Border Lines

It’s that time of year again. Time to go back to school. The kids in Texas have just returned back to school the other day. And colleges are going to be starting their school years again soon, as well. And it’s time to start thinking about homework, tests, and term papers. Yes, not only do college students have to take tests, if you ask them they’ll tell you that they have to write longer and longer term papers. Against the school rules, there are companies out there that will sell you a term paper if you need to buy one.

If you are in college, and your term paper (the one that you have not written yet) is due tomorrow or in a few days do you dare search Google for “term papers” and hire someone to write a term paper for you? There are literally hundreds of web sites out there that offer term paper assistance and custom term papers for sale.

Plagiarism in education is a big issue that schools have to deal with just about every day. We all wish that students took the time that they have and write the papers themselves. But, with the invention of the internet, Google indexing more and more documents on the web, and other means of checking for duplicate content, educators, professors, teachers, teacher assistants, assistant professors, have more and more opportunities to catch those who plagiarize.

A few years ago, a group of educators demanded that Google stop allowing the “term paper companies” to advertise via the Google AdWords program. Google has since stopped allowing advertisers to bid on certain keywords. However, Yahoo! Search Marketing has yet to stop this practice. Through the Yahoo! Publisher Network and and on Yahoo! there are still paid advertisements for term papers. I’ve recently talked with an advertiser who has tried to bid on “term papers” and on related keywords but they’ve been stopped after an editorial review. However, ads for term papers and related services still continue to run on Yahoo! and their partner sites. I recently went to Yahoo!’s <a href=”http://www.flickr.com”>Flickr</a> photo service and captured the following ads:

MSN.com still allows advertisers to pitch and sell their term paper services on their site, as well. Let’s take a look at the term paper advertisements on MSN.com:

There has been an online petition to appeal to Google to stop allowing advertisers to bid on these words. It’s been a few years now. And yet MSN and Yahoo! still allows the bidding on these keyword phrases. In that petition, they asked Google to stop “undermining education” by continuing the ads to run.

Let me ask you; if you are a college student now, and you have a term paper due tomorrow afternoon, will you sit down and write that term paper? Or will you go on over to MSN or Yahoo! or perhaps even companies that write term papers for you and order a term paper be written for you?

Do you dare?

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