NAIROBI— On the University of Nairobi campus, talent is on sale.
Signs advertise for researchers or online writers — code words for those writing essays for paying students at universities around the world.
Aggrey Isoe has been in the business since 2010. As a freelancer, he can work wherever he wants. He gets his assignments through websites that post requests from students around the world.Isoe said he's written assignments for undergrads, master's students — even the occasional Ph.D. “The topics are broad — social sciences; the sciences, especially biology; law, business, marketing, psychology, sociology,” he said.
The work calls for a degree of creativity. Isoe once had to write a first-person experience for a student trying to get into a nursing program in California. “Actually, you have to put yourself into his or her shoes and be creative," he said. "In fact, the client（委托人，客户） was from India and she had to give reasons why she had to leave all the schools in India to come to that organization.”
Writers can find assignments on certain. On one site registered （登记，注册）in Kenya, a writer was being sought to turn out an undergraduate level essay in chemistry, eight pages long and due in 30 days. For that, the writer could earn a little over $90.
Pauline Chepkwony, a University of Nairobi graduate with an undergraduate degree in sociology and a master's degree in international affairs, is a former academic writer. She struggled with the ethics（道德规范）of doing this type of work.
“If you look at it from a moral or ethical perspective, it’s kind of ... it’s not right,” she said.
But she said the pay was good, and in the end the work helped her to be better at her own studies.
本时文内容由奇速英语国际教育研究院原创编写，禁止复制和任何商业用途，版权所有，侵权必究！