Essay mills continue to proliferate

Jakarta’s Pramuka Street intersection is well known for its essay-production services, as Indonesian universities continue to be dogged by the problem of ghostwritten essays. By paying a sum, a student can graduate without making much effort writing the final-year dissertation.

Several small shops in a row on Pramuka Street intersecton have banner advertisements proclaiming that they provide printing services for invitation cards, business cards, letterheads and stamp-making.

But when a client asks the shopkeeper about these services, they immediately reply with a question of their own: What is your major subject? It is a sign that the printing business is simply a front for dissertation production.

Although the essay-writing business is not conducted openly, it is not unknown among Indonesian students, and some essay mills have been around for a long time.

“We've been here since 1995,” Pramuka Street shopkeeper Novi told University World News.

Most of Novi’s clients are students at private universities, but there are also some public university students using the service. “All passed the examinations,” she said.

Laziness is the main reason why students use essay-writing services. "They want it to be instant," said Novi. Moreover, sometimes parents push their children to graduate swiftly, which can be stressful for students, leaving them with little time to properly research and write a dissertation.

Services easy to find

Small advertisements appear in the classified advertising sections of local newspapers, and essay mills are also easy to find via an internet search, which will bring up several Indonesian-language sites offering not only undergraduate essay-writing services but also writing of postgraduate dissertations and theses.

Some sites cite a price while others require the client to contact them via the listed email.

Services include ‘quantitative’ dissertations. "Quantitative dissertations require a survey and it is troublesome for us because it forces us to go out into the field and it takes time," said Novi. On the internet, essay mills mostly masquerade as services for conducting surveys and opinion polls.

The cost of the service depends on the package. "Mostly clients want the complete package," Novi said. This starts from a research proposal right through to its conclusion. A client can have their own idea for the proposal but that won't reduce the price.”

Clients also decide on the number of pages required – usually 80-90 pages.

For an undergraduate dissertation, the average cost is Rp4 to Rp6 million (US$400 to US$650) depending on the subject. ‘Easy’ subjects like management come cheapest, while ‘difficult’ subjects like medicine are the most expensive, costing around Rp13 million (US$1,350).

Once a client agrees to the price, 50% must be paid upfront. Another requirement is that the client must provide the supporting books for the service.

"This is not plagiarism,” Novi insisted. “We provide an original thesis, so the books are important.” She also advises students to meet with their lecturers and report back so that the essay-writer can incorporate the lecturer’s suggestions and make the dissertation more 'appropriate'.

She said that she always advises a client to read the dissertation before submitting it to the university. "Otherwise the examiner could know the thesis was not his."

Novi's team admits that they also provide postgraduate theses, although that does not happen often. "The price is more expensive. The cheapest one costs about Rp20 million," said Novi.

No authority to shut them down

The longstanding businesses survive in several Indonesian university towns despite statements from time to time from politicians that they should be shut down.

Yogyakarta, widely known as ‘Education city’ for the number of institutions located there, is aware of the problem.

Last month, Yogyakarta’s Education Council chair Wuryadi told local media that “unless something is done about them [the essay mills], their presence could severely damage the quality of higher education graduates in the region.”

Unfortunately, the Education Council does not have the authority to close down such businesses. “We can only campaign against it, including bringing up this issue in various forums,” said Wuryadi, who is also a professor at Yogyakarta State University.

He said that the power to control essay mills lay with departments in institutions, and added that thesis supervisors should take their jobs more seriously. “They must follow the thesis-writing process very intensely and not simply hand out a final result,” he said.

Freelance essay writers

One student at a private university, who spoke to University World News on condition of anonymity, said she began seriously to think about paying for an essay service after her dissertation proposal was rejected several times by a lecturer.

“I knew about them for quite a while” she said. “Once I contacted the service, but the price was too expensive for me – Rp3.5 million (US$360),” she said, clearly shocked at the amount.

Eventually she found a freelance essay writer, a student who had already graduated. “I think he didn’t know the standard price for the service at the time I met him,” said the student, adding it was an “affordable” Rp1.25 million for a complete quantitative thesis.

“He is an expert” in this kind of thesis, said the student, who is studying communications. She did not use the freelance writer’s idea for the topic of the research. As it required survey data, the freelancer provided fictitious data.

Every time she met with her supervisors she informed the freelance writer of what needed to be ‘fixed’, and she said he was even willing to come to her place to go over the dissertation with her. The process took about six weeks.

Her parents knew she had paid someone to work on the thesis, but said she had their blessing. “They were okay with it. It is better than getting another extension” to the study period.

In the end she passed with a B+ for the thesis. “I think he helped me a lot. Otherwise I wouldn’t have finished the thesis and would not have graduated,” she said.