Vocabulary: cheating 詞匯：作弊

A BBC investigation has highlighted the growing problem of an industry where students can try to deceive teachers by paying to have their coursework written for them.

Tucked away in the windows of newsagents across London, in amongst the postcards advertising music lessons and childcare, there are some offering to write essays.

The essays are described as "model" assignments that students can use to guide them in their course of study. But according to the BBC's Reeta Chakrabarti, privately some of these firms are saying the work can be passed off by students as their own.

A reporter, posing as a student, spoke to six companies on the phone and when he asked if he could hand in the work provided to his tutor as if it was his own, all the firms clearly said that he could. Our undercover student also learned about smartly-dressed men standing outside campuses touting for business, especially towards the end of term, when the pressure on students is the greatest.

Universities are well set up to detect more traditional forms of plagiarism where extracts of someone else's work are used. But according to the Birmingham City University's professor Robert Clarke, this is much harder to identify in a bespoke essay, original but written by someone else. He thinks this should concern us all and asks: "Would you want to be treated by a nurse who's cheated on her assignment?"

There are serious implications for any student found to be buying an essay in this way. A student can be stripped of their degree or thrown out of university.

This form of cheating is not a crime, although there are some in academic circles who think it should be. And the offence is the student's.

The phenomenon affects universities in many parts of the world. Earlier this year, Harvard University officials said that dozens of its students were being investigated for allegedly helping each other cheat in an exam.

Up to 125 students in one undergraduate course are suspected of sharing answers or plagiarising.