THERE is good business for ghost-writers doing assignments for university students and even lecturers pursuing further studies despite the availability of plagiarism-detection software.

A provider of such services, who charges RM1,800 for six-page papers, said writers are able to pass these checks as they avoided direct plagiarism of content from other works and the software could not detect differences in writing style.

“So even if (your lecturers) suspect that you hired someone to do your paper, they cannot prove it, so don’t worry,” The Malaysian Insight was told when it enquired about the service.

This loophole is being exploited by ghost-writers across Malaysia, said retired Universiti Pertahanan Nasional Malaysia (UPNM) lecturer, Ahmad Ghazali Abu Hassan.

“I can know from supervising my students, I can see the standard of their writing from their previous assignments, because I know the quality of their writing and how they normally write in their usual assignments.

“And the papers are always ‘Turnitin-approved’, the most that I can do is I can give them a passing mark. I cannot allow them to score but I cannot fail them because there is no ‘system’ to fail them,” he said, referring to university rules and regulations that define plagiarism and when a paper deserves a fail.

Turnitin is a popular plagiarism checker utilised by many academic bodies in Malaysia. When a paper is uploaded to the software’s database, it is checked against other papers stored there. Once uploaded, a paper cannot be removed.

“Hiring a ghost-writer, content-wise the paper comes out OK, but deep inside, a lecturer (who knows his students) will know when one is incapable of producing such a paper,” added Ghazali, who has had 18 years of teaching experience.

He told The Malaysian Insight that using ghost-writers was not only done by university students but some lecturers aiming to move up the academic ladder.

“I can say that it is not only common among students but also lecturers, like those who are doing their master’s.

“They want to achieve their article quota and have their names in published articles. This is very bad.”

Ads for academic ghost-writing services are still found on social media, even after the unethical practice was reported by newspapers in 2015.

The Malaysian Insight followed up on one of these advertisements on Facebook and made enquiries posing as a postgraduate student.

“Pricing is different, it depends on what the topic is and which university we are writing it for and how soon the deadline is,” said the service provider.

He then asked to meet at a building in Kuala Lumpur to discuss the assignment.

Inside a sparsely furnished “office” on the first floor of a high-rise building in the Bukit Bintang area were fewer than a dozen people sitting at tables working on laptops.

“For a private university, your paper should cost about RM1,800,” the service provider said when asked about a six-page postgraduate assignment on an education topic.

He said it is a bit cheaper if the paper was for a public university.

Asked how the ghost-writing would be fool-proof and that the “client” would not fail the paper, he said their writing services are “Turnitin-approved” and that there is also a money-back guarantee.

Academic cheating

In the case of lecturers, Ghazali said he knew of cases where contract lecturers with a good command of English were engaged to work alongside the “client” on a group project and then made to do the “grunt work”.

“They hire these people, to work in the faculty with them, who do the grunt work and then share their names. 

“These contract lecturers survive and get their contracts renewed because they write for the dean or the head of the department or whoever,” he said.

Ghazali said he partly blamed the university education system in Malaysia that prioritised key performance indicators instead of improving the quality and capabilities of lecturers and students.

“The core issue is that you don’t have people with the ability to write good English and then you set a high standard for them, insisting they write a research paper.

“So how do they achieve that target? You have to resort to ghost-writing and plagiarism,” Ahmad said.

Malaysian Academic Movement (MOVE) president Prof Zaharom Nain said ghost-writing had become common to the extent that service providers based overseas were accepting jobs from Malaysia.

“I would say it is on the rise as more of these services are being provided and openly advertised.

“The services seem to be offered across countries, so a student in Malaysia can get services provided in another country,” he said.

Zaharom added that cheating is not limited to final-year projects but also happens in regular assignments.

“This doesn’t happen just for final-year projects. It seems to happen for assignments in all years,” he said.

MOVE recently submitted a memorandum to the new education minister on June 11 calling for the appointments of university top brass to be based solely on merit, not politics.

Minister Dr Mazlee Malik on June 3 warned academics against cheating and plagiarism. – July 25, 2018.