University students studying. With poor prospects of getting a job after
completing their education, some have resorted to doing assignments for
those still in college at a fee. The practice has seen the UK seeking
to ban advertising for help with academic work. PHOTO | FOTOSEARCH
Only days after Kenya made the headlines for producing the
world's best teacher, it is in the news again, this time for the wrong
reason.
It is described as a hotbed of academic
dishonesty, where jobless graduates are minting millions of shillings
writing thesis and term papers for students in the United Kingdom.
According
to the British media, doctorate candidates pay £2,000 (Sh264,000) to
£6,000 for dissertations. “Kenya is the hotbed where the writing
happens. There is high unemployment and a job working from home is
coveted. They have good English and low overheads,” Dr Thomas Lancaster,
a senior fellow at Imperial College, London, was quoted by the British
press as saying.
CHEATING
“There
are thousands of people in Kenya whose job is to write essays for
cheating students. There are several writers in every apartment block,”
he added.
A motion is set to be introduced in the UK parliament to ban all forms of advertising for any assistance in academic work.
Initially, the business was done entirely through outsourcing
websites run from Europe and hiring people with an ability to write
academic material on a freelance basis and then floating jobs for them.
The
jobs are usually academic papers given as assignments to students in
Europe or the US, but are too lazy to do them. The pay is per page and
can be as high as $15 (Sh1,500).
DEGREES
A Nation investigation on Monday found that several young people in Nairobi are engaged in the practice full-time.
In
a shared office on Moi Avenue, the clicking of keyboards fuses with the
noise from the street below to create the impression of an industry on a
roll. The office, just a stone’s throw from the University of Nairobi,
is illustrative of the booming underground industry that is helping
thousands of students cheat their way to PhDs and Masters degrees.
For
Sh30,000 to Sh50,000, depending on the course, one can get a research
project done in two weeks to a month for work that is supposed to take
an entire semester for a Masters student. And for Sh200,000, a PhD
thesis can be done.
An assignment costs as little as Sh500, while a term paper sets you back about Sh2,000.
The
company is just one of the dozens, if not hundreds, of such outfits
spread across the country that are helping universities churn out
graduates who have not met all the requirements.
THESIS
Assignments
and term papers contribute to the overall grade of a student. Masters
and PhD students are required to undertake research project or thesis
and defend it before they are cleared to graduate.
Dr
Nancy Booker, the director of academic affairs at the Aga Khan
University Graduate School of Mass Communication, says it is the only
way for a graduate student to show that he or she has mastered a
particular subject. “It shows you have mastered a discipline and you can
execute a project from start to finish. It is what makes you an
authority in a certain area,” she says.
However, with a
simple search online or through referrals, students can get academic
research papers done for them, which they present as their own without
detection. Fuelled by access to cheap Internet, high unemployment rates
among graduates and the commercialisation of university education,
academic cheating continues to boom.
RESEARCH
The
“research writers”, as they are known, are not only helping Kenyan
students cheat, but their work is being felt globally through the
outsourcing websites.
The business gathered steam in
2009, when the importation of refurbished computers was zero-rated. The
undersea fibre optic cable also came at about the same time,
significantly bringing down Internet costs and presented Kenyan youths
with a host of job opportunities.
Some graduates who
could not get jobs found it a worthwhile method of self-employment. In
estates like Roysambu, Kahawa West, Kasarani, Kahawa Wendani and areas
neighbouring Kenyatta University), students have turned it into a
money-minting venture.
However, the dry periods between
May and September, when universities abroad are not in session, have
made those engaged in the business turn to the Kenyan market, which
looks like it had been waiting for them all along.
WEBSITES
This
is evident from the explosion of websites targeting Kenyan students who
want to cheat their way to degrees. And the openness and vigour with
which such services are being marketed is remarkable.
Just next to the University of Nairobi at Kampus Towers are about a dozen such firms, each employing up to 10 staff.
The
beginners in the industry start by doing assignments and term papers
before slowly graduating to research projects and then theses. All this
from a desktop, with no field work whatsoever.
The
findings from what is supposed to be field work are then cooked before
the student is coached on how to defend his or her project.
WORD COUNT
“We
do desktop research and then write the thesis based on that research.
The time frame and total cost depends on the expected word count. We
charge Sh800 per page,” an executive of a firm told this writer when he
posed as a student looking for someone to do research for a Masters in
Journalism degree.
“Our work is plagiarism-free and all the work is scanned before being submitting to the client,” the executive said.
So
clinical are those in the business that they even ensure that the work
is within the acceptable plagiarism range and any queries from the
lecturer supervising the student are dealt with to perfection.
PROJECTS
And
business is booming. “It depends on the amount of work available, but
in a month, I can do between six and seven research projects,” the owner
of a company that does projects on behalf of students told the Nation.
“It
is not that difficult as students see it. I can describe it as driving;
once you learn how to do it, you do it so effortlessly. It is the
students who fumble because it is something they do once in their
academic journey,” he said.
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