Google Bans Ads For Essay-Writing Services

llamapalooza writes "Google announced that it will ban essay writing firms from advertising on their site. (The prevalence of cheating on campuses has been discussed here before.) While universities have welcomed the move, the affected firms are claiming it will 'punish legitimate businesses.' Google has specifically banned 'academic paper-writing services and the sale of pre-written essays, theses, and dissertations,' which now join other items on the banned list such as tobacco, drugs, weapons, and prostitution."

Thank God!

[GregPK]

While I've never cheated. It's hard enough being an honest college student nowdays. Searching the web for research on topics and having that constant reminder pop up in your face. You can bypass 30 hours of research and writing with 20 bucks. Pisses me off to no end.

I admire the business plan behind it even when they make my life hell with thier grade curve changing essays. They must make a fortune.

But diploma mills are still adverticed

[thue]

Google apparently still allows ads for Diploma mills [wikipedia.org]. Usually they claim that they examine your "life experience", and then grant you a diploma based on what you already know. In practice, they just sell you pieces of paper without checking, and you can then use the diploma to pretend to other people you have taken a real university degree, i.e. fraud.

For example a reporter was able to buy a degree in aerospace engineering, a field he knew nothing about, from Ashwood University [wikipedia.org]. Ashwood University is deceptively named to be similar to Ashford University.

But if you search for "Ashwood University" in Google [slashdot.org] you get plenty of ads. As well as the Wikipedia article which document the fact that the operation is fraudulent. The Wikipedia article is vandalized regularly by people trying to edit out the well-documented criticism. The vandals are probably the university owners or degree holders.

I have sent an email to Google some time ago, saying that they were advertising for fraud. But my email had no lasting effect, obviously.

Re:It's not illegal, though

[Moraelin]

Forging an official document be illegal, but cheating isn't. I dont think anyone got throw in jail for being caught cheating at an exam. Or do you know of any actual case where that happened?

Heck, I even know of people who forged or lied about their diploma, and still didn't land in jail. E.g., there was this story on Slashdot about the, IIRC, admission officer at MIT, who not only claimed diplomas from universities she never went to or which didn't even offer that qualification, but went on to actively undermine the whole idea of academic achievement and integrity. They fired her, but that's pretty much all they can possibly do. You can't throw someone in jail for merely being a pathological liar, or we'd have to build jails for all the politicians and marketters and PR hacks, plus about half the journalists.

College rules are one thing, laws are another. Something may be forbidden by the college rules, yet perfectly legal as far as a court of law is concerned.

Cheating is just inherently unethical and for most of us abhorrent, but, as I was saying, a lot of stuff that I find unethical and abhorrent is legal anyway. And unless someone actually manages to make it illegal, like it or not, it _is_ a legitimate business.

Now noone says you or Google should do business with them. But they are legitimate, no matter how much some of us think they shouldn't be.

Essay services can give horrible results

[Anonymous Coward]

For the third year of my UK bachelor's degree I was once extremely pressed for time. Personal circumstances, that the essay material was quite peripheral to the core of the study and that I was edging in at the highest grading tier (1st) already led me to try an essay writing service.

I used an essay service that let you specify your desired grade, level (bachelor's degree, masters or PhD, though not which year of bachelor's degree) required turnaround (standard 1 week, express 48h delivered by midnight on the 2nd day, express 24h delivered by midnight on the next day) and word limit. You could also specify sources that you needed to have referenced.

I picked the 24h, but specified in the comment box that I was happy with 48h delivery but would like to pay the higher amount in order to ensure that they took proper care in writing. I also provided a couple of references we had been given.

The essay I got back after 20h was 15% below the recommended word limit and literally crap. No logical progression, shoddy grammar (who writes short sentences starting with 'So'?) and just a bunch of bullet points all pasted together that didn't lead to any conclusion. One of the sources had not been used with the explanation that 'I was unable to find the source you quote for which I should not be held liable', and the others only in extremely generalised ways that could pretty much apply to any article on the subject.

The only recourse was that I could 'return it along with a list of desired changes for the author to make', but given that the same person would write it I didn't really see the point. I spent the last day rewriting paragraph by paragraph ~£500 ($1000) lighter and was really so embarassed over the result that I didn't ask for feedback on it.

-AC

Re:'Bout Time

[Anonymous Coward]

If someone else has written your PhD thesis, and that thesis is accepted, then the research has been done and your examiners consider that the scholarship of your discipline has been advanced. Who cares if it's done by A.N. Other or Profit-Making Research Inc? Unless you put your own reward/reputation above the advancement of the discipline, in which case you're not likely to be of much use to the field (though your implied ego will make you think quite the opposite).

Of course, I don't think that any of these businesses yet offer PhD assistance services, making your PhD comment quite irrelevant. The services focus on undergraduates, where an undergraduate programme comprises but 3-5 years of dilly-dallying, giving a piece of paper that's mostly worthless bar a few top Universities.

All that really matters from an academic point of view is whether you'll be able to contribute to your field - whether it was through an "honest" University education, copying all your Undergraduate essays from some stranger so people would take your later original work more seriously, or reading books in your basement.

...And happen to be illegal "too"...

[DrYak]

It is safe to assume that "illegal" is implied. Banning ALL drug advertising would be rather odd in most cases.

Depends on the juridiction.

Remember: Even simple things like aspirin are drugs.

And here in Switzerland, it is illegal to advertise for it.
A drug company can advertise its brand name (As in "Here in Mepha we make generics and thus are cheaper than concurrence !")
A drug company may indirectly infer that it does produces drugs against some problem ("Having sexual troubles ? You shoul talk about them with your doctor ! this message is brought to you by Pfitzer")
But a drug company CAN'T advertise its products to the general population ("Eat Prozac ! It's will make your life happier !")

Also, addiction to medical drugs is on the rise in developed countries and is starting to de-throne the classical usage of illegal drugs. Both with people getting addicted on naturally addicting drugs like sleeping medication or pain killers, and people who get "psychologically addicted to comfort pills" (eating anti depressant and viagra like candy, even if those don't necessarily cause physical addiction).
I'm not a hippie saying that drugs bring more problems than they solve, or that we shall go back to a society with no chemical remedies (That would be suicidal : I'm a doctor).
I'm just saying that general public should be a little bit more informed about those problems and less exposed to pharmaceutical marketing (which anyway is what cost the most for a drug company, and not the R&D as they are complaining anytime someone tries to lift drugs patents to help developing countries).

Re:Banned list?

[user24]

My first response to the headline was "thank god" - I post copies of my essays online, and I hate having cheat sites advertised next to my hard-written essays. Not only is (was) it insulting to students who work for their degrees, but it also cheapened my site by aligning it with those types of services.

Re:Banned list?

[lgw]

It's odd: I don't consider tobacco, drugs, weapons, prostitution, or cheating to be "evil" (the latter is pathetic, perhaps), which forces me to think of Google as "evil" for imposing their morality through their service. Just another church that's sure what's good for me.