Posts by TurtlesAllTheWayUp

TurtlesAllTheWayUp

Jul 25, 2016

Writing Careers / Possible academic repercussions of freelance essay writing? [11]

I've done a little writing for essay companies and I like the work. Lately I've been thinking about starting my own freelance essay business and possibly taking online classes for people as well. However, I'm concerned about anonymity. I've considered using a DBA name so customers wouldn't see my real name in Paypal, but it's my understanding that the fictitious name would still be linked with my real name in public records, if people were really inclined to search it out.

I'm not currently a student, but I want to go back to school to do a master's and possibly a Ph.D. eventually. My fear is that my future school would somehow find out about my work on the side. It seems really unlikely, but also possible, that a disgruntled customer could dig up my identifying information and make my school aware of it. (Not that I'm planning on having disgruntled customers, but it happens.) I don't want to do anything that could jeopardize my academic future.

I've searched the internet for information on this topic, but I can't find anything. Most people who do this kind of work seem to be out of school and I haven't spent enough time in this business to know if my worries are valid or not. I know academic ghostwriting isn't illegal, but that doesn't mean I wouldn't get in trouble with a university for it. What do you think? If you were planning to go back to school, would you still do academic writing for money?

Thanks.

TurtlesAllTheWayUp

Jul 27, 2016

Writing Careers / Possible academic repercussions of freelance essay writing? [11]

Thanks for the replies. Major, I think you're right that taking classes for others isn't a good idea, as there's pretty much no ethical justification for it. I'm poor and taking classes is what I'm best at, haha, which is why I was considering it, but I do feel a bit weird about it so I'll be steering clear of that one.

Regarding the academic writing, though, do you think a school would be skeptical about the ethics of my work even if I made it very clear that I don't condone cheating? Because realistically, no matter how many anti-cheating warnings I put on my website, I know and university administrators know that part of the customer base for pre-written essays is students who don't want to do their own work, and I doubt that my playing dumb would convince anyone. Not too many people are going to spend $100+ on custom-written CliffsNotes. Maybe my business would look more respectable if I also offered editing services and composition tutoring? I'm not sure if there's a way I can spin this that wouldn't raise any eyebrows.