What is the future of the Academic Research Industry?

I have been following all shades of discussions going on in this forum before I cautiously decided to join.

While I don't want to be drawn into the two extreme points that act as the general references of steering debates here, I have been wondering this scenario:

Supposing the essay industry grows bigger and bigger to an extent that even the leading players(companies) file for IPOs(lol!), will these companies(especially in the US and UK) become fully integrated into the world of business and have code of ethics, standard benchmarks......etc that characterize the more conventional businesses?. And what would be the implications to the educational standards?

Would I be wrong to hypothesize the development of a 'fully' grown academic research industry that rakes maybe $4b every year?

What laws govern the academic research industry in different States in the US?

I might plead ignorance but can someone tell me- who is the average custom paper buying customer?

a) A bright but time-constrained student?
c) A rich student kid?
d) An ESL student with language difficulties?

I'd love to hear some insightful opinions

Thanks Guys.....

I'm a bright student but my foray into the industry has shown me that the quality is pretty abysmal unless yeah, you're a dummy to begin with and couldn't critique what you received anyway. I don't think the industry will be taking over but serves the education system right if it ever did. The whole system is up the put.

I don't think there is really an average customer. From my experience, A-D all exist and more, there are as many reasons as there are customers.

I didn't indicate anywhere that i sought the services of any essay writing company. And i am not a 'dummy'(to use your word). I simply wanted to know the 'big picture' purely for some research reasons. Don't you think the essay industry is ripe to warrant some serious research into its operations?

I think you took my reply all wrong. I was just letting you know of my experiences and why I dont think the industry is really good enough to be that big. I thought that was kinda what you were asking. I certainly wasn't calling YOU a dummy or insinuating you were looking to use an essay writing company.

Sorry for that misunderstanding. It is only that I suspect the industry could be enormous- only that it is extremely hard-almost impossible- to actually know and quantify what happens behind the scenes(customers orders, financial transactions and so on) and thus quantify its size. In fact the few newspaper articles I have come across can only at the very best estimate the industry's size. For example, yesterday I saw an article in The Telegraph estimating the essay industry in the UK to be worth £200 million(2010).

Perhaps out of naivety, I was assuming that one day, the industry will come above board and act like any other industry.

Or perhaps the whole industry might come to a one, big stop. I have heard university administrators opine that universities might be forced to eventually do away with home work/essays/ dissertations and use classroom based tests as their appraisal methods. However, this approach is fraught with difficulties as dissertations/thesis play a critical role in assessing a student's competency in his/her field(for students who write their own dissertations, anyway).

Phd - How do you define "above board?" If you mean by this a time when there will be no scams and all customers will be happy with the product they receive then the answer is never since there are scams and poor products in every industry. Otherwise there are already registered companies and tax paying writers that do operate in a legitimate fashion like in any other industry. Just because some people frown upon an industry be it essays, tobacco or anything else dose not mean an industry is not "above board."

The future of our trade...

I'm a new writer here but I was wondering.. what are everyone's thoughts on the current press essay services have been receiving? As a Canadian, I've seen multiple news stories about this topic, both on the provincial and federal level (i.e. in national news sources). It frightens me to some degree, even though I know that cheating is a business--like the oldest business in the world--that will likely never disappear.

Furthermore, I know it sounds horrible, but does anyone 'get off' on doing essays? There's just something about the badness of it..

The bad, typically seasonal press will always be there. Note that if you write for a real company, they have proper Terms of Use which deny services to students who consider cheating; the problem may be with your 'private' customers (if you want to be 'covered' you must have your own Terms of Service available to them, usually included in the footer of an email if you don't have your own website).

I don't find any problem with the seasonality. I've been trying to fight them off recently to get some off-time (and it's JULY). I work for 3 companies - one goes VERY strong throughout the summer, second one is medium and the last one gives almost nothing.

I wonder why one essay research service would have a lot of jobs during summertime, and others would have hardly any jobs (don't they target the same students/audience)? Either way, July seems to be the slowest month overall.

