding process, where writers pitch against one another to write the essay, a process similar to that seen in the earliest contract cheating study (Clarke and Lancaster 2006 ). Once completed, further internal quality checks are made, which may include the use of automated tools to ensure plagiarism is avoided or disguised. Writers can be penalised if their work is of poor quality. Once internally approved, the work is made available to the student, who either accepts it, or returns it for revisions through a back-and-forth process. If a student remains dissatisfied, they may raise their concerns with higher levels of essay mill management through a dispute process.

Even if a student accepts work from an essay mill, the end result is not risk free. The essay mill has the student’s contact details and can continue to market to them. Students can be required to continue to buy or they risk being blackmailed, an area which most students appear unaware of (Yorke et al. 2020 ). Writers disgruntled with the essay mill they work for can often figure out student contact details and their institution and may try and extort money from them directly or inform the educational institution of their impropriety. Also, once a student submits commissioned work via text-matching software, they become potentially identifiable by the company they used, whatever the precautions they had taken up to that point.

The legal grounds for students changing their mind

• Contract formation

The first question to be addressed asks when a student commissions academic work, does a legally binding commitment or contract of purchase form? This is not a trivial question. An analysis of the behaviours and wider contractual relationships involved in contract cheating was undertaken by Draper et al. ( 2017 ).

Irrespective of jurisdiction, formation of a legally binding contract normally requires an offer to contract, an unqualified acceptance of that offer and its terms without variation, with the acceptance being communicated to the person making the offer with an intention to create or enter into a legal relationship with the parties to the contract having legal capacity, including by age and mental capacity.

In major European jurisdictions the existence of an agreement is usually demonstrated by the identification of at least an offer and acceptance (Jansen and Zimmermann 2011 : 636–637). This is also the case in Australia. Some jurisdictions, such as England and Wales, also require the movement of consideration or benefit between the parties for a legally enforceable contract to be created, the usual example being the payment of money in return for the service or goods supplied. In such circumstances the student receives the completed assignment and the essay mill receives money by way of consideration.

The precise terms of the contract will depend upon the terms and conditions specified by the supplier and any other terms implied to make the contract work. Some jurisdictions, particularly in the counties identified above, intervene in the freedom to contract through the imposition of implied or imposed contractual terms to protect individuals contracting in a personal capacity, typically known as a consumer, as opposed to contracting in a business capacity. However, while the transaction may be made from the student’s end in a country with consumer protection, due to the nature and operation of essay mill sites, these rights can be compromised when the transaction occurs across international borders (Durovic 2020 ).

Intervention is needed because contracts made by a business with an individual acting in a personal capacity, known as consumer contracts, usually have the following specific characteristics:

They are pre-drafted by one party as a standard form contract. Normally this means they are drafted by the essay mill rather than the student.

The express terms of the contract, usually referred to as the standard terms and conditions, are not usually subject to negotiation. This means that a consumer such as a student must usually accept the pre-drafted terms and conditions as they are if they want to obtain the desired service such as the supply of the essay.

They are entered into in circumstances in which neither party is known to the other with unequal bargaining power and commercial sophistication. A student is at a significant disadvantage in understanding the terms of the contract compared with the essay mill that drafted them, and is bound by the terms of the contract of supply, even if they have not read or understood them, provided there is reasonable notice of and a reasonable opportunity to read the terms and conditions before the contract is made.

When a student is given reasonable notice of and a reasonable opportunity to read the terms and conditions of the proposed contract before clicking ‘ I agree to the terms and conditions’ or ‘ I accept the terms and conditions’ a binding and enforceable contract will be made on those terms at some point in the ordering process when there is a clear offer and acceptance of the terms of the contract.

Further, when a contract is made with a consumer, further additional implied or imposed contractual terms and protections for the benefit of the consumer may apply. These depend on the country or the legal jurisdiction in which the contract is made or the law which applies to the contract usually by an express term known as a governing law clause.

Durovic ( 2020 , 5) notes that “consumer law and policy is faced with two major challenges, which need to be addressed adequately on the global scale. The first one is an increasing number of cross-border transactions, whereas the second one is the rise of Internet as the leading global marketplace and the entire technological developments which have disrupted the traditional consumer law”.

As essay mills tend to operate across national boundaries it is crucial that an essay mill states, in an express term of the contract, the law and jurisdiction which is to apply to the contract having regard to its legal interpretation and enforcement, in terms of governing law and/or jurisdiction clause. However, many essay mills do not provide this.

The lack of express terms may not, in itself, prevent a national court from asserting jurisdiction if their consumer(s) are at risk. As Durovic ( 2020 ) notes, there are international conventions dealing with governing law, and consumer rights and permissible use of personal information gathered in online environments.

Express terms which are relevant to this paper are those requiring the payment of a deposit on order, the cancellation of a contract and those allowing for personal information to be taken and used in addition to a name and contact details. For example, the student may be required to provide the name of the institution at which they are studying, student number and photographic identification, none of which immediately appear relevant to the subject matter of the contract.

Contractual tricks

Many of the tactics used by essay mills could be considered unfair. They know that consumers, including students, do not usually read the terms and conditions of the contract before clicking and will not therefore know in any detail what they have agreed or indeed what their rights or obligations maybe under the terms of the contract beyond a superficial understanding that payment at some point will be required for the work (Rogerson 2017 ). For example, Berreby ( 2020 ) reported in The Guardian newspaper that hundreds of College students joining a new social network did not notice a clause where they promised to give away their first-born children.

