Australian students cheat by outsourcing homework on foreign websites for 2 U.S. dollars

Australian high school and university students have been found outsourcing their homework to websites in India, Pakistan and Egypt which provide English essays and maths papers for as little as two U.S. dollars, Australia's media reported on Sunday.

According to News Ltd newspapers, these websites offer fixed- price tariffs or auction-style services where students post their assignments, and mostly graduates from India and Pakistan bid to take on the projects.

The Sunday Telegraph tracked down one worker offering his services, graduate Mohammed Ali Khan, 23, of Islamabad, Pakistan.

"It's my part-time job," Khan told The Sunday Telegraph on Sunday. "I get work from all over the world including Australia, the U.S. and the United Kingdom."

Schools are powerless to stop cheaters using the outsourcing services, because custom-made work cannot usually be detected by plagiarism software. And Academics expressed concerns about the new customized cheating factories on the net.

According to University of Western Sydney associate dean Craig Ellis, in the past five years there has been an explosion in sites where you can download pre-written assignments.

He said the trend towards custom-produced work at such low costs is particularly worrying, because it is much harder to spot.

Meanwhile, Australia's New South Wales Department of Education warned that any students caught cheating would be given zero marks.

Source: Xinhua