In Assiniboine's Policy A25, contract cheating is defined as:
Contract cheating, essay mills, and auction platforms are collectively called the Industry (Hersey, 2019) in academic integrity research. Newton (2018) specifies the act of payment as the factor which makes contract cheating “deliberate, pre-planned and intentional” (p.2).
Outsourcing work, however, does not always involve formal contracts or the exchange of money (Bretag et al., 2019). At Assiniboine, cheating has involved students asking or allowing the following people to write their assignments:
This has been done in exchange for favours or stopping bullying.
Sometimes these incidents of academic misconduct come from confusion or lack of awareness. At other times, students have actively sought to outsource their work to third parties.
Canada is currently tied for second place among “countries where students engage in contract cheating” (Toye et al., 2019). Assiniboine is no exception.
An initiative to first track then block access to websites offering contract cheating and plagiarism websites showed that Assiniboine students:
Students using these sites risk:
Contract cheating sites are businesses whose concern is profit, despite marketing themselves to students as “study guides” and “homework help”. They're not concerned about students:
The Learning Commons works to bring awareness about contract cheating to the Assiniboine learning community throughout Manitoba in various ways, including:
Contact the Assiniboine Library for more information.
The differences between contract cheating and plagiarism may seem confusing and are the source of debate within the academic integrity community.
In some ways, contract cheating could also be viewed as plagiarism in Policy A25:
This would, after all, apply to situations where students are handing in something completed by another person.
In both of these cases, the student has interacted with their sources and worked on their assessment.
In this case, there is no learning at all, hence contract cheating being a more serious form of academic misconduct.
We can see the differences in intent by looking at the two situations below:
versus
In the first situation, the student intentionally had someone else complete their work. However, in the second situation, the student plagiarsed, but completed their own work.
As Newton (2018) describes, contract cheating is “deliberate, pre-planned and intentional”, regardless of whether a formal contract or payment is involved.
As outlined in Policy A25, examples of contract cheating include, but are not limited to:
A Google search for something like “write my essay” will return thousands of results from contract cheating providers. They market themselves to students as legitimate resources, but are not. Sometimes they'll want only a payment, and at other times they'll want students to upload resources in order to access others.
Below is a small selection of examples of this illicit industry.
Figure 1. Contract cheating advertisement. (Kaktins, 2018).
Figure 2. Contract cheating advertisement. (Kaktins, 2018).
Figure 3. Twitter exchange. (Hendricks, 2019).
Contract cheating providers lurk on social media, using algorithms to respond with sales pitches to people's comments about homework, essays, and papers. Many appear independent but are tied to contract cheating websites.
Figure 4. Website screenshot. (Eaton et al., 2019).
Note the appeals to having better things to do, and suggesting that essays are irrelevant.
Figure 5. Contract cheating advertisement. (Kaktins, 2018).
Note the offer of "professional writing assistance" for students who they claim don't have enough knowledge to complete their own assignments. Gaining this knowledge is part of the transformational experience of student life.
Many of the same strategies to help reduce plagiarism also work to reduce contract cheating, including:
References
Assiniboine College. (2023). Policy A25. https://assiniboine.net/sites/default/files/documents/2019-08/a25.pdf
Bretag, T., Harper, R., Burton, M., Ellis, C., Newton, P., van Haeringen, K., Saddiqui, S., & Rozenberg, P. (2019). Contract cheating and assessment design: exploring the relationship. Assessment & Evaluation in Higher Education, 44(5), 676-691.
Eaton, S. E., Chibry, N., Toye, M. A., Rossi, S. (2019). Interinstitutional perspectives on contract cheating: a qualitative narrative exploration from Canada. International Journal for Educational Integrity, 15(9). 1-17. https://doi.org/10.1007/s40979-019-0046-0
Hersey, C. (2019). The struggle is real! #Ineedapaperfast. Presented at the Canadian Symposium on Academic Integrity, Calgary, AB.
Hendricks, M. (2019). Picture of Twitter exchange. https://threader.app/thread/1113430487924711425
Kaktins, L. (2018). Contract cheating advertisements: What they tell us about international students’ attitudes to academic integrity. Ethics & Education, 13(2), 268-284.
Newton, P. (2018). How common is commercial contract cheating in higher education and is it increasing? A systematic review. Frontiers in Education, 3(67), https:/doi.org//10.3389/feduc.2018.00067
Yorke, J., Sefcik, L., & Veeran-Colton, T. (2020). Contract cheating and blackmail: A risky business? Studies in Higher Education. https://doi.org/10.1080/03075079.2020.1730313