The collection and use of other types of personal information and data beyond name and Institution etc. as a result of online contracts are a current concern. For example, the Australian Competition and Consumer Commission ( 2019 ) observed a range of practices used by platforms that did not conform with existing consumer laws, but nevertheless may not be effective at deterring conduct that is detrimental to consumers. Given the increasing value of data, some businesses engage in conduct designed to elicit data or information the collection of which may be considered unfair to consumers.

These design patterns have become known as ‘dark patterns’ because they prompt, mislead or sometimes force consumers to provide their personal data or cause them to sign up to services, often without the consumer realising (Bignull 2010 ). Dark patterns take advantage of skim reading of text and other unconscious habits through familiarity with user interfaces to procure either money or data from consumers, often without their fully informed consent (ibid). At their most benign dark patterns nudge the behaviour of consumers to a desired outcome in which the consumer unconsciously provides personal data or agree to its use by the business. These patterns can have significant impact on unsophisticated students as the next section discusses.

When does contract acceptance take place?

After placing an order for work a student may change their mind and seek to cancel the order. As a matter of general contract law, a student may withdraw their offer without liability at any time before the contract is formed by acceptance of the order by the essay mill. Depending on the terms and conditions, the offer made by the student may be accepted so that an enforceable contract arises as soon as the order is processed, or when the payment or deposit is taken, or upon dispatch of the essay to the student. However as noted above while a legal contract may exist it does not necessarily follow that it will be enforceable across international borders and this point should be borne in mind when considering the analysis that follows – particularly when there are unscrupulous operators in this area.

A legal analysis of the typical order process discussed in the background section would conclude that acceptance likely occurs when the order status is made available to writers within an essay mill or upon the status of the order being made available to the student for review. The precise moment of the creation of an enforceable contract will depend in the main upon the terms and conditions of supply. Options to revise or embark on dispute resolution are likely to be interpreted as express contractual rights which operate after the formation of the contract.

Thus, a student would be legally entitled to withdraw their offer to purchase work and without liability, because there is no contract, before the change in status of the order. After change in status of the order it is possible that the contract contains an express term allowing for cancellation subject usually to loss of any deposit or some other sum which genuinely represents the loss suffered by the essay mill, for example payments made to a writer. In such circumstances it is important that a student follow the terms of cancellation precisely in order to legally terminate the contract and limit the loss under the contract.

Without an express term allowing for termination of the contract, for example after a change in the status of the order to ‘available’, any attempt by one party to cancel a contract before performance of that contract will usually amount to a repudiatory breach of contract entitling the innocent party to damages in respect of any loss suffered if and when that breach is accepted. From the point of view of an essay mill that will usually be payments contracted to be made to a writer for their work and other administration costs.

Consumer contracts will usually have implied rights of cancellation attached to them by legislation and/or regulations. In England and Wales this will mean the Consumer Rights Act 2015 and the Consumer Contracts (Information, Cancellation and Additional Charges) Regulations 2013 .

Information about the rights of a consumer to cancel a contract should be detailed by the supplier and made available to the consumer before the contract is made. Failure to provide the information to a consumer as required by the regulations will allow a consumer to claim that a breach of contract has occurred and to seek an appropriate remedy. However as noted above these rights and protections may not be available or enforceable in a cross-border context.

Consumer protection and rights of cancellation

In England and Wales as the contract between the essay mill and student will normally be concluded remotely, namely online, a student’s rights to cancel the contract are to be found in the Consumer Contracts (Information, Cancellation and Additional Charges) Regulations 2013. These are more generous than if the contract had been concluded face-to face. These regulations also apply to all auctions including online auctions. Online auctions result in contracts created at a distance rather than face to face.

As considered earlier the formation of a contract requires an offer and acceptance of that offer. It is likely that the website of an essay mill is treated in the same way as a shop window. The website is not an offer of a service or goods, but an invitation to treat, or in other words an invitation to another to make an offer to buy or order on stated terms and conditions. A student placing an order online is making an offer to buy an essay and not to accept the offer of the essay mill to supply an essay.

Depending on the terms and conditions the offer made by the student may be accepted so that an enforceable contract arises as soon as the order is processed or made ‘available’ or the deposit is taken or upon dispatch of the essay to the student as discussed above. As a matter of general contract law, a student may withdraw their offer without liability at any time before the contract is formed by acceptance. Once the contract is formed then a student will have statutory rights of cancellation without giving any reason for cancellation within a specified time. These rights can only be excluded in very limited circumstances which require the express and fully informed consent of the consumer. This means that they cannot be excluded by standard terms and conditions.

Rights of cancellation differ if the contract relates to goods or digital content or services. Both allow for cancellation within a 14-day period but the calculation of that period will be different if the contract relates to goods or digital content or services. If the supply of an essay is treated as the supply of goods then under the regulations a student has a right to cancel an order for an essay as soon as the order is placed up until 14 days from the day after the student receives the essay with a right to a refund within 14 days of either the supplier getting the goods back or the consumer providing evidence of having returned the goods. If the supply of an essay is treated as the supply of digital content, not supplied on a tangible medium or a service, then a student has 14 days starting from the day after the contract was made in which to cancel that contract with a right to a refund of money paid.

