Google bans essay writing adverts

[Mule]

<TABLE cellSpacing=0 cellPadding=0 width=629 border=0><TBODY><TR><TD colSpan=3>Google bans essay writing adverts


</TD></TR><TR><TD vAlign=top width=416><!-- S BO --><!-- S IBYL --><TABLE cellSpacing=0 cellPadding=0 width=416 border=0><TBODY><TR><TD vAlign=bottom>By Sean Coughlan
BBC News education reporter
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<!-- E IBYL --><!-- S IIMA --><TABLE cellSpacing=0 cellPadding=0 width=203 align=right border=0><TBODY><TR><TD> Google is blocking adverts where essays sell from £5 to £5,000

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Google is to ban adverts for essay writing services - following claims that plagiarism is threatening the integrity of university degrees.


There have been complaints from universities about students being sold customised essays on the internet.

The advert ban from the Google search engine has been "warmly welcomed" by university authorities.

But it has angered essay writing firms which say this will unfairly punish legitimate businesses.
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From next month, Google will no longer take adverts from companies which sell essays and dissertations - and the internet company has written to advertisers to tell them about the policy.

Plagiarism software

Google's forthcoming ban on adverts for "academic paper-writing services and the sale of pre-written essays, theses, and dissertations" means that essay websites join a blacklist of "unacceptable content" including adverts for weapons, prostitution, drugs, tobacco, fake documents and "miracle cures".

The move has been applauded by universities which have struggled with the problem of students dishonestly submitting material copied from the internet.

<!-- S IIMA --><TABLE cellSpacing=0 cellPadding=0 width=203 align=right border=0><TBODY><TR><TD> Universities warn that plagiarism "devalues" higher education

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"Making life harder for these cynical web 'essay mills' is a step in the right direction," says Professor Drummond Bone, president of Universities UK.

"We welcome this move. Essay writing sites claim that students pay hundreds of pounds for model answers - but do not then submit these as their own work. We all know this claim is absurd."

The universities organisation says that in particular there have been difficulties with essays bought by students from companies which sell tailor-made answers, where fees can be up to £5,000 for a single piece of extended work.

There have been reports of up to 12,000 essays being sold to students in a year, says Universities UK.

These essays and assignments can be written by freelance academics or other students - and it is less easy for plagiarism software used by universities to detect such work.

Google, commenting on the change, says its advertising policies are "developed and evaluated based on multiple factors, including legal and cultural considerations plus user and customer experience".

And a spokesperson said that the advert ban was expected to be applied across Google's global network.

Unfair ban?

But one of the UK companies fearing that it will be prevented from advertising, Essaywriter.co.uk, is angry at the threat to its business - with 80% of its customers coming through Google.

Managing director Matthew Wilson says this will punish the legitimate, transparent companies, which sell essays, but which warn students that they must not be used dishonestly.

Mr Wilson says that such a bespoke service, selling tailor-made essays at short notice, with prices around £70 and upwards, can be used as a guide for students wanting extra assistance.

Overseas students are frequently customers, he says - but the firm makes clear that essays should not be passed off as being written by the student. And he says that such a blanket ban will not stop the search engine from generating links to rogue essay selling companies, which have been accused of scamming customers by providing poor quality material.
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http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/education/6680457.stm

[Tr1xerb3ll]

blumin party poopers!! university should be more about the life experience than the work imo in which case i would of got a fair first with honours for my student antics

[marcode]

i think its a good thing tbh.. there are far too many students (and increasingly, secondary and primary school kids) who rip shit off the net, or worse still, pay some cunt to do it for you.

whats the point of being there if some other fuckers doing the work for you and you learn FA. waste of time.

[ian_jedi]

we had some kids in today doing work experience, and a colleague asked if they read books, the answer was why when we can google everything we need to know

[Over Carl]

That last comment is true to some extent. Whats the point in forking out money for a book - then you are limited cos it's only one person's point of view, and you can't cut and paste any text or diagrams. Also book doesnt get updated after its been bought, so could be terribly out of date.

[BBK]

There's nothing wrong with using the internet to help write your own essay, research is a vital component of any. Sadly I remember the hours spent in the University library, and there's no reason why Google can't help with that. Getting someone else to write your essay is cheating, and anyone found using such a service should be thrown off the course.

[ian_jedi]

not to mention, I used to carry about 5 text books at college and that was some heavy s*&#.

[/dev/null]

Of course using the internet for research is fine - as long as you reference the sources. I think this is about more than research though.

Why should someone spend hours and hours writing up their own essay when the next person can come along and get it done for them by someone else virtually? Not really assessing that persons ability is it?

Most uni's run the work through a plagarism detector anyway which then searches its database of such sites, search engines etc and marks down any similarities. These are then looked at manually if any are found and the work is then possibly given a mark of 0 if it is found to contain copied, unreferenced material.

[marcode]

used in the right way google is really helpful..

eg. google book search rocks.. whole sections of books that are searchable!

[maverick_15]

Do you mean Google Scholar? Great tool for finding journals and other references if so.

[marcode]

Do you mean Google Scholar?

er.. no, google books.

http://books.google.com/

[yazooo]

google scholar is still very handy for journal searches....references from papers always look better in your work.

[marcode]

personally i found google scholar always to be a bit wank. the paper you wanted was always a paid for link, so you couldnt read any of it unless you coughed up.

preferred the library ACM portal subscription for papers.

[yazooo]

aahhh, yes i never thought of it if you didn't have a subscription, it would be a bit pointless then. not google fault mind. doesn't your uni have an athens login?

[elephantsoup]

Athens is very good

[Fresh]

I used to hate people at Uni who cheated. Used to really piss me off when people included work in their reports that wasn't their own and didn't acknowledge the author. Cheating cunts. Glad to see google cutting the supply of essays like that, infact I'm quite impressed they have taken such an extreme measure.

[maverick_15]

Yeah, with an athens account you can access more or less every journal. Never used that books before, didn't actually realise it was there. Bit late now, could've made use of it. Ah well.

[Tr1xerb3ll]

http://www.fuckinggoogleit.com/

LOL yeah i followed the lnk too never was the brightest thing on earth

[Over Carl]

I like that site, going to use it one day, but I can't find any other reference to it on this thread

[Elwood]

I couldnt care less about buying essays as I'm not a student, but I dont like search engines to decide what I can or cant look for, so I would be against google filtering anything out of the searches.