The problem of Essay Mills: Student society functioning hampered by scam messages

Since the start of the academic year, societies across the University of Leeds have seen a large increase in fraudulent or academically dangerous messages across their official WhatsApp groups.

Namely, the advertisement of essay writing services to students, or ‘essay mills’. 

Students across Leeds university use WhatsApp for a range of purposes, from co-ordinating for group projects to society scheduling. These WhatsApp groups normally see a few cases each semester of non-students offering essay writing services to students. However, there has recently been a major increase in the promotion of these services across society WhatsApp’s. 

The practice, where students are invited to purchase essays or other work for submission, is known as “contract cheating”, whereby a student violates their academic contract by submitting work which isn’t sufficiently their own. 

While students are warned that accepting such offers could result in their expulsion. The offering of essay writing for payment is also a criminal offence in its own right, since the passing of the 2022 Skills and Post-16 Education Act. 

This illegal nature of the practice may come as a surprise to most students, given the recent deluges in attempts to get students to purchase these services. 

The Gryphon spoke with the presidents of the Philosophy and Spoken Word societies about their experiences trying to manage the influx of messages.

Both societies highlighted an experience of constant harassment from automated messaging accounts. Millie Darley, Philosophy society president, said messages were coming in “on a daily basis” and that this was a definite increase when compared to the previous year.

This was further highlighted by Hannah Byrne, President of the Spoken Word society, as she described that it felt like messages were coming in “twice a day”. She also affirmed Millie’s concern around a rise in these kinds of scam prior to last year. 

The Spoken Word society said this had been highly damaging to their society, particularly as a new society.

“At the beginning of the year when events were only just starting to happen there were more bot messages than actual messages”.

Hannah highlights how this invasion by illegitimate student accounts risked damaging the society as people said it “felt like another spam box”.

These levels of spam messaging have become a constant for established societies too, with the POLIS society reporting a day in which they received as many as 60 messages offering services.

The issue calls into question the prevalence of essay mill services, perhaps suggesting an increase in their usage. However, a report from the times in 2016 found there was only an average take up of 0.7% from students on offers of essay writing services.

A recent BBC article, published shortly before this report, suggests the numbers may be significantly higher, particularly among international students. The article cites a claim stating that “of the 100 students… maybe 80 or 90 of them brought assignments.” However, universities mentioned in the BBC piece have dismissed these figures.

The Gryphon has reached out to the Department for Education to inquire if they hold any estimates on this issue. A response is expected in January.

Leeds University Union seem to be aware of the issue having issued a post around their new “fraud awareness course”. 

When informed about the program, Hannah Byrne, President of the Spoken Word Society, admitted she was unaware of the union’s counter-fraud campaign, with many students also expressing they were unaware of the illegality of essay mill services. 

If you would like to contribute your experiences on this issue, please contact: charlie.aldous@icloud.com or pr21ca@leeds.ac.uk.

Words by Charlie Aldous