Diploma, inexpensive – the market for student work is estimated at 10 billion rubles

According to experts, the turnover of the student work market over the past few years has been up to 10 billion rubles. Literally everything is for sale: from term papers and tests to attending lectures and even passing tests, if the performer outwardly looks a bit like a customer.

The Fontanka editors found out who earns from students and how much, whether it is possible to distinguish the original from the purchased fake, and what they think about it in St. Petersburg universities.

In February, the story of the chat bot of the ChatGPT neural network and the savvy student of the Russian State University for the Humanities, who wrote a diploma with his help, thundered. In addition to him, there are tens of thousands of university students in Russia who prefer to spend money rather than time and nerves.

The average temperature for buyers – a sociologist from the regions

A spurt in demand for student work began at the end of the 2000s, with the spread of cheap Internet, said Alexander Davydov, head of the Khamovniki Foundation for Supporting Social Research. This foundation has done a great job of researching the market, determining the average price of different types of student requests and their number – by category.

Khamovniki have been following this problem for many years and note that progress has a strong influence on the development of the market: there used to be sites where the author left an application, and orders came to his mail, in the 2010s aggregators like Correspondence and “Avtor24”, then people began to fully master what social networks can offer them.

In 2019, the turnover of the market for term papers and diplomas fluctuated within 9 billion rubles, now it has grown slightly – up to 10 billion, Alexander Davydov noted. He identified several strata of clients who seek help with work more often than others. Among them, for example, are excellent students who go to a red diploma and are afraid to lose it, working students and those who entered the quota as a foreigner and do not have a sufficient level of knowledge and competencies to study at a Russian university.

More often, orders come from the regions and some universities of the capital – “Moscow and provincial middle peasants.” The fact is that in regional universities a formal attitude to learning is more developed, including because of the difficulties in the labor market, Alexander Davydov believes.

“In Moscow, we can easily imagine a person who receives a sociological education and goes into his specialty. In the regions, the labor market is much worse, so a person more often does not believe in principle that his education will correspond to his future work. Namely, the formal approach to education and the weak connection of specialties with the market generate demand for such services,” he stressed.

Among the record holders for honesty, according to his experience, are Shaninka (Moscow Higher School of Social and Economic Sciences), the Higher School of Economics and Baumanka. If we talk about faculties, the demand for the purchase of term papers and diplomas is more developed in the humanities and social sciences.

Where is better. Bad advice from a “burnt buyer”

At the request “buy a diploma”, search engines show hundreds of sites and offers: on Avito alone in St. Petersburg, there are 1564 such ads. It is not surprising that there are buyers, and even notorious shopaholics who prefer not to strain.

“I’m a savvy shopper who just graduated from university this way. Three coursework, about fifty control, independent and laboratory. And I bought my degree. I studied for the sake of a crust, the university was not very good, I could not transfer – I was afraid that they would be taken into the army. In general, I worked actively and bought scientific studies, now I’m already getting the second tower with my mind, ”Vladimir, who graduated from one of the leading St. Petersburg technical universities the year before last, told Fontanka. He also divided the market of scientific papers into three parts.

The first is the stock market. There, students and researchers exhibit their old works, and their newly minted comrades download ready-made ones. You can find there diplomas, term papers, abstracts, dissertations, and even practice reports. The prices are suspiciously ridiculous.

For example, a diploma in the profile “Vehicles” “Characteristics of the design object and analysis of its work” for 59 pages – 442 rubles, “Development of the technological process for welding fittings to the body” for 90 pages – 250 rubles. The same is the cost of a diploma in management “Analysis of the possibilities and conditions for obtaining state support for a small business in the Khabarovsk Territory.” Each of them – attention! — defended by five.

However, our expert Vladimir advises not to be deceived by the price: the catch is that the buyer, as a rule, will see the educational institution only on the title page when he has already bought the work.

“And what in one university is protected by five, in another university you can only wipe yourself. Works of some construction college of the Sverdlovsk region are exhibited there for advertising, and it is clear that in some St. Petersburg State University or St. Petersburg State University of Economics they will be kicked out of the university for such work.

