Essay writing companies have become a booming business in recent years as more students turn to outsourcing their academic writing tasks. While this practice remains controversial, there are very real reasons behind the proliferation of these services. Understanding why essay writing companies exist can provide valuable insight into both the issues students face and how the education system has evolved.
One of the main drivers behind the emergence of essay writing companies is the sheer volume of work expected of students. College and university workloads have ballooned tremendously over the past few decades. Students are routinely assigned dozens of readings per week along with lengthy writing assignments on tight deadlines. Even bright, ambitious students struggle to keep up with such intense academic demands while also juggling jobs, extracurriculars, family responsibilities, and their social lives. Essay writing services offer a way for time-strapped students to outsource some of their workload in order to avoid falling hopelessly behind or having a breakdown from stress and burnout.
Related to the issue of overwhelming workloads is the rise of continuous assessment and less emphasis on final exams. Academics now place greater stock in things like participation grades, papers, presentations, group projects, and labs over traditional exams. While continuous assessment aims to produce a well-rounded graduate, it results in students constantly having assignments due rather than being able to focus intensively on exams. This perpetually assessed model leaves little room for error or breaks, incentivizing students to turn elsewhere for help when they reach their limits.
A third factor is the rising costs of higher education. As tuitions have skyrocketed while government funding for schools declined, students feel increased pressure to perform well academically in order to justify the money and get a good return on investment. Earning a low grade due to being overburdened can cost students thousands in financial aid, scholarships, or delayed graduation costs. Therefore, using essay writing services provides desperate students a way to ensure high marks while balancing everything else.
Money pressures have also led many schools to operate more like businesses chasing revenues and market shares rather than focusing solely on education. This has given rise to some questionable practices that essay companies help address. For example, academics complain of bloated class sizes, excessive adjunct/TA usage, and lack of support for students. Meanwhile, institutions pocket lucrative international student fees while seemingly ignoring severe service gaps – international undergraduates are a big customer base for essay companies. Similarly, for-profit colleges have faced accusations of prioritizing recruitment volumes over student success. Weak institutional support structures drive students to buy external help.
Another aspect is the skills gap that has emerged in recent decades. The level and types of work expected from young graduates has changed dramatically with the digital revolution but primary/secondary education curricula have struggled to keep pace. Assignments regularly require research, critical thinking, technical/digital literacy and other advanced scholarly competencies that many students never learned. Essay writing services can compensate for a lack of such preparation by helping fill these academic skills deficiencies. They also cater to languages/subjects students are unfamiliar with but universities keep adding poorly-designed degree programs in.
A lesser discussed reason for essay writing company appeal is how certain educational practices disadvantage specific student populations. For example, conventions like standard English language essays favor native English speakers. Students for whom English is an additional language, or who come from education cultures with different writing styles, can easily be tripped up by academic genre expectations they were never tutored for. Companies can help level the playing field for these learners who would otherwise face significant barriers to demonstrate their knowledge effectively. They also provide options for students with learning differences, disabilities or socioeconomic circumstances that make accessing institutional support challenging.
Finally, it would be remiss not to acknowledge that demand for essays stems in part from students simply wanting an easier way out at times. Juggling responsibilities is difficult and every person has their limits – some inevitably seek shortcuts. While this breaches codes of conduct, it speaks to the psychological stress mainstream education subjects many learners to and its shortcomings accommodating human nature. A perfect system would design processes attracting the best from people rather than relying on punishment to extract it.
In closing, while academic integrity issues surrounding essay companies remain valid concerns, their prevalence is largely a byproduct of systemic problems in higher education that prior research shows are real and growing – from over-assessment to undersupported internationalization to inadequate skills development. Rather than harshly penalizing users, educational institutions need serious self-reflection on how they can reform practices fueling third-party involvement. Finding alternatives addressing root drivers constructively may do more to curb outsourcing than rules alone. Simply punishing peripheral actors risks overlooking the systemic dysfunction they help obscure. With open-minded reform, schools could regain their role asTrue mentors instead of faceless assessors.
Andrew Stroud