Ghostwriting versus academic writing: is the line too fine?

As noted in an earlier post about ghostwriting, in other fields of endeavor, ghostwriting is common practice. It is only in academia that ghostwriting is considered wrong for ethical reasons. Sure, I realize that most clients do not use our work product as it is intended (as a guide only), but assuming that they do, academic ghostwriting would appear to be just as legitimate. About half of my clients are teachers or healthcare practitioners who just can't write. I've also written for the clergy (attending divinity schools), students attending the Army War College (several times), a project for a student intended for my state's governor, a Middle East oil minister and countless others. There has to be some worth in there somewhere.

If you want someone to say that essay writing is upstanding work, you might be out of luck. It's amoral. It's just a question of whether it bothers you or not. More specifically, if it does bother you, it's a question of whether the money outweighs that. Can you sleep at night knowing that you're chipping away at the ivory tower?

You're right about me wanting some legitimacy for the profession in general and me in particular, but you're also right about the other stuff too. I guess my point was that the practice is accepted everywhere else and the ability to write papers is not necessarily a reflection of learning. There are better ways of assessing academic achievement and forcing students to resort to our services is the "but for" in this situation. Teachers are too busy or lazy to learn and apply these alternatives, but thank God they don't. Chipping away is fun and profitable.

I don't even accept the proposition that it's necessarily amoral because formal rules can be (and often are) arbitrary and/or illogical. For example, the moral character of drinking or selling alcohol isn't changed by Prohibition: it can be made legal or illegal by Congress or statute, but taking a swig from the same bottle in your cabinet was not moral the day before and immoral the after Prohibition went into effect. Some laws do concern moral issues but many do not. The only legitimate moral argument against most instances of ghostwriting in academia is that it's unfair competition against other students who write their own papers.

There would be a moral issue if there were a connection between writing assignments and the actual qualifications of students as relates to their intended fields and professions, but not otherwise, and not when those writing assignments are unnecessary in the first place. The vast majority of the opportunity for academic ghostwriting only exists in the first place because colleges waste the time of engineers and nurses (etc) satisfying writing requirements that are useless to them and unnecessary for them. Generally, students who need ghostwriting don't go into fields where their ability to write is important. Engineers need to know engineering and nurses need to know nursing; there's just no reason to force either of them to take History or English Literature courses that they have no interest in and whose material they won't remember a week after their exams anyway. Nobody is harmed by the fact that an engineer or nurse bought a paper on World War II in college. Even when they do their own writing, it's usually nothing more than stringing together the ideas they find in their sources and wouldn't meet the standards of academic writing if their professors cared enough to check beyond just making sure they didn't copy & paste directly from sources. They usually don't check any further than that because they don't care either, precisely because it really doesn't matter.

There would be a legitimate moral issue if engineers or nurses paid someone to take their exams in their majors because that would enable unqualified engineers and nurses to build unstable buildings or dispense the wrong medications. Unless students are going into a field where their actual job emphasizes writing, it's nobody's business (including their academic institutions') that they can't write much more than an informal email, and most students who purchase ghostwriting aren't going into those fields. Otherwise, colleges have no reason to force students to write in the first place because their only concern should be what students learn substantively, and that can be (and is) tested sufficiently on exams; and exams can include essay questions if it really matters that students be able to express their knowledge that way. If they can write well enough to pass an in-class essay-question exam, they can write well enough that it's nobody else's legitimate business whether they choose to work on improving their writing any more than that.

[While I respect both of the posters above, there are also plenty of dummies here who will be tempted to respond with the (very) obvious counterarguments. Please spare me because I can make them better than you can; trust me on that. I just don't believe that the strongest counterargument here prevails on the issues.]

i agree it's amoral, but i think the above is a really significant point. this industry exists for a reason and inefficient teaching practices and antiquated college requirements are definitely a contributing factor.

...we all know that "amoral" and "immoral" are two very different things, right?

yes, we know. nobody cares.

Yes, I think we do. Thank you, Captain Obvious.

You said it WAY better than me.

If you call yourself a writer, you ought to.


Given that some people were using the two words interchangeably, I'm not sure it's so obvious to everyone. The fact that this discussion is happening is evidence that most people don't consider it "amoral" at all, and no one has actually supported an argument that the issue is amoral. You advanced the notion without any real explanation, and the rest of discussion has been about the morality of the issue--mostly why it is justifiable. I, too, think it is justifiable, but anyone that morally justifies the industry is also clearly insisting that it is not an amoral issue at all.

Thank you all for your spirited responses, viewpoints and arguments -- and you didn't even get too personal! Given that we learn a little (or a lot) from each of the papers we write, we must be the smartest people in the world. Where's that Jeopardy application...

p.s. Johnsmom: Did Paul write those thirteen letters? What do you think? (I'm writing a paper).