The regulations do allow for service to be started within the cancellation period and for a charge to be made providing that the consumer has expressly requested this. A consumer loses their right to cancel a service contract that has been performed fully within the cancellation period, providing they requested this and acknowledged that they would lose their right to cancel once the contract had been performed fully. It is likely that a contract for the supply of an essay will be treated as a contract for the supply of goods.

Additional rights are available under the UK Consumer Rights Act 2015 to reject a product if not of satisfactory quality or fit for purpose. In the context of a paid for assignment this will be difficult to establish against assignment briefs as marking has a degree of subjectivity. Essay mills seek to mitigate such problems through terms and conditions allowing for rewriting or some other form of offer or compensation. Similar consumer rights apply across Europe as the Act and Regulations are based on European Directives.

As Sutherland-Smith and Dullaghan have observed ( 2019 ), purchasers of contract cheating don’t always get what they pay for. Therefore, cancelation rights are a particularly useful addition to any express dispute resolution provided by the terms and conditions of the essay mill. Furthermore, a student may simply change their mind and cancel the order because of the risks attached to submission or their conscience gets the better of them or because of an institutional campaign or peer pressure or support.

The danger for a student is that they may forget, or may not feel they have been told at the outset when the contract is formed, that strict time limits normally apply to the use of statutory cancellation rights. This can limit their ability to raise a dispute with the essay mill.

In summary therefore, and subject to the point that rights and protections may not be available or enforceable in a cross-border context, a student has a right:

To cancel the order at any time before it is accepted and a contract formed

To cancel the contract under express cancellation rights but normally at a financial cost through loss of deposit or other recoverable loss

To cancel the contract under jurisdictional cancellation rights without financial cost unless expressly excluded in the circumstances described above

Institutional responses to the student right to withdraw

Although the paper has established that students have the legal rights of cancellation, it cannot be assumed that the essay mill will simply demur to the exercise of those rights. Therefore, it is recommended that institutions have their own responses prepared ready for when students wish to withdraw from contracts with essay mills.

Students do run the risk of blackmail and extortion if they proceed with a contract. They may discover the risk, ask to withdraw from their contract, but have such a request declined or ignored. They may also have used a contract cheating provider previously, not realising they would be expected to continue to purchase future pieces of work from them.

Universities should provide a mechanism for students to confess and to seek support. Students should be encouraged to use this. Such a mechanism would also be a welcome development for universities. Not only would it save considerable time and resources in investigations and hearings, but there is potential for accessing new intelligence about essay mills that would not otherwise have been found.

Sanctions to negate an unfair advantage are often unavoidable in such a situation. Students cannot be seen to be rewarded for assessments they did not complete themselves. However, in return for their cooperation, students could perhaps be taken through a less formal process, combined with a programme of support, guidance and monitoring, to ensure they are not tempted to do this again (QAA 2020 : 12–17). This might include, for example, a situation in which a student who confesses shortly after submitting a single commissioned assignment could be provided with the opportunity to redeem themselves, for instance by repeating the work, subject to measures such as grade caps designed to neutralise the potential for an unfair advantage.

In some cases, a light touch approach may not be possible. Consider, for example, a situation involving a final-year degree student confessing to having routinely commissioned over three or four (or more) years of study, with a progression dependent on pre-requisites from one year to the next. In addition, there might be course-specific regulations arising from professional institutional accreditation that over-ride more general regulations.

If a student does not confess, then they face serious and complicated risks. Put simply, once a student communicates with an essay mill, even if only making an enquiry, then that essay mill has some version of their identity and contact details on a database (possibly overseas) which is potentially available to other parties. Any commissioning and payment would provide additional details, irrespective of any subsequent change of mind. Even if a student manages to conceal their identity and their institution when commissioning an assignment, once that assignment is submitted through similarity checking software, then the student is potentially traceable. All a blackmailer needs to do is submit the assignment to the same similarity checking software themselves, possibly via a facilitator’s account or an account that’s been compromised, see which institution is identified as the main result, and then go ‘phishing’ at that institution, possibly with the assistance of a staff or student facilitator at that institution, Of course, if they’ve already unsuccessfully tried to blackmail the student, they might simply ‘whistle-blow’ to that institution with sufficient evidence to support the allegation. Essay mills are not famous for their ethical principles: they are interested in making money. A database of student details is a marketable commodity that could be traded to unscrupulous third parties, who themselves can engage in extortion.

Raising students’ awareness about these in-built dangers of engaging in contract cheating is not just part of the deterrence measures for educational providers, it is also part of their duty of care.

This paper serves to emphasise that a decision by a student to resort to contract cheating can be changed. That change of mind or heart is supported by the law and should be reflected in institutional regulations and policies. The right of students to change their mind is not a message that has been addressed in the literature or heard often in conferences or within institutions; but, nevertheless, it is important and needs to be discussed with students.

It should be possible for a student to change their mind and do so in way that offers them a degree of protection from the sharp and unscrupulous practices of essay mills, as identified in this paper. To benefit from that protection the student must disclose to the institution the arrangements they made with the essay mill. To do this will take a significant amount of courage on the part of a student. It is therefore critical that institutional regulations and policies provide a framework to enable and support such a decision, ideally with support from student organisations. In so doing, institutions need to uphold the fundamental aim of fostering academic integrity as a core value for all.

