The Independent (Oxbridge Essays) Cash For Essays: a Moral Dilemma, by Harriet Swain, February, 2007 Hard-up graduates

from Oxford and Cambridge can earn up to 10,000 by writing model answers for an essay mill company. But are they simply encouraging plagiarism? Harriet Swain reports Good news for cash-strapped postgraduates. A new sponsorship scheme is offering up to 10,000 to 40 lucky students from next academic year, plus scholarships to three more. The catch? Well, successful applicants will probably need to spend a few days each month writing about their areas of academic interest. They'll need a confirmed or expected 2:1 or above from Oxford or Cambridge. And, according to their Alma Maters, they'll need questionable morals - or at least morals that don't ask too many questions. The scheme has been developed by Oxbridge Essays, a company registered in 2005 to provide model answer essays, dissertations, covering letters, CVs, revision notes and other writing services from Oxbridge students or graduates, for a fee. To qualify for a full 5,000 a year scholarship, students will need to guarantee to complete between 3,000 and 3,500 worth of work for the company, for which they will receive normal writers' fees on top of the scholarship. For a 5,000 sponsorship, they will need to guarantee to carry out 4,500 worth of work and will receive 500 as a gift. PhD students can pledge more work in return for a larger sponsorship, up to 10,000. Most of the company's most lucrative work - 2,000-word model essays, earning writers between 500 and 700, and the same again for the company would be steered towards sponsorship or scholarship writers. John Foster, director of Oxbridge Essays Postgraduate Sponsorship Scheme, says the advantage to the company is that it expands its pool of writers and develops a group that it can call on regularly. The advantage for the writers is that they have financial security. He even claims advantages for Oxford and Cambridge. "The university benefits by having students go on to postgraduate study who wouldn't otherwise be able to afford it," he says. The universities aren't that grateful. A Universities UK spokesperson said: "Oxbridge Essays claim that students pay hundreds of pounds for model answers which they then do not submit as their own work. We think that claim, along with similar claims made by other essay websites, is absurd. Plagiarism devalues the efforts of students who work hard to achieve their degrees. It also damages the student who commits plagiarism, as they will not benefit from the research and learning experience." In reply, the company says its terms and conditions unambiguously opp-ose plagiarism and advise their customers to check with their institution whether they need to reference use of the service. Whatever the ethics of what it does, Oxbridge Essays has identified a problem that surprisingly few others are attempting to meet - postgraduate poverty. While undergraduate hardship is high on the agenda thanks to political arguments over top-up fees, undergraduates who go on to further study tend to be left to their books and bank loans.

This is partly because, while undergraduate applications have fallen, postgraduate numbers are buoyant. They reached more than 545,000 last year compared with under 500,000 in 2002/03. Many postgraduates are also richer than they once were. The Roberts review of the supply of science and engineering skills in the UK in 2001 recommended substantial increases in the research stipend paid to postgraduate students from around 8,000 a year then to around 13,000 this year. But this affects only those who receive the stipend. Two thirds don't, and who does depends heavily on the subject they are studying. While science or engineering postgraduates will have a good chance of having their fees paid, a social sciences student cannot be nearly so confident, and a humanities graduate even less so. "A large proportion of students in the humanities will be self funding in some way and nothing much has been done to help them," says Malcolm McCrae, chair of the UK Council for Graduate Education. What is more, he says, as the number of postgraduates increases, the proportion receiving government money is actually falling. But does this matter? Postgraduates have already chosen intellectual over worldly riches, parttime working through a Masters or PhD is the norm, and maybe all that tricky budgeting sharpens the mind. These are not arguments that carry much weight with the National Postgraduate Committee. It is petitioning for the student loans scheme to be extended to postgraduates on the grounds that financial worries have a detrimental effect on students. Research by the NPC and Prospects, the graduate jobs website, published last summer found that 77 per cent of potential postgraduates from working-class backgrounds said that financial concerns strongly influenced their decision over whether to enter postgraduate study. Only 33 per cent of those from upper middle-class backgrounds felt the same. The NPC argues that this could have a detrimental effect on the diversity of the academic community. Paul Wakeling, a PhD student at Manchester University, has researched the social make up of postgraduates, and found that a graduate from the top social class is nearly three times as likely to take a taught Masters or PhD as someone from the bottom group. He plans to carry out further research but says one problem is that many who are forced to give up on the idea through failure to raise enough money don't appear in any dataset. Also yet to be measured is the impact of undergraduate top-up fees on graduates' decisions about whether to go straight into work or to take on more debt as a postgraduate in the hope of eventually furthering their career. Those who choose the latter usually need to take out a Career Development Loan, start a parttime job and dig around for extra financial help. Simon Deville, manager of the Educational Grants Advisory Service, says his database includes more than 1,000 trust funds offering small sums, often with precise specifications about the type of student, or subject they want to help. Subject associations also administer a number of small grants, often from trusts and bequests. The Institute for Historical Research, for example, administers Fellowships funded by the Scouloudi Foundation and The Isobel Thornley bequest, as well as a number of prizes offering a few hundred pounds each. James Lees, fellowship officer at the IHR says it is hoping to attract more fellowships funded by bequests and has recently secured funding for a 2

major fellowship programme and a couple of smaller awards, all of which still have to be finalised. As a PhD student himself, he says it is still possible for students to get by, through a combination of small grants and part-time work. The fear is what will happen if tuition fees rise substantially. Already for some the temptation of Oxbridge Essay's guaranteed 5,000 or 10,000 for writing about what they love is hard to resist, even if it does involve suppressing of those naturally questioning minds. 'It's a flexible way to earn money to pay for your tuition' Richard Simpson, 25, did not have to pay undergraduate tuition fees because his family's income was below the financial threshold at which fees are charged. But as a postgraduate, studying part-time for a Masters in human geography at the London School of Economics, he is liable for fees of over 8,000, and has had to find the money for this himself. He says his debts match the average for UK students - officially estimated at at least 15,000 for those starting courses in 2006 - although his job as an LSE sub warden takes care of his accommodation. He also works as a research assistant. "I'm concerned," he says. "I cannot focus on studying. It also places more pressure on daily life because I need to think about not only my studies but about work and whether this investment is worthwhile." He argues that everybody working to fund themselves is being stretched, and that this creates a vicious circle in which those who cannot focus exclusively on their studies are put at an academic disadvantage. Students who perform best in their studies are more likely to find grants or sponsorship, leaving the rest to fall yet further behind academically and financially. Sean, 23, who is studying for a one-year Masters at Cambridge, is planning to apply for one of the Oxbridge Essays sponsorships to help pay the 6,000 a term he spends on tuition and living costs. He has already carried out about 10 pieces of work for the company over the past four months, for which he has earned more than 2,000. "In terms of earning money to pay for your tuition there really aren't that many things that are as flexible," he says. Earning money is particularly pressing for Sean as he is carrying a $60,000 debt from his undergraduate studies in the United States. Even so, the ethical issues around Oxbridge Essays do concern him. "The fact is, people go to Oxbridge Essays because they feel that recent graduates from Oxford and Cambridge will write their papers for them," he says. "It's a pretty big bullet to dodge." HS