The plagiarism circles that were organized around them continue to go unscathed. Greek Universities. Companies on a paid basis write theses, master’s theses, articles for students. And although aspects of the problem have been repeatedly pointed out and means of combating plagiarism are improving as technology develops, and there are many complaints that have reached the court, in practice nothing is being done, despite intentions and statements to the contrary.

In particular, Mr. Angel Sirygos, the Deputy Minister of Education in charge of higher education, published his complaint to the Attorney General’s Office of Athens against companies engaged in the writing of undergraduate, master’s, and postgraduate and thesis papers. According to his complaint, companies actively provide drafting and editing services in a variety of disparate scientific disciplines (statistics, law, mathematics, philology, sociology, etc.), usually by young graduates who work with each company. These companies not only write articles for students to take courses, but also articles for blogs and websites. “This was likely before ChatGPT, Microsoft’s artificial intelligence algorithm, was released last December,” he said. mockingly commented yesterday “K”. “Many companies get lion’s share of tuition at universities, there are a lot of them around campuses,” he noted. talking to “K”, Mr. Sirigos.

Much of the activity is carried out within the shadow economy, and payments are made without proof. Student reports, however, speak of up to 500 euros. Of course, the price depends on the volume of each task and the degree of its complexity. Different price for papers provided in the context of an undergraduate, undergraduate or graduate course, lower than the fee for undergraduate students who write papers for junior courses.

Companies advertise predominantly on the Internet, without skipping individual ads on school walls. “Every day we manage to help schoolchildren, students and specialists. On our platform, you will connect with the most trusted professional writers for guaranteed results,” says one company. In addition, many groups advertise on social media as a physics, chemistry, philosophy (or any other university subject) group, adding the university whose students they are targeting. For example, such as This was reported to K by NTUA rector Andreas Butuvis., an e-mail sent to students of the School of Agronomists and Surveyors – Geoinformatics Engineers, among other things, reported: “… (note: the company name is mentioned) consists of a team of qualified surveyors of 12 people. and civil engineers, NTUA graduates with master’s degrees in Greece and abroad. In recent years, we have been engaged in full editing and writing of theses, abstracts and term papers, solving questions from last year’s exams and tutoring support. To date, we have completed a total of over 100 theses, 450 term papers and subjects, and 180 students in private lessons, with abstracts always graded on a 10-point scale and exam pass rates of over 97%.” And the message continued: “At the same time, we have the best prices on the market, combined with the fastest delivery of works. In any case, absolute confidentiality and anonymity are maintained. Our team also provides a guarantee of the quality of the work performed. In particular, a free plagiarism check is offered and, of course, free corrections / additions that can be offered by the responsible head professor. However, Mr. Butuvis has been filing a relevant report with the Athens Prosecutor’s Office since the beginning of 2022, since reported “K” yesterdaysince then there has been no development.

Control systems

On the other hand, universities have had plagiarism control systems in place for many years, and Turnitin software has recently been installed in university libraries. This checks the submitted work for unintentional or intentional plagiarism. In addition, the program can check whether the original work submitted by a university student was subsequently copied by other university students. Ternitin evaluates the “level of relevance” of each article to scientific sources, and the teacher evaluates whether the student has plagiarized.

Such as Mr. Sirygos underlined the “K”.“plagiarism and writing assignments for pay are the most common violations. I have already referred such cases to the prosecutor’s office. In addition, the student disciplinary law now provides as a misdemeanor “plagiarism or concealment of the direct or indirect contribution of other persons to the subject of scientific activity or research”, entailed consequences.

Numbers

5% this is the approximate percentage of students who copy on each exam.

100-150 The “tariff” for anyone who undertakes to conduct a lesson through a teleexam is from 10 euros.

500 The euro is the maximum “fare” charged for work.

10% an upper limit is estimated that a task can have texts from other tasks.