Availability of data and materials

No data was used in the writing of this article.

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15% of students admit to buying essays. What can universities do about it?

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New research on plagiarism at university has revealed students are surprisingly unconcerned about a practice known as “contract cheating”.

The term “contract cheating” was coined in 2006 , and describes students paying for completed assessments. At that time, concerns over the outsourcing of assessments were in their infancy, but today, contract cheating is big business.

In 2017 alone, the UK’s Daily Telegraph reported more than 20,000 students had bought professionally written essays from the country’s two largest essay-writing services.

According to a 2018 study , as many as 31 million university students worldwide are paying third parties to complete their assessments. This staggering figure was drawn by reviewing 65 studies on contract cheating. Since 2014, as many as 15.7% of surveyed students admitted to outsourcing their assignments and essays.

The growth in contract cheating speaks volumes about the modern view of education as a commodity.

Read more: Buying essays: how to make sure assessment is authentic

Who’s cheating?

A recent survey , led by the University of South Australia, found international students demonstrated proportionately higher cheating behaviours. So did students who spoke a language other than English at home.

In 2013, a large online survey on academic honesty at six Australian universities found international students were significantly less aware of academic integrity processes, and much less confident about how to avoid academic integrity breaches.

A 2015 study of US student demand for commercially produced assignments found students with English as their first language who liked taking risks were about as likely to buy an assessment as students who were reluctant risk-takers, but who spoke English as a second language.

It’s no surprise that students whom we aggressively court for their higher fees and who are working in a less familiar language environment are turning to these services at higher rates.

A recent study on contract cheating in Australia concluded that the over-representation of non-native English speaking students in cheating surveys is linked to the failure of universities to provide support for language and learning development. Students are tasked with completing assessments for which they lack the basic English language skills.

What’s being done about it?

Widely used plagiarism-detection companies, such as Turnitin , can detect similarities to material that already exists. But essay-writing companies loudly promote the fact their product is original.

In February this year, Turnitin announced plans to crack down on contract cheating. Its proposed solution , authorship investigation, hopes to automate a process familiar to any human marker: detecting major shifts in individual students’ writing style that may point to help from a third party.

But despite these technological advancements, students who are turning to such services have reasons far more complicated than laziness or disregard for personal responsibility.

Read more: Universities run as businesses can't pursue genuine learning

Is it worth it?

Despite the moral panic over grades for cash, there’s some evidence to suggest students turning to essay mill services are not getting what they pay for. A 2014 mystery shopping exercise in the UK revealed the astonishingly low standard of commissioned work produced by essay mills. Of all the essays purchased, none received the requested grade, and many fell dramatically short of expected academic standards.

Rather than buying top grades, desperate students are being exploited by companies that take advantage of the very shortcomings (lower literacy and an ignorance of plagiarism protocols) students are hoping to mitigate.

One less obvious aspect of contract cheating that can’t be fixed by intelligent software is the predatory nature of essay mill companies. According to a 2017 study on cheating websites, commercial providers rely on persuasive marketing techniques. They often repackage an unethical choice in the guise of professional help for students who are weighed down by a demanding workload.

How can we discourage it?

In recent years, several scholars have explored the legality of contract cheating, along with the possibilities of defining a new offence under criminal law of providing or advertising contract cheating.

In 2011, for example, a law was introduced in New Zealand that makes it a criminal offence to provide or advertise cheating services. Yet the criminalisation of such services leads inevitably to the prosecution of cheating students, something the legal system has so far been reluctant to do.

But even discounting the possibility of legal action, plagiarism has hefty consequences for university students under misconduct policies, including revoking course credits, expulsion, and a permanent record of cheating.

Redesigning assessments is the primary way to tackle the growing problem of contract cheating. Recent suggestions focus on the development of authentic assessments: tasks that more closely mirror the real-world demands students will face after they graduate from university.

Rather than simply completing an essay, for example, a history student might be tasked with interviewing a local non-profit organisation, and producing a podcast episode.

Teachers who use authentic assessments hope to reduce cheating by tying learning to student’s hopes for their futures, but one obvious benefit is the difficulty of cheating in such individualised tasks. One key problem for overhauling assessment design is the troubling proliferation of casual labour in universities. The development of assessments is rarely, if ever, accounted for in casual teaching rates.

Turnitin works to reduce students’ work into patterns and algorithms, weeding out supposed cheats and frauds. But a more considered response must take into account the complex reasons students turn to these services in the first place.

Understanding why students are willing to pay for assessments might also illuminate a problem at the heart of tertiary education – one that is related to our present repackaging of knowledge as a resource to be bought, rather than an ennobling pursuit that is worthy of all the energy, time, and attention teachers and students can devote to it.

Read more: Assessment design won’t stop cheating, but our relationships with students might

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Essay mills ‘infiltrating university websites’

‘black hat’ techniques from drug sales and information warfare used on students seeking legitimate university services.

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Disinformation techniques used to influence elections and peddle illicit pharmaceuticals are being harnessed to promote contract cheating services on universities’ websites, research has found.