Throwing in my ten cents worth into the discussion here. I know it's late. Don't bite my head off please. I just want to share my thoughts regarding this highly interesting and still relevant topic. I still believe that the line has been erased in terms of ghost writing and academic writing because both of them should be considered illegal if you think about it. A ghost writer pretty much writes a speech, solely based on an idea given to him by the speaker. The speaker doesn't care about what the speech contains, as long as what he wants to say get across to the listener. The same goes for academic writing. The student doesn't care how the paper is completed, as long as the instructions for writing the paper are followed. So one is no better than the other since the same objective is accomplished in the end. So the line isn't just fine, it doesn't exist. If one considers that the students these days spend a specific amount of time with tutors after school, asking for writing help can't be considered a bad thing or amoral because we are simply offering up a service that the tutors can't. Our purpose is also to help educate the student by helping them develop papers that they can read and learn from prior to submission to their professors or teachers.

I have experienced having helped people from various fields complete their written requirements. My clients, just like ProfessorVerb, varied from the academic to the professional. All of them had one thing in common. They all knew what they wanted to say, they just couldn't put it into writing.

I had students coming to me with their outline and almost unreadable notes, begging me to help them put their ideas into an understandable form. Since they did most of the work already and just needed help to put their work into a more academic presentation, I was always more than happy to help them out. Do I consider that helping them cheat? No. Why? Refer to my previous statement.

I also had students come to me asking to do their work from scratch because they had the material, but no idea how to use it. I helped them. Why should their grades suffer just because they are not capable of using the materials they have on hand? Did they submit it for a grade? I pretty much did not care. My only part in this instance was to make sure that they had something usable, for whatever purpose they intended it for.

As for the priests who asked me to write their homilies, the lawyers who asked me to write their case briefs and summations, and nursing and medical students who asked me to complete their case studies, These were people who simply did not have the time to do the work between their classes, regular jobs, and other chores. Who was I to say I could not help them? Of course I did.

Academic writing and ghostwriting are the same in my opinion. There is no fine line dividing them because both of the practices have the same purpose, to help a person get his thoughts down on paper in a manner that can be presented to other people for reading and consideration.

My definition of ghostwriting and academic writing is similar to @WriteReview. Both require the writer to complete a project, most often from start to finish, where the writer will not be known or disclosed. What the client does with the project upon its completion (right or wrong) is, frankly, not the writer's business. The writer is hired to do a job. When the writer has received payment and the project has been delivered, the job is complete. The project is now owned by the buyer. The writer no longer exists, in that sense (aka being a ghost). If the writer has qualms about how the end project will or will not be used the best course of action is to not accept the order in the first place.

If we're being entirely honest, that would, essentially, rule out this entire line of work for the same reason as it would rule out the business of manufacturing rolling papers and bongs if their manufacturers had qualms about anybody using those products to smoke anything but tobacco.

@FreelanceWriter
Exactly. The line is fine, and the area is gray. (See my reply to the OPs point 6: https://essayscam.org/forum/wc/academic-writing-jobs-possible-disadvantages-downsides-6178/ )

I'm going to retire soon and happily thanks to a recent decision by the VA and 52 years of hard work.

No one is "entirely honest" (come on -- let's get real -- but I try very hard to be). In the interim I have to point out that legitimate academic writers not only care about you, they care about your family and friends -- we're only human. I sincerely want all of my clients to achieve their full academic potential, and I believe the 10,000_ model papers I've written over the years have helped. I've had hundreds of clients who graduated write me and tell me how their lives were changed for the better thanks fo me, and these responses were humbling. Regardless, though, I'm not a humble person and I take pride in my work. I've tried my best over the years to help people who have been waylayed by busy schedules, surgeries, illnesses, failed marriages and other disabilities, and trust that my work speaks for itself. Say what you will about his industry, but we have a 4000-year legacy that supports our efforts. Here's to us..

I often find that academic writers have an extensive preference to be referred to (alternatively) as ghost writers. In ghostwriting, you simply do not own any rights of acquiring the work because you've accomplished the task precisely for the client. Because of this, you're technically ghostwriting when you're doing academic writing. There's no thin line as the line does not exist. You can use both bylines if you're introducing yourself as a writer in the industry.

I believe that there is a demarcation line between ghost writing and academic writing. Each has a specific purpose and meant for a particular audience but with a tremendous amount with regards to the content. A ghostwriter is given talking points with which to write a speech, a book, or possible debate responses for specific people. They know the questions and they have been given the possible responses prior to the writing of the material. While an academic paper is based only on the topic provided and information the writer will research on his own. Based on that comparison, one can clearly see that a ghostwriter has an easier time completing his task when compared to an academic writer. The ghostwriter has the responses provided for his writing. All he has to do is expand on it. An academic writer has to seek out the information that he will use to create the paper and then hope that the client will think like him when it comes to the research he developed. If not, he has to revise the paper. A ghostwriter rarely has to make revisions (if at all) to the work he submits.