Are online term paper sites causing an increase in student plagiarism?
Online term paper sites are plentiful and active; two years ago, over 200 sites were available (Atkins and Nelson 101). One term-paper-mill proprietor claims that they are one of the few profitable online businesses after the dot.com meltdown (see Glasner). But student plagiarism is a longstanding phenomenon, as Sue Carter Simmons’ historical research demonstrates. It may be that the Internet term paper sites are a now-obvious, now-visible part of an always-thriving term-paper industry that was previously conducted in much-rumored fraternity files and by mail-order ghostwriting companies (see, for example, Witherspoon).