Hundreds of university websites have been infiltrated by hackers aiming to steer unwitting students into essay mills’ clutches, according to preliminary studies by US experts.

Content ghostwritten by the essay mills, complete with embedded hyperlinks, has been grafted on to universities’ student service web pages. Links to legitimate services have been rigged so that they redirect to contract cheating companies, while university chat sites have been peppered with recommendations for essay mills.

The most “egregious” infiltrations involve fake essay contests for students who, hoping to win scholarships, inadvertently supply the essay mills with “clean” content unknown to plagiarism-detection databases.

The researchers  uncovered  117 “compromised” US university sites after scouring the American “.edu” domain for links to 14 prominent essay mills. A subsequent scan of websites ending in “.edu.au” – used by Australian schools, training colleges and universities –  revealed  179 instances of infiltration.

Jim Ridolfo, an associate professor at the University of Kentucky , said these examples had been exposed by “small sample studies to show proof of concept that this is actually happening”. He said some essay mills used six or more domain names, and searches on the hundreds of other domains would certainly net more results.

The infiltration techniques emerged in 2018 but were “ramped up” in 2020, with hackers apparently exploiting website vulnerabilities as academics and students struggled with the pandemic-induced shift to online delivery. “This costs almost nothing to do,” Dr Ridolfo said. “[Hoodwinking] just a few students could be enough for it to be economically viable.”

Colleague Bill Hart-Davidson, of Michigan State University , said the team had been astonished to discover “shady web-marketing techniques” known as “black hat SEO [search engine optimisation]” in education. Such practices were typically deployed to sell drugs without prescriptions. “What really took us by surprise was seeing contract cheating services using these techniques on our own websites,” Professor Hart-Davidson said.

The compromised sites included a University of Western Australia (UWA) resource page for students. The page contains an advertisement for a now concluded essay contest run by EssayOnTime, a Wyoming-based company that provides essays for A$27.11 (£15.08) per 275-word page.

“Enter our scholarship contest and win a 1000$ reward to make your dreams come true,” the page urges students, who entered by submitting essays of up to 800 words on gun control, environmental regulation or transgender athletes.  Times Higher Education  sought comment from EssayOnTime, which did not respond to enquiries to its US or Australian branch.

A UWA spokeswoman said the university had been approached by an organisation claiming to be not-for-profit. “The approach was accepted in good faith and notice of a competition posted on the scholarship website in 2019. We were, of course, unaware that the competition was not genuine.”

The same contest was advertised on the web pages of four North American universities that have since removed the links. Five other US universities’ websites have been embedded with EssayOnTime web pages listing resources for women, veterans or students with special needs – a strategy to give the company a veneer of credibility and “bump up their rankings on university websites”, Dr Ridolfo said.

In another technique observed in Australia, Google search query indexes were hacked to generate fake results. The researchers scoured the domain  www.cheapwriters.online  – which links to London-based essay mill IQessay – and found 92 doctored examples of “search query indexing” including 14 mentioning Murdoch University .

After being alerted to the issue, Murdoch reengineered the indexing of its web presence. People who follow malicious Google searches to the Murdoch website are now redirected to the university’s regulations, which outline procedures for handling academic misconduct.

UNSW Sydney academic integrity researcher Cath Ellis said that students would assume that links on university websites were legitimate.

“These contract cheating companies have no scruples and they are actively going after students who are legitimately looking for help. Students with authentic learning needs are slipping into their clutches because they are predatory,” she said.

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Students Are Likely Writing Millions of Papers With AI

Students have submitted more than 22 million papers that may have used generative AI in the past year, new data released by plagiarism detection company Turnitin shows.

A year ago, Turnitin rolled out an AI writing detection tool that was trained on its trove of papers written by students as well as other AI-generated texts. Since then, more than 200 million papers have been reviewed by the detector, predominantly written by high school and college students. Turnitin found that 11 percent may contain AI-written language in 20 percent of its content, with 3 percent of the total papers reviewed getting flagged for having 80 percent or more AI writing. (Turnitin is owned by Advance, which also owns Condé Nast, publisher of WIRED.) Turnitin says its detector has a false positive rate of less than 1 percent when analyzing full documents.

ChatGPT’s launch was met with knee-jerk fears that the English class essay would die . The chatbot can synthesize information and distill it near-instantly—but that doesn’t mean it always gets it right. Generative AI has been known to hallucinate , creating its own facts and citing academic references that don’t actually exist. Generative AI chatbots have also been caught spitting out biased text on gender and race . Despite those flaws, students have used chatbots for research, organizing ideas, and as a ghostwriter . Traces of chatbots have even been found in peer-reviewed, published academic writing .

Teachers understandably want to hold students accountable for using generative AI without permission or disclosure. But that requires a reliable way to prove AI was used in a given assignment. Instructors have tried at times to find their own solutions to detecting AI in writing, using messy, untested methods to enforce rules , and distressing students. Further complicating the issue, some teachers are even using generative AI in their grading processes.

Detecting the use of gen AI is tricky. It’s not as easy as flagging plagiarism, because generated text is still original text. Plus, there’s nuance to how students use gen AI; some may ask chatbots to write their papers for them in large chunks or in full, while others may use the tools as an aid or a brainstorm partner.

