Definition

Contract cheating is a phenomena which was observed in 2006 by Thomas Lancaster and Robert Clarke ^* at the University of Central England, Birmingham in which students get others to complete their coursework for them by putting it out to tender.

Although there had already been websites which would supply ready-made essays Contract cheating took the process a step further in that the students used legitimate websites normally used by businesses offering freelance project work.

Extent of contract cheating

The only published material detailing the extent of contract cheating is a study by Robert Clarke and Thomas Lancaster. The study presents three main findings.

1 - That 12.3% of postings on a popular site for outsourcing computer contract work are actually bid requests from students looking to attempt contract cheating.

2 - That contract cheaters have, on average, posted between 2 and 7 bid requests. This suggests that habitual use is made of such services by these students.

3 - A smaller number of users have posted over 50 bid requests, including examples from multiple institutions. This suggests that these are agencies subcontracing work, not students who are directly making use of the services.

Alternative forms of wording

Some sources have erroneously referred to contract cheating as contract plagiarism. Although strictly this type of cheating is a type of plagiarism, as a student is submitting work that they have not created for academic credit, the idea of cheating more accurately reflects this attempt to deceive. As is the way of the Internet, this alternative terminology has since been quoted in other sources and in some cases these terms are used interchangably.

References