Our Vision for the Future of Higher Education

Published: February 21, 2017

In January 2017, an amendment to the HE & Research Bill was proposed which would make it an "offence to provide or advertise cheating services". This amendment was intended to target "essay mills" - services which create work for students to submit directly to their institutions. UK Essays is not an "essay mill" - UK Essays is a company with 14 years' experience - we know this industry better than anyone else, and we know this industry's customers better than anyone else.

Much of the time, these customers are not 'dishonest cheaters': they are struggling students who have been offered inadequate support from their universities when it comes to the very specific skill of essay-writing. A huge proportion of our client base is made up of international students, who contend with the additional hurdle of a language barrier in many cases. Our services enable them to understand how their subject knowledge can be structured and organised in a suitably academic way, and the essays we provide are a springboard from which our customers can develop their own, 100% original piece of work.

Take a look at our website, ukessays.com, and you will see that we provide more study help, completely free of charge, than can be found on any UK university's website. We have hundreds of thousands of free essays, a plagiarism scanner, a free 'ask an expert' service, free essay marking, and soon, we'll have entire courses of learning online for free. We are about far more than just creating model essays: our ultimate goal is helping students learn.

Correct use of our service is no different to asking for a tutor's feedback, discussing work with class mates or even using a model essay provided by a university - many tutors will distribute examples of past students' work to demonstrate the best way to complete an assignment, after all. Despite this, universities refuse to sanction our use and the situation has consequently gotten worse - but we want to work with universities, not against them.

Our essays not only elucidate the subject matter and demonstrate great essay style and structure; they come packed with insightful analysis and arguments, and a list of useful references for further reading. They are the best, most useful study aid in the world, bar none: they increase any student's understanding of a topic, which subsequently improves their ability to write an excellent, unique answer of their own.

We have shown repeatedly that students who use our service develop a stronger understanding of their topic, and certainly do better with our help than they could have without it. The reasons for this are obvious - namely, we have 3,500 highly qualified writers, all of whom are qualified to a minimum of degree level (though several have advanced beyond this, all the way up to PhD study). Many of our writers are also teachers, lecturers and industry professionals, meaning that they are perfectly placed to give help which is focused on a very specific question. The assistance we can provide to students in this way is raising the standards of education, not lowering them.

We pride ourselves on our ethics: as a company, we refuse to sell to cheats, and strongly encourage proper use of our services within our guarantees. We are a far cry from the businesses - located worldwide in locations as diverse as India, Pakistan, Ukraine and the USA, amongst others - who actively encourage cheating. Our comprehensive Fair Use Policy - which is displayed prominently across our website - clearly outlines that handing in someone else's work as your own is unacceptable, and explains the serious consequences which may result from doing so.

Simply put, there are two types of company in our industry: those who promote cheating and do not value academic integrity, which are largely based overseas; and companies like us, who actively try to prevent students from doing this (most of whom are based in the UK, following our lead). How, then, can we ensure that the actions of the former companies are separated from the legitimate activities of the latter companies?

Demand for services like these would likely remain constant, regardless of legislation. The more pertinent question to ask is: how can we minimise the potential harm of this demand? Our solution is regulation, and has been for some time.

The only viable answer is to regulate the industry to enhance control over it and mitigate potential harm - in doing this, we can gain influence over something, rather than lose it altogether. Suggestions for appropriate ways to do this include making students declare usage of services like ours, and ensuring that operators keep a register of users. While the demand for these services won't go away, implementing this means we could begin to control that use. All that this proposed legislation can achieve is to push demand overseas - even further out of the government's sphere of influence. This would make the already-difficult task of policing the industry almost impossible, only resulting in a total lack of control.

This approach gives the many honest students - who correctly and ethically utilise our service - no safe, legitimate way to use it. We want to make it 100% clear that we do not condone cheating: indeed, we turn away students who have misused our services and committed academic misconduct, and refuse service altogether if a prospective client implies that they intend to use our service in this way.

To reiterate: our primary goal is to help our customers get the most out of their university education. To ensure that this goal is achieved, we want nothing more than to take steps which would culminate in a properly regulated industry; we want to work with universities; and, more than anything, we want to continue helping students to achieve the best grades possible in an ethical way.

Best Regards,
Daniel Dennehy,
Chief Operating Officer, All Answers Ltd