Simbarashe Murima
It is a new academic year for freshman and returning college/university students.
Higher tertiary institutions play a leading role in concocting students for knowledge and skills accretion and career paths cardinal in their ongoing fields of study.
Patently, students are given assignments by the lecturers and tutors on all courses to examine their proficiency, problem-solving and research skills to their coursework. Additionally, to evaluate students’ learning outcomes and help them to totally understand the subject matter.
On the other hand, sickness, lack of knowledge and struggling to manage time efficiently maybe some of the factors that discourage students to execute their assignments and research engagements promptly.
Compellingly, in this contemporary education and learning paying or hiring someone to write the student’s assignments is booming and a common practice in higher institutions. Even though this practice has been around for a long time, is it ethical to pay someone to write assignments for you at university?
As expected, assignments are scholarly tasks assigned to students to complete individually or in a group. Students have to do research, read and practise adroit writing while shepherding their assignments that will ultimately tot up their abstract knowledge and skills.
Despite the aforesaid motives for hiring someone to do your assignments, it is wrong to pay somebody to do your assignments or research project, as this amounts to plagiarism, cheating and considered unfair to individually hard working students.
Plagiarism is defined as the representation of another person’s concepts, thoughts, or expressions as your own bona fide work sans acknowledging or citing their contribution. Miranda Devine writes . . . ‘‘Plagiarism is one of the great academic sins. It has the power to destroy a scholar or writer and turn a lifetime’s work to dust’’.
As a consequence, paying or asking someone to write your assignment or research paper, whether it’s your husband, wife, brother, sister, friend or colleague, is a form of plagiarism and an intellectual “theft”.
Certainly, payment is a mutual concordat between two parties depending on the individual’s situation and urgencies.
Paying another person to complete your assignments not only dents the educational system and debases your own learning. It deprives you the opportunity to learn and grow while depressing your intellectual adeptness.
Therefore, resulting in pitiable academic and professional corroboration at higher educational echelons. As a matter of fact, the “expert” who does the assignment or dissertation and the one who pays for and receives it are equally guilty of dishonest.
The sense of guiltiness is comparable to someone who ‘buys’ a drivers’ licence, his/her driving skills, knowledge and confidence is always questionable. Conversely, there are alternatives to paying somebody to do your assignment or research project.
For example, if you are inundated in keeping abreast with your workload, seek assistance from your lecturers to help guide you on the assignment or task, create study groups with other keen students to share ideas.
Furthermore, manage your time better which you can do by allotting yourself sufficient time for inquiry and studying as well as avoiding distractions from watching too much television, minimising addiction to Facebook, TikTok and other toxic social media platforms. It is better for the students to exhaustively learn the content material and complete their own assignments and projects than supporting such illicit academic practices. Earn your own success and hold your head up intelligently.
Simbarashe Murima (PhDc). He is writing in his own capacity as an Education, Tourism and Hospitality expert in Namibia and Zimbabwe. Feedback: s.murima@yahoo.com/ 0781480742/ +264814571709 (WhatsApp)