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The secret world of term paper selling
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BOSTON – In a few weeks, the crunch will begin. Returning students know it well: those few days in mid-October when each of their professors expects that midterm assignment they’ve been putting off since just after Labor Day. Papers on topics from Chaucer to Churchill, lab assignments to group assignments. The list goes on and on.
It all has to get done, and all that time spent sleeping or eating isn’t getting it done any faster. The struggles to find sources, research, take notes, write and to revise seems never-ending.
But fear not, fellow students, for there is a way to get all your assignments done on time while sparing you the indignity of an all-nighter. All you need is a topic, some plastic and no shame.
The ads read clearly on the different Web sites:
“Are you looking for an original and custom written term paper?” asks one ad from TermPaperTime.com. “Are you running short of your deadlines? Is the time slipping out of your hands? Well luckily, you can stop it now!”
“Calm down, drop the guilt trip, and listen up,” reads another from ProPapers.com. “We know what formal education and business is like and you are not alone!”
Companies like Term Paper Time and Pro Papers have been around long before the beginnings of the Web, doing business by mail or face-to-face transaction. Today a simple online search under “term paper” nets tens of thousands of returns, most leading to sites willing to deliver a complete written assignment, including title page, bibliography, everything you need, for just a nominal charge on a credit card. Sound good? Well before you reach for your wallets, there’s some information you might want to know.
You’re committing plagiarism, the most serious academic offense you can commit at Boston University. And every year students who do it are caught, suspended and in some cases expelled.
Cases of cheating, whether it’s plagiarism or other forms, are not unique to BU. At University of Virginia this past May, 122 students faced expulsion or degree forfeiture for plagiarizing introductory physics papers at a school whose honor code has allowed students to take final exams unsupervised since the days of Thomas Jefferson.
High schoolers aren’t immune either, with 70 percent of students surveyed by the Josephson Institute of Ethics admitting they had cheated on an exam. A full 98 percent said they had let someone else copy their work knowingly.
The business of plagiarism is manifested primarily through these “term paper mills.” There are two basic types of companies in the market: those that pull pre-written papers from a database stored online and those that will write a custom paper based on the specifications a customer submits.
Most limit questions to paper length and a detailed description of the assignment, but some, such as ModelTermPapers.com, go so far as to ask for number of the course, number of sources needed and any specific sources that should be used.
Database sites are generally cheaper, some offering free access to thousands of papers, but most charge a monthly fee of $5 to $15. Custom writing, while more expensive than database services, is generally preferred because work is of higher quality and is not easily detectable using the Internet search tools many are pioneering to combat plagiarism in the classroom and boardroom.
Wendy Strunk is the co-founder of three Internet-based research companies: Expert Papers, Pro Papers and Advance Papers. She started these with the help of Lurae Milazzo, who Strunk met while working as a research writer for a similar company she declined to name.
Despite her saying, “there is a controversy about it,” Strunk said her company is in the market of “offering research and aid for writing papers” and nothing more.
“We consider ourselves research writers, in tune with the customers’ needs,” Strunk said. “We do plenty of business writing, business proposals, portfolio work, legal research, medical research, overseas work for various businesses. Probably the student would be the majority of our customers, but business work is a very close second.”
Strunk, who studied for two years at a college in Tennessee, began working as a research writer following school. After several years at a handful of companies, she began to see the large profits available within the field. This profit motive, plus the desire to work out of her home, caused her to start her own business.
“It is quite a profitable business, I believe, if it’s done right,” Strunk said. “My feeling is that customer service, understanding what a client is looking for, is paramount. That is not selling term papers. That is not what we are doing. [That's not] what the company I worked for was doing, selling from databases.”
Pro Papers maintains only a small office staff. Strunk takes all orders and Milazzo deals with the technical aspects of the Web site. Freelance writers, who are not employees but are contacted on a case-by-case basis, do all writing.
“We put the work out there. If the writers don’t think it’s enough, then they leave it on the table,” Strunk said. “The usual going rate runs $8 to $15 a page. If you’re working at a higher level, with more detailed research, we could go as high as $20 per page.”
Pro Papers charges users between $18 and $28 per page of written text, depending on the level of the work requested, and everything from undergraduate essays to masters theses can be specified. Additional per-page charges are added in special cases, such as if the paper is needed in less than five days. While Strunk was reluctant to give exact figures, she and the writer stand to make a large amount from even the simplest book report research.
“You get bombarded with applications for writers. We advertised for a month in the early summer [through a writers network], and got 300 applications right away,” Strunk said.
She added that they needed to pull the advertising.
Plagiarism is a major concern to Strunk, who says she currently has a network of only about a dozen “very, very trustworthy writers, where the writing will be exactly what the client wants, and they have some loyalty to us.”
Each writer who seeks to work with Pro Papers must agree to the company’s terms, which include a section on plagiarizing works. Strunk said she has to stop using many writers because they are caught plagiarizing.
“When we get a new freelance writer, we spend two to three weeks going over their work in the office, to ensure authenticity,” Strunk said.
Anyone caught plagiarizing cannot be fired, because they’re not company employees, but Strunk said the client is alerted and the writer will not be used again.
As for students plagiarizing her company’s work, however, Strunk’s approach is more hands-off. Pro Papers’ site features an explanation of their policy, part of which reads, “Pro Papers neither recommends or condones the use of its services as a misrepresentation of the individual’s knowledge or abilities and relies on the principles of its clients to assure proper reference and use of any and all papers it develops and delivers.”
“All of our pages clearly state our policy. We don’t recommend the use of our papers as someone’s own work. But when somebody buys from us, what they do with it is their business,” Strunk said. “It’s like any product. We are selling a product just like anyone else.”
In truth, of the six main pages on their web site, only one clearly states the company’s policy. While one offers links to a definition of plagiarism and another says Pro Papers understands its services “can be used inappropriately,” others go into detail about how papers will be formatted or speak cryptically about the validity of the services.
“Any research that is going to be put down can be handed in. Any client could reformat it,” Strunk explains, when asked why research is returned to clients in the form of a suitable paper. “Basically the client is paying for their education. If they want to pay for their education, it’s their loss. If they aren’t concerned for their education, I would hope they’re not going to get a very good grade.
“I’m not trying to be the righteous term paper writer here, but if we even have an inkling [of someone planning to plagiarize], we won’t handle it,” Strunk said. “I handle all the orders and don’t want to risk the rest of the business.”
Jon Couture