Students also aren't tempted by only ChatGPT and similar large language models. So-called word spinners are another type of AI software that rewrites text, and may make it less obvious to a teacher that work was plagiarized or generated by AI. Turnitin’s AI detector has also been updated to detect word spinners, says Annie Chechitelli, the company’s chief product officer. It can also flag work that was rewritten by services like spell checker Grammarly, which now has its own generative AI tool . As familiar software increasingly adds generative AI components, what students can and can’t use becomes more muddled.

Detection tools themselves have a risk of bias. English language learners may be more likely to set them off; a 2023 study found a 61.3 percent false positive rate when evaluating Test of English as a Foreign Language (TOEFL) exams with seven different AI detectors. The study did not examine Turnitin’s version. The company says it has trained its detector on writing from English language learners as well as native English speakers. A study published in October found that Turnitin was among the most accurate of 16 AI language detectors in a test that had the tool examine undergraduate papers and AI-generated papers.

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Schools that use Turnitin had access to the AI detection software for a free pilot period, which ended at the start of this year. Chechitelli says a majority of the service’s clients have opted to purchase the AI detection. But the risks of false positives and bias against English learners have led some universities to ditch the tools for now. Montclair State University in New Jersey announced in November that it would pause use of Turnitin’s AI detector. Vanderbilt University and Northwestern University did the same last summer.

“This is hard. I understand why people want a tool,” says Emily Isaacs, executive director of the Office of Faculty Excellence at Montclair State. But Isaacs says the university is concerned about potentially biased results from AI detectors, as well as the fact that the tools can’t provide confirmation the way they can with plagiarism. Plus, Montclair State doesn’t want to put a blanket ban on AI, which will have some place in academia. With time and more trust in the tools, the policies could change. “It’s not a forever decision, it’s a now decision,” Isaacs says.

Chechitelli says the Turnitin tool shouldn’t be the only consideration in passing or failing a student. Instead, it’s a chance for teachers to start conversations with students that touch on all of the nuance in using generative AI. “People don’t really know where that line should be,” she says.

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Harvard’s Taylor Swift Scholars Have Thoughts on ‘Tortured Poets’

The students taking Harvard University’s class on the singer are studying up. Their final papers are due at the end of the month.

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Fans of Taylor Swift often study up for a new album, revisiting the singer’s older works to prepare to analyze lyrics and song titles for secret messages and meanings .

“The Tortured Poets Department” is getting much the same treatment, and perhaps no group of listeners was better prepared than the students at Harvard University currently studying Ms. Swift’s works in an English class devoted entirely to the artist . The undergraduate course, “Taylor Swift and Her World,” is taught by Stephanie Burt, who has her students comparing Ms. Swift’s songs to works by poets and writers including Willa Cather, Samuel Taylor Coleridge and William Wordsworth.

On Thursday night, about 50 students from the class gathered in a lecture hall on campus to listen to Ms. Swift’s new album. Mary Pankowski, a 22-year-old senior studying history of art and architecture, wore a cream sweatshirt she bought at Ms. Swift’s Eras tour last year. The group made beaded friendship bracelets to celebrate the new album, she said.

When the clock struck midnight, the classroom erupted into applause, and the analysis began. First, the group listened through the album once without discussing, just taking it all in.

Certain lines, however, immediately caused a stir, said Samantha Wilhoit, a junior studying government — like a reference to the singer Charlie Puth and the scathing lyrics to the song “The Smallest Man Who Ever Lived,” Ms. Wilhoit, 21, said.

A line from the song “I Can Do It With a Broken Heart,” in which Ms. Swift sings, “I cry a lot but I am so productive,” also seemed to resonate, Ms. Wilhoit said, laughing.

A smaller group of students, including Ms. Pankowski, stuck it out until the early hours of the morning waiting to see if Ms. Swift would drop additional music. At 2 a.m., they were rewarded with an additional “volume” of 15 tracks called “The Anthology.” Ms. Pankowski said she didn’t go to sleep until hours later.

Speaking with The New York Times together on a video call Friday morning, several students from the class discussed their thoughts on the 31 new songs and brainstormed their final papers, which are due at the end of the month.

“The song ‘Clara Bow’ reminded me of ‘The Song of the Lark,’” Makenna Walko, 19, said, citing the Willa Cather novel that follows the career of an aspiring opera singer, Thea Kronborg. “She’s talking about a girl trying to make it out of her small town and trying to get to Manhattan, and what it’s like to have these big, musical dreams and try to pursue them,” she continued. “That’s a narrative that has shown up a lot in Taylor’s own life, over the course of her own career. In a lot of ways, it’s Taylor’s story, too.”

Lola DeAscentiis, a sophomore, zeroed in on the song “But Daddy I Love Him,” comparing it to the Sylvia Plath poem “Daddy.” She plans to explore the link in her final paper.

“I hesitate to say that the song was anywhere near the genius of Sylvia Plath — no offense to Taylor Swift — but I can definitely see some similarities in the themes, like sadness, depression and mental health,” Ms. DeAscentiis, 20, said. (Ms. DeAscentiis also drew a distinction between being a fan of Ms. Swift and being a devoted Swiftie. She said she identified as the former.)

“The way that Taylor overlays her relationship with the significant other that she’s talking about in the song with the relationship that she has with her father — I think that was very Plath,” she added.

