CUE must revoke academic credentials of cheats

While buying dissertations or theses is not a new phenomenon in Kenya and across the world, the rate at which the trend has gained traction and become prosaic should be worrying to both the academic world and the job market.

The trend is known as contracting cheating, where students at masters or doctorate level hire an agency or individual to write their research papers for them and which they hand in to the universities as their own original work.

From the point of view of the agencies, the business is legitimate, lucrative and is backed by a steady and popular demand. It is about brainy, well-schooled and jobless individuals taking advantage of the scramble for higher degrees to earn a living.

EDUCATION

The expansion of higher education in Kenya has given rise to a ritualised qualification-earning rush, where people simply go to school to increase their chances of getting a job or earn a promotion at whatever expense. 

And because the goal is simply to impress the job market, the tendency to take shortcuts in what should be a rigorous academic process is too tempting to resist.

The agencies will do all the legwork, craft the thousands of words needed to impress any supervisor, proofread the work and endeavour to beat any anti-plagiarism software.

The problem is on the other side of the coin. Students who contract writing agencies or essay mills as they are commonly called, to do the work for them are cheats and should not be allowed to graduate.

COLLECT DATA

It is one thing to collect data for a student and help with the analysis but it is completely another to write the proposal, craft the research questions, work on the literature review, do the field work and interpret the findings, draw the conclusion and make the recommendations. 

The student cannot own the work because they did not work on it. The project whether at masters or doctorate level is meant to show proof that a student has mastered a particular discipline and demonstrate their contribution to a body of knowledge.

If the student has to contract a writer to work on the project, doesn’t it raise questions about the validity of their course work too?

PLAGIARISM

Many of the students beat university quality control systems and plagiarism rules and go all the way to graduate; but what sorts of professionals do they make if the degrees they hold are not a result of their own originality?

The essay mills are good at their job and it is not easy for universities to detect if a third party wrote an essay but the institutions must find ways of stemming the vice.

DEGREES

They can, for example, offer increased support services to students to help them work on the projects, give them deadlines that are more flexible or allow them to defer their studies for a period.

The Commission for University Education, which is charged with recognition and equation of degrees, must revoke the academic credentials of those found to have cheated.

Employers too have a duty to test the proficiency of job applicants in their chosen fields rather than take their certificates at face value.