Essay cheating at universities remains an open secret, BBC finds

A BBC investigation has found that essay cheating remains widespread at UK universities despite a law passed in 2022 aimed at curbing the practice. Since April 2022 it has been illegal to provide essays for students in post-16 education in England, yet there have been no prosecutions to date. The BBC spoke with a former lecturer who described the issue as an open secret and with a businessman who says he has earned millions selling model answer essays to students. Universities UK, which represents 141 institutions, emphasized that there are severe penalties for students caught submitting work that is not their own, while noting the complex landscape created by international students and language barriers.

Alia, an international student whose name has been changed to protect her identity, said she and her 20 overseas classmates struggled with writing long essays during their course at the University of Lincoln. She said many of them stopped engaging as the semester progressed. Online essay-writing services offered to help students with assignments at roughly £20 for 1,000 words, and some classmates reportedly urged others to pay for ready-made work. The BBC found dozens of examples of companies continuing to advertise such services on their own sites and on social media. The law does not criminalize cheating by students themselves, but it makes it a criminal offence to provide, arrange or advertise cheating services for financial gain to students enrolled in any post-16 education in England.

The BBC interview with several participants highlighted the scale of the market and the tension between student pressures and institutional safeguards. One controversial figure, Barclay Littlewood, said he has built a company with a global network of about 3,000 freelance writers to produce essays on topics ranging from law to sociology. Based in Dubai, Littlewood claims his ranks include former lecturers and quotes prices that can start around £200 and reach as high as £20,000 for advanced degree work. When challenged, he argued that his essays were intended as model answers from which students could learn, not final submissions. He contends he has not broken English law, and that the product is designed to guide students rather than substitute their own effort.

In a separate segment of the investigation, the BBC arranged for Steve Foster, a former English-language lecturer at the International Study Centre affiliated with the University of Lincoln, to mark an essay generated using Littlewood’s tool. Foster, who taught at Lincoln for eight years before moving into the university’s business school, said the submission bore no human touch and contained no obvious errors, presenting as a solid 2:1. He noted that the work did not feel like a student’s own writing and that this kind of submission made it hard to assess genuine learning. Foster, who left the sector in 2024, said cheating was an “open secret” within the teaching community and suggested that the problem had snowballed because many educators turned a blind eye.

Turnitin, a leading plagiarism-detection service used by many universities, has acknowledged that the rise of artificial intelligence has intensified both detection and deterrence efforts. Annie Chechitelli, Turnitin’s chief product officer, said the company’s tools now face heightened demand as students and providers explore ways to evade detection. In Turnitin’s analysis, more than one in ten papers reviewed since 2023 showed that AI wrote at least 20 percent of the material. The company also noted that essay mills remain popular because some services claim to help students circumvent AI-detection tools, preying on students’ fears of being caught.

The Quality Assurance Agency (QAA) cautioned that essay mills “remain a threat to academic integrity across the UK.” Eve Alcock, the agency’s director of public affairs, urged universities to consider moving away from traditional essay-based assessments in light of generative AI tools. Such a shift could enable more authentic assessments and reduce opportunities for outsourcing writing tasks to third parties.

Universities have become increasingly reliant on higher fees from international students, a trend that has continued even as global competition for applicants grows. In the 2023-24 academic year, about 730,000 non-UK students were enrolled in UK universities, making up roughly a quarter of the overall student population. The BBC’s Freedom of Information requests to UK universities showed that, among the 53 institutions providing usable responses, 48 reported that international students were disproportionately represented in academic misconduct investigations. Universities UK did not offer a single explanation for this skew, but one institution pointed to the possibility that many cases involved poor practice, such as inadequate referencing, rather than outright intentional cheating.

The University of Lincoln, one of the institutions cited in the investigation, described academic misconduct as a sector-wide challenge. A spokesperson said Lincoln took such alleged breaches seriously and that investigations were conducted with appropriate responses when misconduct was confirmed. Lincoln’s published data showed that, of 387 investigations, 78 percent involved non-UK students who make up only 22 percent of the student population there. The university’s statement underlined that misconduct cases were addressed within established processes and that responses matched the findings.

The broader context includes policy and enforcement gaps. The Home Office sets English-language requirements as part of student visa conditions, and Universities UK noted that all universities have codes of conduct with penalties ranging from warnings to suspension or expulsion. Yet, the lack of prosecutions at the magistrate’s court, as reported by the Crown Prosecution Service and the Department for Education, suggests that enforcement has not kept pace with the scale of the problem, even as more universities use detection software like Turnitin and more students face pressure to succeed in competitive programs.

Alia, who completed her course, reflected on the mixed legacy of her degree. She said the experience left her feeling conflicted about her achievements and questioned how future employers would view her work relative to peers who relied on essay-writing services. “I have learned a lot myself, and achieved a lot, but how is the employer going to see the difference between someone like me and these people?” she asked. “When the grades were released, for most of the modules they got better grades and were laughing at me. I am not proud of this degree anymore.”

As the investigation unfolds, education officials, universities and students face a complex balancing act: maintaining academic integrity while addressing genuine language and cultural barriers, the pressure to attract international students, and the rapid evolution of AI that could change what counts as authentic assessment. The BBC’s findings suggest that enforcement under the 2022 legislation remains uneven and that deeper reforms—potentially including more varied types of assessment beyond traditional essays—may be needed to restore trust in the value of UK higher education.

The BBC’s ongoing coverage emphasizes that, while laws are on the books, the practical enforcement of those laws depends on universities, prosecutors and the willingness of students to adhere to codes of conduct. In the meantime, the debate about how to assess learning in a world where AI can generate high-quality text continues to shape conversations about the future of culture and education.