Another student, Ana Paulina Serrano, echoed Ms. DeAscentiis, noting that the class had learned about the genre of confessional poetry. “Is Taylor considered a confessional poet?” Ms. Serrano, a 21-year-old junior majoring in neuroscience, asked the group on the call. In support of her own position, she offered as evidence Ms. Swift’s song “Mastermind,” a track off “Midnights,” in which Ms. Swift reveals herself to have calculated and plotted the outcome of a relationship.

“Sometimes she’s confessing things that we, like, already knew or assumed, but she often seems to feel this need to explicitly tell us,” Ms. Serrano added.

Isabel Levin, a 23-year-old senior studying integrative biology, said she thought Ms. Swift’s delivery on several tracks had a spoken-word quality. She wondered if maybe some of the lyrics had initially begun not as songs but as more traditional poems.

Ms. Swift has said she categorizes her songs by the type of pen she imagines using to write each. A “frivolous, carefree, bouncy” song is a glitter gel pen song, while a fountain pen song might be more “brutally honest,” according to Ms. Swift . Quill pen songs are “all old-fashioned, like you’re a 19th-century poet crafting your next sonnet by candlelight,” she explained during her acceptance speech as songwriter-artist of the decade at the Nashville Songwriter Awards in 2022.

And with what implement might Ms. Swift have written “Tortured Poets?”

Quill pen, for sure, Ms. Walko said.

Madison Malone Kircher is a Times reporter covering internet culture. More about Madison Malone Kircher

Inside the World of Taylor Swift

A Triumph at the Grammys: Taylor Swift made history  by winning her fourth album of the year at the 2024 edition of the awards, an event that saw women take many of the top awards .

‘The T ortured Poets Department’: Poets reacted to Swift’s new album name , weighing in on the pertinent question: What do the tortured poets think ?  

In the Public Eye: The budding romance between Swift and the football player Travis Kelce created a monocultural vortex that reached its apex  at the Super Bowl in Las Vegas. Ahead of kickoff, we revisited some key moments in their relationship .

Politics (Taylor’s Version): After months of anticipation, Swift made her first foray into the 2024 election for Super Tuesday with a bipartisan message on Instagram . The singer, who some believe has enough influence  to affect the result of the election , has yet to endorse a presidential candidate.

Conspiracy Theories: In recent months, conspiracy theories about Swift and her relationship with Kelce have proliferated , largely driven by supporters of former President Donald Trump . The pop star's fans are shaking them off .

Bruce Drysdale 5th-grade student advances to national finals in DAR's essay contest

Bruce Drysdale fifth grader Lia Martinonis has advanced to the national finals in the Daughters of the American Revolution 2024 Essay Contest, and each time her essay has advanced, her family has celebrated with a cake.

She is anxiously hoping for more cake. Martinonis is one of eight fifth-grade finalists in the nation, and so far, she's won three awards for her essay — one at the local level, one at the state level and the latest for the Southeastern Division.

"I am unbelievably proud. I have felt both shocked and pleased each time I learned that I had won," she said.

And there's prize money involved: $1,000 for first place, $500 for second place and $250 for third place. The winners will be recognized at the National Society Daughters of the American Revolution Continental Congress, which is being held June 26-30 in Washington, D.C.

The topic for the contest was “Stars and Stripes Forever.” Essay writers were asked to imagine they were a newspaper reporter for The Philadelphia Times on May 14, 1897, and the newspaper's editor asked them to attend and report on the first public performance of John Philip Sousa’s new march, “The Stars and Stripes Forever.” The students were to tell about Sousa’s life and the story behind the song.

Lia was with her family on April 20 in Durham to receive the state award, her mother, Andrea, said.

"This essay contest has been an incredible experience for Lia. My daughter aspires to be a writer when she grows up," Andrea Martinonis said. "This opportunity has given her the confidence to pursue that dream. Lia researched the essay subject, learned about American history, honed her writing skills, and read her speech to a large audience at the initial award ceremony. 

"As an educator, I couldn't be more pleased that DAR sponsors this contest, encouraging students to write essays and learn about our nation's past. As a parent, I am thrilled that my daughter chooses to spend her free time reading and writing and that her interests and skills are being recognized."

More: North Henderson student one of four grand prize winners in national essay contest

Lia said her teacher, April Summey, assigned the essay contest to her class.

"I remember being frustrated when drafting my essay, but now I am so glad my hard work paid off. I still cannot believe this is all happening," Lia Martinonis said.  

This part of her essay describes Sousa talking about composing his new march:

"...Sousa said that he composed the song in his head on his return to America as he grieved the death of his beloved band manager, David Blakely. Sousa said, “In a kind of dreamy way, I used to think over old days at Washington when I was leader of the Marine Band…when we played at all public functions, and I could see the Stars and Stripes flying from the flagstaff.” He also stated, “And that flag of ours became glorified… And to my imagination it seemed to be the biggest, grandest flag in the world, and I could not get back under it quick enough.”

More: Apple Valley Middle student one of four grand prize winners in national contest

Summey called Lia a phenomenal, gifted student who "always goes above and beyond."

"She thrives on a challenge and is an avid learner. Her contagious curiosity shines brightly as she lights up upon acquiring new knowledge," Summey said. "Every year, my fifth grade students work on the DAR essay. They are given a prompt and required to read multiple primary and secondary sources about the topic in order to prepare. I am very passionate about the contest, because it helps students learn history and get excited about it." 