The second category is aggregator sites, where not goods are presented, but manufacturers. As a rule, these are researchers or students of master’s and postgraduate studies, whose number of such works has already exceeded one thousand. For an individual approach, they charge more: a Fontanka correspondent left a request on several websites for a term paper on economics for 30-40 pages – no one could find cheaper than 5 thousand.

“If you choose an author, then the chances of not defending a diploma are much less. But there is a risk that the work will be stamped: market pros write term papers in 3-5 days, diplomas in a week and a half and, as a rule, simply insert new text fragments into their finished template, ”Vladimir explained.

“I am looking for a girl of Caucasian appearance who will pass an anatomy test for me”

The third is the “shadow market” in the universities themselves and through acquaintances. Usually there are a couple of excellent students in the university who want to earn extra money during the session and offer fellow students to do the work for them. According to Vladimir, this is the best option for not very obligatory students: the customer knows the performer, the performer knows the teacher.

Some universities even have separate social media exchanges, the students told Fontanka. As a rule, these are Telegram chats where those in need ask for help, and their colleagues offer their services.

Moreover, there are not only coursework and control papers in circulation, they also trade in souls, living and dead. For example, in chats you can find such announcements: “I’m looking for a girl of Caucasian appearance who will pass an anatomy test for me”, “I’m going to a lecture on economics for you, 300 rubles.”

Monetization of education. More than 70 thousand per month

I found “Fontanka” and a player on the other side of the barricades – the author of term papers and graduation theses. Petersburger Katya, who recently graduated from a university in the humanities, has been in business for a long time: she has been writing works for others since high school. The first clients applying for more serious work were a couple of friends, then half of the group, acquaintances of acquaintances, and further in the best traditions of word of mouth.

She started with one and a half thousand rubles for coursework and five to seven thousand for a diploma for college students, but later raised prices: course work comes out at an average of 3,500 rubles, a diploma – 10,000 rubles for a college, 12,000 rubles – for a university. June was record-breaking in terms of income – there were ten diploma students per month and, as a result, more than 70 thousand rubles. “I just monetized what I did best, study,” she explains.

At the same time, Katya does not work for any particular firm: in her experience, the demand is so great that clients find her themselves. Once she created a working page in one of the social networks, posted only one post there, and even there she found a buyer.

On average, work on Katya’s diploma takes 2–3 months, taking into account the waiting period for revisions from the supervisor, coursework takes one to two weeks. However, you often have to work in stages, because teachers require you to submit work in portions – then the deadlines may be delayed.

At the same time, those who want to earn extra money need to understand that writing student scientific papers is entirely seasonal work, Katya emphasized. The peak of demand for term papers falls at the end of autumn, for diplomas and practice reports – at the beginning of spring. The rest of the time, you can take only small orders: presentations, essays, diplomas. They are a constant value on the market, they come evenly throughout the school year.

Katya explains such a demand for her services not by the laziness and stupidity of students. “Somehow it happened that buying a diploma speaks of your low intellectual abilities or makes you look like a bad specialist. I strongly disagree with this, in my opinion, most of the guys simply don’t want to bother with these indentations according to GOST, the design of literature, shaking over anti-plagiarism and a bunch of imposed stress, ”she said.

The best offense is defense

In universities, the entrepreneurial spirit of some and the peculiar time management from others are not very welcome and they are trying to fight the sale and purchase. For example, Andrey Shevchik, rector of the Technological Institute, notes that it is not so difficult to identify students with purchased works. The defense procedure through which any diploma and coursework passes will save.

“When there is a defense, it is very easy to find out whether the student did the work on his own or not. We do not have the authority to conduct inquiries and checks, and we do not do this. We simply understand during the defense whether the student did the work himself or not. If a student swims, then the grade may be unsatisfactory,” he stressed.

At the same time, the demand for purchased student works is high, Andrei Shevchik believes: such a number of proposals cannot but be supported by demand from students. However, it is often easier for technical universities here: a term paper or a diploma, as a rule, is an experiment that is performed on the basis of university equipment.

Alexander Davydov believes that it is technically possible to catch a student, but in fact it is almost impossible. Only if you point out the discrepancy between the level of work and the level of the student and try to get recognition. And that is not necessary for all teachers.

“This is the biggest ethical issue – as a rule, it is acceptable for teachers that works are bought. There are a lot of them, they are of average quality, which means that you can spend less time checking,” he explained.