I don't think seasonality is the problem. I think that students are becoming wise to the scam that is being run by these companies so they have decided to steer clear of them. I think one of the reasons for the decline in student use of these services is the fact that the universities and schools now have Writing Centers where the students are encouraged to come in so that they can get free help with their research paper and essay development. If a student truly wants to learn, he will take advantage of those free school services.

Aside from that, there are also all of these free online grammar checker, plagiarism checker, and editing services that allow the student to write the paper himself, get professional opinions from experienced reviewers, and then edit the paper on their own. Saves them time, stress, and aggravation when the work they order isn't what is delivered. The low order placement rate is all because the academic writing industry is slowly killing itself because of the scam it runs on the students. These poor kids get dismally written papers and then, are unable to get proper revision work or refunds from these companies. I would not be surprised if the news about that has spread in the student community. Which has resulted in the lower than usual order placements in some companies. The other companies that still have a high rate of orders probably have ventured into other venues of writing other than academic in order to keep their company afloat.

@Smiley73
You have no idea what the hell you're talking about. How about you actually do some work in this industry before going all high and mighty. From everything you've written, you sound like a bitter "writer wannabe" (who needs serious work on his grammar by the way) and not an expert as you portray yourself. Anyone who has been in this line of work for longer than a week can recognize your clear lack of knowledge about it, so I suggest that you try to understand what it is you're talking about before opening your trap.

How about you telling us what's it all about instead of attacking him/her?

So you agree that all companies are scams? Or that this type of service is completely off base and we are all here just to scam people? If so, what are you doing here? Also, from personal experience, the number of orders and the quality of product varies heavily. So putting everybody in the same basket based on (presumably) poor individual experience - which I assume this dude has had - is NOT a viable argument. Not to mention it's completely wrong, but that's a different point entirely, isn't it?

As a person who worked for a number of academic writing companies over the past 20 years, I say that yes, there are companies that scam both the student and the writer. These companies come out of India and the Ukraine mostly. I'd like to clarify though, I meant to say that if you work for a company located in one of those countries that really don't have any safeguards to protect the earnings of the writer or the payment of the student then yes, it is a scam.

However, if you work for yourself, then you obviously don't fall under that classification. An honest academic writer who works for himself relies on the word of mouth from satisfied clients to build his business. Therefore, he will never scam a student. He needs that student to be happy with his work because his business earnings depend on it. These other writing companies, most of whom I have worked for, don't function that way. They make it difficult for the students to get their refunds back when the writer assigned is obviously inferior. They penalize writers are a whim to the point where no salary is received in certain instances as well. These companies often use the "bait and switch" maneuver to get the client to sign up for the service. They offer writers lucrative per page offers then don't follow through once the writer begins to work for them. Those are the scam companies who make it difficult for the academic research industry to come out of the shadows.

I would like to add something to what I have already said. If the academic research and writing industry is to have a future, then arrangements with universities and schools world-wide need to be made so that the industry can be regulated to certain standards that protect all concerned. Educators must willingly accept the work that the students pass to them without question or reservation provided he does well in other aspects such as in class exams and exercises.

Yes, I do know what I speak of...

Most of the new analysis you provided after my critique is accurate, although still overly generalized. However, there will never be a time when Universities and other institutions accept this line of work, never.

I was right, then, that you've had bad experiences. Most of us had, but you need to make sure to separate those from the evidence, since there are many companies that actually provide good services, and have nothing to do with scams. They should not fall prey to your or anyone else's generalizations!

Finally, not all private writers are to be trusted, but if someone has a proven resume and a bunch of orders on their back (which they can prove, of course) than they're a pretty safe bet. There's a whole bunch of people who claim to be writers but are not, nor will they ever be.

That's the problem - an 'inferior' writer completes an order and then he/she is penalized (because the company needs to refund or credit). Then they may complain about it in public and the viscous cycle continues. The problem are companies that hire poor writers in the first place (and then those low-level writers publicize the fact they had been fined or penalized, without telling the whole story).