Dean Hensley is the news editor for the Hendersonville Times-News. Email him with tips, questions and comments at [email protected]. Please help support this kind of local journalism with a subscription to the Hendersonville Times-News.

In Taylor Swift's 'Tortured Poets,' the torture is in the songwriting

'the tortured poets department' further complicates my feelings surrounding the pop star, and proves that taylor swift could benefit greatly from a more communal, creative approach..

When Taylor Swift announced her new album, “ The Tortured Poets Department, ” earlier this year at the Grammys , I was equal parts curious and unaffected. Even as a lifelong fan, I wasn’t fond of her previous effort, “Midnights,” cause I found most of it overwhelmingly uninspired – despite it winning Album of the Year. 

Nevertheless, Swift’s command over the zeitgeist makes her inescapable, and as a fan of most of her work, I’m bound to engage with her offerings regardless. The quality and acclaim of her previous works made me cling to the futile hope that “Midnights” was just a fluke. Everybody makes mistakes. Everybody has those days. 

That hope died, though, as soon as I saw the album credits.

To my dismay, Swift keeps her usual creative ensemble on “The Tortured Poets Department”: Jack Antonoff, every indie-pop girl’s go-to producer, and Aaron Dessner, of The National fame, who previously worked with her on her “Folklore” and “Evermore,” and “Midnights (3 a.m. Edition).” She also brings on Post Malone and longtime friend Florence Welch as new collaborators. 

Swift is known for writing songs based on her own life experiences. This artistic choice has made her synonymous with a certain brand of relatability and bestowed her with scrutiny and acclaim alike. Her fans in particular, “Swifties” for the uninitiated, use this to justify that sometimes unwarranted acclaim and discredit artists who choose a more collaborative approach to creating. “The Tortured Poets Department” further complicates my feelings surrounding the pop star and proves that Swift could benefit greatly from a more communal, creative approach. 

Beyoncé reclaims country music: Beyoncé pushes the confines of genre with 'Cowboy Carter.' Country will be better for it.

Taylor Swift has already won. Swifties don't need to banish criticism.

It’s not all bad, though. Moments of her past brilliance find a way to break through the crest every now and again, especially on “The Tortured Poets Department: The Anthology,” the second installment of what appears to be a double album, which she released at 2 a.m. on Friday .

“The Black Dog” builds into a heart ache roar as she laments why memories of her don’t mar a lover’s mind while he visits the places they used to share. On “The Albatross,” she makes clever allusions to Samuel Taylor Coleridge’s “The Rime of the Ancient Mariner” (1798), referring to herself as both the saboteur and savior of her past relationships. 

As a singer-songwriter, Swift is often perceived as a “singular” artist with her personhood at the center. Much of her discography is akin to intimate diary entries. The fact that she is so singular, often credited as the sole writer on many of her tracks, and her life is so large allows fans to decode her songs like scripture and attach them to moments in her life and relationships.

Conservatives are 'Down Bad': Taylor Swift is an American icon, regardless of what you think

The beauty of her older music is that listeners can take her tales of sneaking out late to tap on a lover’s window, her journey out of the woods or the regret that takes her back to a fateful December night and apply them to happenings in their own lives. It’s why I admire “Folklore” and “Evermore” so deeply. The way she blurred the lines between fact and fiction, making it hard to determine when she was chronicling her own life or one she’s concocted, offered universality in its specificity. Now, it seems that her celebrity has eclipsed her.

“The Tortured Poets Department” will undoubtedly be the best-selling album of 2024 and will be nominated, and possibly win, the big awards at next year’s Grammys. The record has been universally praised by publications like Rolling Stone. Her previous album broke almost every record imaginable and won every award. She embarked on one of the most lucrative tours of all time.

By most metrics, she’s the biggest pop star in the world , possibly of all time. Taylor Swift has won.

But so much of the discourse surrounding Swift exists in extremes. Anything less than unabashed praise is shunned. And some of her most ruthless dissenters obviously do so in bad faith. Engaging with any art without nuance is a fruitless endeavor. 

She keeps her ink and quill tightly to her chest, but this individualist and self-centered way of creating has led to an uninteresting product, unless you are obsessed with the innards of her personal life. I doubt she’ll ever run out of stories to tell. Life always gives us new inspiration. The trick lies in whether she’ll find interesting ways to tell them. 

Nevertheless, I still love Taylor Swift. I went to see the Eras Tour in New York with my best friend. I have countless memories of a younger me belting “Mine” and “Our Song” out of car windows down I-95. I remember the first time I heard “Cruel Summer” in my friend’s bright red Honda Fit and knowing I’d be obsessed with that song forever.

I spent so much of quarantine shattered and painstakingly introspective from the beautiful prose on “Folklore” and “Evermore.” My heart broke with hers on “All Too Well,” first in 2012 and again in 2022. Swift has soundtracked the lives of so many, chronicling the beauty of falling in love and the hurt thereafter. My only wish now is that she’d see beyond herself and relinquish her powerful pen to someone new – someone who could reignite the fire in her.

Kofi Mframa is a music and culture writer and opinion intern at the Louisville Courier Journal.