timesofindia.indiatimes.com
LONDON: In a unique twist to outsourcing from Britain to India, students in British universities have been paying computer professionals in India to complete their course assignments for a fee.
The newly recognised trend, operating mainly through the Internet, has been dubbed as "contract plagiarism" by British academics who have tracked such malpractices.
It is more in vogue among students enrolled in IT courses in British universities.
The modus operandi is simple: A student willing to pay for the course assignment puts on certain websites an offer, giving details of what is required, and invites bids from professionals who are willing to complete the assignment for a fee.
Such online bidding is invariably dominated by IT professionals from India. Due to competitive bidding, students in British universities are able to get their computer assignments done for as low as 5 to 10 pounds - all to high quality and tight deadlines.
According to an investigation conducted by Robert Clarke and Thomas Lancaster of the University of Central England (UCE), the trend has assumed the dimensions of international trade, with offers being made by students in western countries, for which competitive bids are made by professionals in India and eastern Europe.
"It's a little cottage industry," Clarke, a lecturer in the department of computing at the UCE, told The Guardian.
Clarke and Lancaster monitored a legitimate website on which small companies advertise for software to be written, but found 12 percent of its business was students asking for bids to write their assignments.
The offers are by students who want, for example, a computer code written, but are incapable, lazy or wealthy enough to pay someone else to do the needful.
Over the course of a year, the UCE lecturers found the average student on the site was posting four to seven assignments to be done by someone else. |
