Call it unethical or illegal, outsourced academic writing is now a lucrative business that experienced educators and academic writers are excellently thriving on. A section of American students has now found a cheaper and easier way to get their auspicious 4.0 GPA's. Essay mills and essay-for-hire companies have sprung up in the last decade, thanks to globalization and the internet. A quick search on Google finds tons of essay mills and bots that offer academic writing services at affordable rates, from explanatory essays to argumentative essays, and even dissertations. For example, a 1,000 word essay can be fully completed within a turnaround of two to four hours, meeting guidelines like MLA outline or APA outline.

Contracting Academic Writing

Outsourcing academic writing has been debatable for quite some time among scholars, educationists, and researchers. Aside from the admissions scandals that the U.S. has been trying to solve, safeguarding the integrity and dignity of education is a huge problem now. Most colleges have online classrooms and blackboards where learners are taught by their instructors: just like the typical classroom environment, except it's done online. Weekly assignments, homework, discussion questions, quizzes, and even lab work have been entirely shifted to an online working environment. With students having the comfort of handling their assignments online and having open books take away tests, cheating and student impersonation have taken place. They outsource their tasks to essay mills that have perfected the art of academic writing. A quick look at some of these sites shows that their clients have a complete money-back guarantee, and their confidential information is impressively protected. These companies have writers, from college students looking to earn extra money for college expenses to professionals who are versed in the qualities of academic writing, like research, assignment structures like APA, Chicago, Harvard, and MLA format essays.

Lucrative Industry 

As studies show, over 10% of currently enrolled students outsource their academic work to oversees countries that are still developing. India, Ukraine, Nigeria, and Kenya are the leading developing countries that lead in offering online academic writing. Kenya, for example, has many graduates who are unemployed and need to earn a living. They have tens of thousands of students who successfully graduated from their various universities and colleges. They get exposed to a thin employment market where the available jobs cannot satisfy them all, which makes academic writing a viable option seeing as they are qualified in their various fields of study. 

Estimated Earnings

An entry-level Kenyan graduate has an estimated monthly income of $500. It is challenging to make a decent living with such an amount, which makes them turn to online jobs like academic writing where they are able to make more and usually never catch the eye of their internal revenue agencies and authorities. As reported by the New York Times, an academic writer is estimated to make as much as $2000 a month and as low as $500 a month. The business is lucrative since the writers work in the comfort of their home and are able to plan their own hours. The availability of work and their ability to take as much work as possible determines their earning capabilities. With a little hard work and determination, the booming online academic writing is now becoming a fulltime job for such individuals who are able to live a comfortable life with the earnings from the industry. Research shows that even students who have ongoing classes choose to engage their knowledge and skills on the tasks that, for sure, pay well as compared to their entry-level graduates. Another reason why academic writing is thriving is that there is little to no set regulations and laws that govern the industry.

Academic and essay writing is a source of pain for academic institutions, and as a result, such incidents face severe consequences, including suspension and expulsion of students. Essay mills have competitive packages and are highly applied for. Writers undergo several interviews, including video calls on skype, their academic qualifications, certificates, and even transcripts requested before they are hired. This shows how serious the business is in finding the right writers with regards to writing quality and education level. These individuals have high standards of education and are trying to make ends meet amidst their challenging economic lives. Academic essay writing will undoubtedly continue to pay bills for many individuals who are finding it hard to be formally employed despite being qualified. It is a no brainer that academic writers are making a kill in this business, making a decent living, buying or building homes, and educating their children from the proceeds of an industry deemed as the personification of academic dishonesty. Illegal and unethical it might seem, the business is continuing to thrive overseas.