Argumentative essays are one of the most common types of essay students write. Of course, as any professor would tell you, the entire meaning of an argumentative essay is that the student writes it by themselves entirely. However, we don’t live in an ideal world, and in the real world a lot of students want someone to write an essay for them, that is, they seek argumentative essay help.
Demand for these services is high, and there is supply as well. There are both websites dedicated to argumentative essay writing services, and lone copywriters that offer help with these essays. Even professional researchers and the media pay attention to this phenomenon:
- In 2006, the industry was first identified by researchers as “contract cheating”;
- In 2017, British research showed that over 20,000 students used essay writing services;
- In 2018, a worldwide study showed that over 31 million students worldwide use essay writing services.
More recent surveys
During the early 2010s, two more surveys were anonymously conducted in Australia. According to one of these surveys, most respondents who admitted to using copywriting services and other forms of academic cheating were international students. Another Australian survey of 2013 confirmed this data and found out that international students are notably less disciplined in terms of academic honesty. There is a hypothesis that the widespread popularity of such practices among students from other countries has to do with the lack of foreign language support in academic processes.
According to a 2015 British survey, another group of students likely to use writing services were students who display general risk-taking behaviour at psychological profiling.
Is an essay writing service crackdown possible?
As university professors become aware of the widespread popularity of argumentative essay writing services, they draft more and more plans to counteract this industry. As we know, good writing service provides original content, and no plagiarism checker could detect an essay written by a skilled freelancer. Therefore, other kinds of software are required to stop it, such as writing style analyzers. However, a total crackdown on essay writing services is still a pipe dream. The reasons for that are the following:
- Universities lack the legislative power to ban essay writing services;
- It is not practical to subject all students to constant writing style screening;
- Contract fines such as revoking student credits are generally enough to thwart essay cheating if it is detected, but the main problem is detecting it.
What does it mean for an essay writer?
The first bit of good news for an argumentative essay writer is that the business is not going anywhere. There will not be any brutal crackdown on essay writing services that will destroy the demand for these services for good. Legal counteraction is not possible in most countries. And it is detecting outsourced essays that is the main problem.
The second bit of news is that there is a trend for rising quality of freelancer-written papers. One effective way of spotting them is low quality, and more and more essay writing services are raising their standards to avoid being detected. Therefore, any freelancer who wishes to stay in this industry should care about quality.
The distinction between services
Which essay writing services enjoy the greatest popularity? Of course, this depends on the service’s overall quality standards, but this is far from the only criterion. Many services have their own specialized traits that set them apart and attract certain types of students.
Low-cost services attract beginning writers and poorer students. Usually, no writer stays working for such a service for long, when they develop enough skill and experience, they migrate to a more profitable employer. Urgent writing services advertise their high speed. A student can order an argumentative essay at such a service and receive it the same day. The costs of using these services is often very high. Finally, reliable services offer higher standards of quality and disciplined writers who won’t miss a deadline. These essay writing services tend to be the most popular among students in all countries.