There is a secret industry that generates billions of dollars a year. Its workers are bright, industrious and completely anonymous. Their job is writing essays to order for students \u2013 in the UK and elsewhere \u2013 to help them get good degrees.<\/p>\n
These are \u201cshadow scholars\u201d, highly educated Kenyans who earn a living by working for essay mills. They are contracted to ghostwrite essays, PhD dissertations and other academic papers for students across the world, who pay a fee then pass off the work as their own.<\/p>\n
The role is not unique to Kenya. There are similar writers in India, Pakistan and any other number of countries, including the UK, but Kenya has been identified as a hotspot, with an estimated 40,000 ghostwriters working in Nairobi alone.<\/p>\n
They are the subject of a new film that talks for the first time to the young Kenyans who may be writing an essay or dissertation on any topic from mechanical engineering, nursing or quantum physics to Jane Austen, linguistics or Ho Chi Minh.<\/p>\n
Smart, ambitious, well-educated and tech-savvy, they worked hard to get to university, they graduated with good degrees, but there are no jobs. Instead they spend their days \u2013 and nights \u2013 logging on to essay-writing platforms, scrolling down the list of assignments and making their bids to win the work.<\/p>\n
The cameras follow the sociologist and Oxford professor Patricia Kingori as she travels to Nairobi to interview the writers and explore the power dynamics that enable students in countries such as the UK to secure degrees and begin lucrative careers without doing their own work.<\/p>\n
Patricia Kingori said it was important to overturn the idea that \u2018Africa isn\u2019t the place that is propping up educational institutions.\u2019 Photograph: Channel 4<\/p>\n
She is bowled over by the young people she meets. \u201cThey\u2019re incredible,\u201d she told the Guardian. \u201cI felt like I was entering a kind of elite athletes\u2019 camp. It\u2019s like being a recreational jogger and then suddenly entering an Olympic village.<\/p>\n
\u201cYou\u2019re able to write an essay, on a subject you\u2019ve learned nothing about, in six hours? How are you able to do this? They have to meet these deadlines, otherwise they get badly reviewed and they get kicked off the platform. They don\u2019t get extensions. They don\u2019t get sick notes. They just have to do it.\u201d<\/p>\n
Kingori, who is Kenyan-born, meets Mercy, a graduate and mother of Angel, who works through the night, sometimes having to master two different subjects for two different assignments in the space of 12 hours. She has had only three hours\u2019 sleep, but she needs the money.<\/p>\n
With the money he has made, Chege, who describes himself as one of Kenya\u2019s academic writing pioneers, paid for his own education, supported his sister through her degree, built his parents a house and bought himself a car.<\/p>\n
The writers create fake IDs, using white profiles and names, because they say it helps convince clients they are up to the task. \u201cIf you go online now and try to find help with an essay, invariably they sell you the service as if it\u2019s coming from somebody that\u2019s in the UK or the US,\u201d said Kingori.<\/p>\n
\u201cNothing that I\u2019ve seen will tell you that this is somebody in Nairobi. There\u2019s this idea that this could not be coming from an African country. This level of intellect and skills could not be coming from people in Kenya.<\/p>\n
The best paid shadow scholars can earn as much as a doctor in Nairobi. Pricing ranges from less than \u00a31 a page to thousands of pounds for a whole dissertation. Photograph: Channel 4<\/p>\n
\u201cAfrica isn\u2019t the place that educates us, right? This is the place where we do all the cake sales for, it\u2019s not the place that is actually propping up all of our educational institutions. So I think turning that on its head is really important.\u201d<\/p>\n
One of the writers in the film says: \u201cThey want our ideas. They just don\u2019t want us.\u201d<\/p>\n
skip past newsletter promotion<\/a><\/p>\n Our morning email breaks down the key stories of the day, telling you what\u2019s happening and why it matters<\/p>\n Privacy Notice: <\/strong>Newsletters may contain information about charities, online ads, and content funded by outside parties. If you do not have an account, we will create a guest account for you on theguardian.com<\/a> to send you this newsletter. You can complete full registration at any time. For more information about how we use your data see our Privacy Policy<\/a>. We use Google reCaptcha to protect our website and the Google Privacy Policy<\/a> and Terms of Service<\/a> apply.<\/p>\n after newsletter promotion<\/p>\n Another says: \u201cThere\u2019s no Kenyan writer who called an American citizen and asked them to do an assignment for them.\u201d<\/p>\n The best paid can earn as much as a doctor in Nairobi. Pricing can range from less than \u00a31 a page to thousands of pounds for a whole dissertation. Adrian has written essays for students at the universities of Oxford and Leeds, among others. Asked about the ethics of what he does, he said: \u201cFor me, I\u2019m gaining knowledge. I would pass that question to the client.\u201d<\/p>\n On the other side of the world is Kate, a US student who was falling behind with her studies and sold nudes so she could pay $300 for someone else to write her essays. Her parents invested their life savings in her education, which is costing tens of thousands of dollars a year, and she cannot bear to let them down.<\/p>\n Essay mills were banned in England in 2022, but one expert said students are still using them, though genAI is changing the landscape. Photograph: Channel 4<\/p>\n Essay mills were banned in England in 2022, but according to Thomas Lancaster, a computer scientist and expert on contract cheating at Imperial College London, students are still using them, though the advent of generative AI is changing the landscape.<\/p>\n \u201cContract cheating and the use of essay mills remains a major problem in UK higher education, as students are getting awards that they do not deserve. This is unfair to the vast majority of students, who are working and studying hard,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n