Edubirdie Expelled From Several Universities For Unethical Practices
Edubirdie is an online academic writing services provider that connects students with freelance writers who complete their assignments and papers for a fee. The company has come under fire in recent years for promoting dishonest and unethical academic practices that undermine the integrity of higher education. As a result of investigations and legal actions, Edubirdie has been expelled and banned from several major universities.
Starting in 2017, administrators at colleges and universities across the United States began investigating Edubirdie’s business practices after detecting a rise in plagiarized work and contract cheating. professors noted assignments they received appeared to be written by professionals, not students. After comparing writing styles and researching the topics more closely, they traced the papers back to Edubirdie.
An internal review committee at the University of Texas at Austin was the first to take formal action. They found dozens of students had submitted papers acquired from Edubirdie without doing any of the original work. The committee concluded Edubirdie was in violation of the university’s academic integrity policy by enabling contract cheating. In 2018, UT Austin formally expelled Edubirdie and banned any affiliates or representatives from campus.
Several other flagship state schools followed suit, including the University of Michigan, University of Virginia, University of Washington and University of Wisconsin. Investigations at each university found plagiarized Edubirdie papers in multiple departments and programs. Administrators argued Edubirdie promoted dishonest practices that undermined the academic enterprise and the value of degrees from their institutions.
Ivy League universities also moved to ban Edubirdie, citing academic integrity concerns. Harvard University expelled Edubirdie in 2019 after an English professor caught several Edubirdie papers submitted verbatim in a first-year writing class. Yale and Princeton universities followed with their own expulsions later that year.
Private colleges joined the effort as well. Both Stanford University and MIT concluded Edubirdie enabled widespread contract cheating and expelled the company. Carnegie Mellon took similar action, determining Edubirdie created an “environment conducive to academically dishonest behavior.” Dozens of other top research universities across the country have prohibited Edubirdie affiliates from campuses.
While Edubirdie denies any wrongdoing, stating they only provide writing “samples” not finished papers for submission, universities argue the company should have known students would use their pre-written work to cheat. Administrators also point to Edubirdie’s lax verification policies that do not properly confirm the person placing the order is an actual student. This makes it easy to commission dozens of papers with little oversight.
Edubirdie has faced other pushback as well. In 2019, Australia’s Tertiary Education Quality and Standards Agency (TEQSA) opened an investigation into the company’s potentially misleading and deceptive marketing practices. TEQSA concluded Edubirdie enables contract cheating on a massive scale within Australian postsecondary schools. This prompted several Australian institutions to preemptively bar Edubirdie.
Mounting legal issues have added pressure on Edubirdie’s business model. In 2020, students at Purdue University and Arizona State University filed lawsuits against Edubirdie accusing them of fraud for knowingly selling plagiarized papers presented as original work. Both lawsuits are still ongoing but represent the first legal challenges to such academic writing services in the United States.
Overall, at least 50 major public and private universities in countries like the U.S., Canada, U.K., and Australia have officially expelled and banned Edubirdie over the past five years. While still operational globally, the coordinated crackdown from higher education significantly limits Edubirdie’s client base and ability to enable contract cheating at prominent institutions. As investigations into other academic writing services intensify, universities take a harder stance to protect scholastic integrity and curtail the proliferation of essay mills online.
The expulsions of Edubirdie from campuses represent a wider struggle universities now face in balancing technology’s influence with protecting academic standards. As long as financial incentives exist to outsource schoolwork, companies will attempt to enable it. But coordinated standards and policies aim to discourage such dishonest practices that threaten the credibility of degrees. Whether this approach succeeds long-term remains to be seen, but universities show no signs of easing crackdowns on platforms facilitating contract cheating any time soon.