What are Essay Mills?
Essay mills are businesses which offer essay-writing services to students often for a fee or in return for uploading lecture notes and assignments. Due to the pandemic and increased online learning there has been a significant rise in the number of these mills. They offer to write “original” assignments that they claim will not be picked up by plagiarism software such as TurnItIn, and many now offer answers in real time.
The practice is referred to as commercial contract cheating and is classed as academic misconduct. Essay mills put individual students at risk and they threaten standards in higher education.
We understand that the overwhelming majority of students are not looking to cheat, they are looking for support and guidance with assignments. These essay mills are increasingly targeting anxious and vulnerable students who are under pressure to meet deadlines.
Essay mills are ever adapting and many pose as legitimate student support and proof-reading services. These mills are exploiting students and there have been instances of students receiving very poor-quality work, and threatened or blackmailed with threats of exposure if they do not pay.
We have set up this page to educate our students on how to avoid falling victim to these scammers, to direct students to genuine support and to allow students to anonymously report suspected essay mills sites, this will help us to create a database of these mills and will help protect your fellow students.