RMONROE ESSAYSHARK: THE RISE AND FALL OF A CONTROVERSIAL ESSAY WRITING SERVICE
Introduction
Rmonroe EssayShark was once one of the largest and most well-known essay writing services, helping thousands of students complete their written assignments. The company was also mired in controversy due to accusations of enabling academic dishonesty. This article will provide an overview of Rmonroe EssayShark’s history, business practices, and the debates surrounding commercial essay writing services. It will also detail the events that led to the company’s decline and closure.
Origins and Growth
Rmonroe EssayShark was founded in 2013 by entrepreneur Ronald Monroe. Operating from an office in Tampa, Florida, the company began as a small online freelancing marketplace connecting students needing help with assignments to independent writers. Monroe saw an opportunity in the growing essay writing service industry and worked to quickly expand the company.
Within a year, Rmonroe EssayShark had over 500 writers on its platform and was processing hundreds of orders per month. The key to its early success was competitive pricing – students could get shorter essays written for as little as $10. Monroe focused on recruiting writers from countries with lower labor costs like India, Pakistan, and Ukraine. This allowed Rmonroe EssayShark to undercut competitors while still providing reasonable pay to writers.
By 2015, Rmonroe EssayShark had grown to become one of the largest essay writing companies worldwide, with estimated annual revenues of over $5 million. At its peak, the site had a database of over 5,000 freelance writers and was fulfilling thousands of orders per week for students across the US, UK, Australia, and other English-speaking countries. The company promoted itself mainly through aggressive pay-per-click search advertising and gained notoriety through its tagline – “We Write Essays Better than You!”.
Controversy Erupts
As Rmonroe EssayShark became more prominent, it also attracted intense criticism from academics who saw the company as enabling academic dishonesty. University instructors argued that custom-written essays stripped students of the opportunity to learn. They also claimed it created unfair advantages and degraded the overall integrity of academic assessments.
In 2015, an undercover investigative report by a student publication revealed poor quality control and instances of plagiarism in essays produced by Rmonroe EssayShark writers. Monroe denied the plagiarism claims but acknowledged spot-checking was an ongoing challenge given the volume of orders. That same year, a petition circulating at several large state schools called on university administrators to take action against essay writing services that “profit from the dishonest work of students.”
The company faced legal threats as well. In 2016, the University of Toronto sent Rmonroe EssayShark a cease-and-desist letter arguing the service violated the university’s academic code of conduct. That was followed by a defamation lawsuit from an Australian university over allegedly plagiarized essays. While Rmonroe EssayShark denied wrongdoing, the lawsuits were financially draining for the small company.
Writer Discontent and Quality Issues
As orders grew exponentially, writing quality became difficult for Rmonroe EssayShark to guarantee. Independent freelance writers working for the platform began to organize and voice frustrations over tight deadlines, low pay, and a lack of job security. Turnover was high, and many less experienced writers were taking on complex assignments beyond their abilities.
In anonymous reviews on freelancer sites, disgruntled former EssayShark writers described intense pressure to complete multiple essays per day for salaries as low as $2 per page. One writer stated, “I was constantly stressed, struggling to research and write high-quality papers on short notice for starvation wages. It felt like I was running an essay factory.”
To cut costs, Rmonroe EssayShark also began outsourcing more work to writing mills in places where labor regulations were lax or non-existent. This led to further complaints over plagiarized or auto-generated content. By 2017, reviews on sites like SiteJabber showed customer satisfaction had plummeted, with over half of grades being one-star. Nonetheless, Rmonroe EssayShark continued expanding operations until facing a crisis that would seal its fate.
Class Action Lawsuit and Closure
In January 2018, a group of Universities including Harvard, Stanford and MIT filed a class action lawsuit against Rmonroe EssayShark and several other major essay writing services. The lawsuit alleged the companies “undermine the academic integrity and honest evaluation of student work,” and that they mislead and defraud students. It sought injunctions to stop the companies selling papers to students at the plaintiff schools.
This coordinated legal action put intense pressure on the already troubled Rmonroe EssayShark. Facing depleted finances and a tarnished brand, Monroe was unable to secure outside funding to withstand the lawsuit. In March 2018, he announced that Rmonroe EssayShark would be discontinuing operations, shutting down the website and laying off all employees and writers.
While smaller writing services continue operating, the high-profile closure of Rmonroe EssayShark marked a major blow to the commercial essay industry. It highlighted the risks of overtly enabling academic dishonesty and failing to adequately protect against plagiarism. For critics of the essay writing model, it demonstrated the unsustainability and illegitimacy of such businesses within the academic space.
Conclusion
At its peak, Rmonroe EssayShark dominated the commercial essay writing industry through aggressive growth tactics. The company’s controversial practices, quality control issues and legal battles ultimately proved unsustainable. While the debate continues over where to draw the line between support services and academic dishonesty, Rmonroe EssayShark stands as a cautionary tale of the risks of prioritizing profits over integrity within a space defined by academic standards. Its dramatic rise and fall highlighted the fragility of businesses built on enabling questionable student behaviors.
Andrew Stroud