Students Have Easy Access to Ghostwriters for Hire - What Should Teachers Do?

By ITS Education Asia

Here is a very concerning article from the Daily Nous discussing the ease with which students can find someone else to write their work for them.

The problem can be illustrated with a quote from the article:  “According to a New York Times article on the use and production of ghost-written papers, it is not clear how many students purchase them. It reports that 7% of undergraduates admitted to submitting papers written by someone else, but that statistic is from 14 years ago, an eon and a half in Internet years. There are worries that it is now “a huge problem.””

The author gives strategies that a teacher can use to try to make it more difficult for students to use ghost written assignments:

1. Teach up-to-date, carefully-constructed courses that make use of distinctive content and assignments
2. Give in-class writing assignments
3. Assign multiple drafts
4. Personalize the subject matter
5. Emphasize class discussion in writing assignments
6. Give assignment 'exit interviews'

Cheating is unfair to students that do their work themselves and should be stamped out where possible. This problem is increasingly hard to police but every effort needs to be made to protect academic integrity.