Dear Colleagues



Feel free to forward this message as appropriate.



I've just had an altercation with someone distributing leaflets to students for a ghost-writing/essay-mill services company based in central London.  The content is attached.  The paper was very good quality plastic-coated, designed to withstand getting wet and be kept by students for a long time.  The website is quite blatant about what they do, especially the emphasis on keeping details of the students 'confidential'.



The distributor has been banned from entering our campus but I am powerless to stop him standing in the public highway.  He explained that he does not work for the agency itself, but is unemployed and got the job through a recruitment agency for temporary work that was offering jobs to distribute the leaflets.  He (and maybe others) are targeting University campuses in Central London (we were his third stint of the day he said and he is working his way through a list).   The company's website specifically targets business and management students.



I questioned the ethics of what he was doing and he said that so long as it wasn't illegal, he wasn't worried about ethics as we live under capitalism and he needed to make a living.  I asked him therefore if he would be happy handing out leaflets promoting cigarette smoking at a primary school gates (though that probably is illegal, but it made the point).  



I have issued a reminder to all of our students that using such services is in contravention of our academic regulations and students will be punished heavily if they are found to have cheated in this way.  



Colleagues in other Central London institutions with business and management subjects may wish to keep a look-out for leaflet distributors over the next few days, and similarly evict them and destroy any leaflets on their premises, as appropriate.  For all of us, this is a reminder that thanks in part to the success of anti-plagiarism tools like Turnitin, Ghost-writing/Essay Mills are now moving out of being a small-scale  'cottage industry' spread by word of mouth, and the perpetrators are using the mass-marketing techniques of larger businesses to plough their wares.  I am not aware of anything at present but it might be an idea if there were some kind of 'Ghost-writer/Essay Mill Watch' e-service where HEIs could share the details of the operations of these organisations and work collaboratively to hinder their businesses.   



Regards



Mike





Mike Milne-Picken

Deputy Director (Student Experience)

Coventry University London 

East India House

109-117 Middlesex Street

London E1 7JF



Tel +44 (0)20 7247 3666 (switchboard)

Mob +44(0)797 498 4684

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www.coventry.ac.uk/londoncampus