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I came across a website specific to my country (EU/Hungary) that offers to commit academic fraud. Basically, they offer to solve assignments, homework, even online tests, for money. The student sends them the assignment and the money, and he gets back the written solutions. No coaching or live discussion involved.

This website is actively advertised in sponsored posts on a Facebook page that is very popular among the student in my country - more than 50.000 followers - so I'm sure a lot of them this. I feel like something must be done against a service offering services that are "academically illegal", even if they probably made up some half-sound legal ground.

I'm worried about the existence and widespread advertisement of this "service". I don't like that it enables unfair advantage of rich students, who can pay them for every assignment they have. Also, maybe some desperate students use their service and gets in big trouble. Even it's very existence degrades the common belief in academic integrity.

Should I take some actions, or let it go? What are the best actions I, a student, could take against this website?

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3 Answers 3

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This is called contract cheating. It is an old and very well known problem.

Students cannot do anything about advertisements for contract cheating. Since the sellers are usually unaffiliated with universities, universities cannot punish them either.

If you have evidence that someone is purchasing contract cheating services, turn that evidence in to the person responsible for academic integrity at your university.

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Several countries have legislated to criminalize the offering of this kind of service. AFAICT, Hungary is not yet among them. So one thing you could do is lobby your local member of the National Assembly to support such legislation.

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    Which countries?
    – user2705196
    Commented Dec 21, 2020 at 2:17
  • @user2705196 A quick Google search yesterday turned up Australia, New Zealand, Ireland, and 17 US states.
    – Daniel Hatton
    Commented Dec 21, 2020 at 10:36
  • Could you include some details of such legislation? I am entirely unfamiliar with it and it might be useful to include.
    – user2705196
    Commented Dec 21, 2020 at 17:31
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Those services provide assistance with homework assignments, which reveals a critical flaw of such assessments: the school can't be sure that the student really did the assessment themself.

Hell, even without such online pay-to-do-my-homework services, a student could ask their parent, friend, or another classmate to do the assessment for them.

The way the school can balance this is by putting more weight on in-person examinations, where they can be sure the student is the one doing the assessment (by checking ID etc).

As a student, you can bring such issues to their attention, and if your school only does homework-type assessments, you can persuade them to also do in-person examinations.

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