@Major I agree with you on that. However, I am not one of those writers. I was actually the writer the company came to in an effort to fix the paper and placate the client. It is this talent of mine that led me to my ranking as Writer 1st Class at the company. One of the highest ranking writer positions they gave to the truly talented writers who had a high rate of return clients. Sometimes though, they would pass the paper on to me too late for me to work my magic on the client. So I would end up getting penalized along wih the original writer. That normally happened when the client demanded a refund even after he recieved a highly satisfying version of the paper from me. The client would say, " I wish I got this version sooner. My deadline passed and I failed the assignment /class. Just give me a refund please." I wish I could name the company here in order to offer evidence to support my claims. I don't think that it will accomplish anything though. So I'll just leave you to your opinion. It makes for a healthy and informative discussion in the thread.

So if they penalized two writers for the same order, they would actually make money even if they really refunded. Penalizing two writers could make them more money than completing the order without penalties; that's a good business model (for them : }

Yeah. It's a good business model for them that translates into lousy treatment of the hardworking writers. I'm sorry if I sound so disgruntled at times. It's just that I worked, at this company in particular, for over 6 years, even after the management changed regularly every year and all the powers that be did was find ways to get around paying the writers.

If the future of the academic research industry is left in the hands of business runners like these people, they will run it into the ground. Nobody will want to work for companies because of the distrust. While those who are honest to goodness freelance writers will have to find effective ways and means to constantly battle the bad press that these negative companies have given the industry.

I really hope that the future of the academic industry will be one that finally has companies that treat the writers and the clients on the level while the independent writers set the foundation for less middle men (companies) and more direct (freelance writer) hiring. Since the field run by companies can't seem to set a standard for quality essays and fair writer treatment, maybe the independent writers can do that and force the companies follow their lead instead.

What is the future of the academic writing industry? Everything that has previously been said may have held truth at the time. However, Covid - 19 and the sudden digitization of the classroom has changed the game. Classes are now more relaxed, being combined with physical classroom and remote learning has given the students a new sense of freedom and less stress when it comes to homework. Do they still need academic writers? Yes. How often will they need one? That is a guessing game. It will all depend upon how serious the change to the learning and assignment atmosphere will end up being. Academic writing will always have a place in the learning industry. How vast that influence will be in the future is what we cannot tell. The academic shakeup hasn't stopped yet. So let's just hold on and see what the end result will be. As writers and owners of academic writing companies, we should simply prepare for the changes in the business so that we can continue to survive in the new world.

What makes you think that college professors are assigning fewer written assignments just because many institutions have transitioned to on-line learning? About half of my clients have always been students enrolled in online institutions and they need just as many essays as their counterparts enrolled in traditional institutions.

Our view of the future in your writing career was viewed through rose colored glasses for such a long time. I miss those days when our careers were non threatened with irrelevance and we had more clients that we could handle. AI and the advent of modular classes changed all that. Modular classes now means that students can study at their own pace and submit their papers at their own pace as well. Deadlines are almost a thing of the past. AI writing is what students turn to because they do not have to spend on having a human writer do their class papers. Although AI plagiarism is still a problem, the students have gotten around it by reviewing and improving the paper themselves, or paying a human writer to improve the AI work. Either way, writers are becoming irrelevant because students have a strong belief in the way that AI will continue to improve and become a vital writing assistant for them both academically and professionally.

I get more and more project inquiries from students who send me some portion of the project with a request to continue and complete it as well as already-completed projects with requests for me to "edit" or "improve" them. They usually don't admit to having used AI for it, but it's pretty obvious from their responses to my asking who wrote whatever they want me to look at and/or why they only wrote a portion of it. In any case, I usually have to tell them that the draft they provided is unusable (because it almost always is complete garbage) and that the only thing that I can do for them is write the whole project from scratch without using anything from their drafts. I tell them that it's none of my business who wrote the draft or how it was produced, but that I can't work with material that may not be accurate and I suggest that they Google the phrase "AI hallucination."