Why Students Buy Ethics Essays - And What Colleges Can Do About It

Essay mills and contract cheating persist as students treat coursework mainly as a credential. Generative AI has complicated detection, but effective responses include staged submissions, authentic assessments (portfolios, local case studies), oral defenses, and clearer links between coursework and real-world skills. Institutions should reward faculty for engaging lower-division students and use scaffolding to make bought papers impractical.

Essay mills and contract cheating: a continuing symptom

You can still buy ready-made ethics essays and model term papers online. These services - often called "essay mills" or part of the broader problem of contract cheating - exist because many students treat coursework as a credentialing hurdle rather than a learning opportunity.

Some students want the experience of a liberal-arts education. Others see college primarily as an investment in a degree and future earnings. When a course or assignment feels irrelevant to a student's goals, the temptation to outsource the work grows.

New complications: AI and detection tools

The rise of generative AI tools since 2022 has changed the landscape. AI can draft essays or revise purchased papers, making it harder to tell whether work reflects a student's own thinking. At the same time, institutions use plagiarism-detection services and other integrity tools to identify copied or contracted writing.

These technological shifts have not removed the core incentive: if students believe an assignment offers little real value, many will seek shortcuts.

Academic responses that work

Faculty have long experimented with tactics to discourage cheating: in-class reflections, oral defenses, narrow or locally framed topics, and staged submissions that require drafts and feedback. Those techniques still help because they make it harder to submit an off-the-shelf product.

More broadly, instructors are redesigning assessments to prioritize authentic tasks. Examples include portfolios, community-engaged projects, case-based work tied to local contexts, and short in-class performances or presentations. These formats make credit harder to buy and more directly test the skills a course aims to teach.

Engage, scaffold, and reward learning

Two systemic changes reduce the market for purchased papers. First, make general-education and lower-division courses more explicitly useful. Show how assignments build concrete skills employers value: critical reading, evidence-based reasoning, oral communication, and teamwork.

Second, scaffold assignments. Require process work (preliminary research, annotated bibliographies, peer review) and grade stages of development. Students are less likely to buy a finished product when they must routinely produce and revise their own work.

Faculty incentives matter too. Departments and institutions should recognize and reward teaching that engages early-career and lower-division students rather than valuing only specialized research or graduate instruction.

Conclusion

Buying ethics essays online is one visible symptom of a larger mismatch between credentialing and meaningful learning. Technology complicates detection, but the more durable solution lies in assessment design and in making the learning genuinely relevant to students' goals.