The Lure of Paper-Mills to Composition Students

Ritter, Kelly.  “The Economics of Authorship: Online Paper Mills, Student Writers, and First-Year Composition.”  College Composition and Communication. 56.4 ( June 2005), pg. 601-631

A couple of years after finishing my undergraduate degree, I was browsing online for some way to utilize my ability to read and write in a profitable manner, when I stumbled across a paper-mill website. As discussed in “The Economics of Authorship” by Kelly Ritter, these websites sell term papers to students using rhetoric that makes authorship comparable with ownership (615-616).  In our consumer driven society, a student who does not have a firm grasp on what is or is not academically appropriate may believe that by buying a paper they own authorship of the paper.  (617) In my personal experience, the website initially seemed legitimate; on the surface they made a strong enough case for their products, and it was a novel enough idea to me that I was on the fence as to whether or not writing for them would be enabling plagiarism for an hour or two, until I considered the ethical implications of behind grading such a paper.

In her article, Ritter emphasizes the importance of clarifying the meaning of “academic dishonesty” to students.  Academic dishonesty is not a matter of disputed ownership; that is, the monetarily transferable “rights” to use a work, but a matter of authorship, that is, the student’s personal demonstration of the ability, creativity, and originality to write the paper (Ritter 615-616).  Ritter also discusses the value students place on their own work, claiming that assignments that limit student’s originality and creativity may make them question the worth of the works they author (613).  Finally, she addresses the fact that students may privilege “paper mill” papers over their own work because they connect the idea of authorship with the idea of fame, greatness, (613) and “quality”, the latter which is promised by paper mills, for a price (622).   

This article did an excellent job of dissecting possible student perspectives and justifications for using a relatively novel form of plagiarizing, the paper mill. By being aware of the student mindset, teachers of composition can better teach and inform their students about what constitutes plagiarism in an academic community.