PayPal is going to withdraw services from essay writing firms selling to students. This form of cheating has been growing in recent times, and is undermining the whole credibility of academic assessment. This recent statement from PayPal is long overdue — "PayPal is working with businesses associated with essay-writing services to ensure our platform is not used to facilitate deceptive and fraudulent practices in education."
If schools and universities cannot be sure of students submitted work as being their own this will mean a move back towards a 100% exam assessment, however this form of assessment disadvantages many students and is not suitable for all subjects. This is a good start, but will not solve the problem as alternative payment methods such as Bitcoin are still available. Hopefully more will be done to stamp out cheating.
Genius is one percent inspiration and ninety-nine percent perspiration.