Edubirdie is an essay writing service that has become quite controversial since its founding in 2014. While it claims to provide a helpful service for students who need assistance, many argue it enables and encourages academic dishonesty. Let’s take a deeper look at edubirdie and some of the discussions surrounding it.
Edubirdie works by connecting students who need writing assistance with freelance writers who will complete essays and other assignments for a fee. Students can explain their paper guidelines and deadline, and freelance writers bid on the job with their proposed price and writing samples. Students then select the writer they want and pay through the edubirdie platform. Upon completion, the student receives a finished paper they can submit as their own work.
Edubirdie argues this provides a solution for students who are too busy, lack writing skills, or need help meeting demanding deadlines. Critics say it essentially acts as a professional ghostwriting service that enables plagiarism and violates university academic integrity policies which prohibit submitting work that is not fully the student’s own. While edubirdie writers claim to provide original work rather than direct re-use of existing content, there is no way to guarantee the writer has not plagiarised sources or that the student has done significant work to truly make it their own writing.
Supporters of edubirdie point out that students will find ways to get help on assignments whether through services like this or other means, so it provides a regulated option. They say edubirdie is upfront about the work being assistance rather than taking full credit, and some students genuinely do use it for brainstorming or having sections edited rather than total ghostwriting. Critics argue it still crosses ethical lines and that universities would not condone such services if aware students were using them. There are also debates around potential implications if non-original work was discovered and linked back to edubirdie.
In surveys, some edubirdie clients report being generally satisfied with the quality of work from freelance writers. But service quality can vary greatly depending on the individual writer, and there are also reports of writers missing deadlines, delivering mediocre work, or even plagiarizing content found online rather than writing original material. From a student perspective, there is a risk in handing your assignment to a stranger on the internet rather than retaining full control over the work yourself. The price can also be prohibitive for some students seeking help, ranging from around $10-30 per page of standard writing.
Industry analysts have questioned the longer-term viability of edubirdie’s business model since many university systems have cracked down on contract cheating and some countries have moved to regulate or ban essay mill services. As artificial intelligence capabilities advance, some predict automated essay generation may replace the need for human freelance writers on such platforms over time as well. Edubirdie remains a vibrant marketplace with thousands of customers and writers due to ongoing student demand for such assistance.
Overall, edubirdie exists in a grey area that involves debates around ethics, academic integrity, and students’ rights to receive outside help on their schoolwork. Reasonable people can disagree on where to draw the lines. As long as the need and demand persists from students seeking an edge in their studies, services like edubirdie are likely to continue, though the specifics of how they operate may evolve with changing policies and technologies. It remains a complex issue without a full consensus on solutions.