This question has bothered every student at least once in a lifetime. It becomes especially painful when you have no time and no energy to complete your academic papers by yourself. This issue provokes many debates between people who protect essay writing services and others who claim these services to be both illegal and unethical.
Let's figure out whether it's okay to pay to write a college essay once and for all! Firstly, we'll look into the legal aspect of this issue.
Is It Legal to Order Essays Online?
First of all, the very fact of your cooperation with writing services is TOTALLY LEGAL. They do their job, pay taxes, and you pay for their efforts. You do the same things every day when you pay for pizza delivery, bus tickets, or coffee.
But there is one nuance. The use of the ordered samples can be illegal in two cases:
- You copy the whole text and present it as your own. That's cheating. And plagiarism.
- You copy the excerpts without properly citing them. That also is considered plagiarism.
Anyway, you shouldn't make these mistakes.
You may ask: what are the reasons for using such services if they aren't helpful at all? That's a reasonable question, and we can give you even more than one reason.
Reasons to Apply to Writing Services
Editing and rewriting
Some services offer the opportunity to edit or rewrite your paper. If your English isn't perfect, it's a good way to get a higher grade and avoid plagiarism at the same time.
Reliable source of information
The modern informational sphere is littered with unprofessional opinions, amateur encyclopedias, and yellow press. It's hard to find a good source of information, especially for specific topics. As a rule, writers who work for professional services have access to various libraries and information bases. Also, their research skills might be slightly better than yours.
Source of new ideas
Online services hire well-educated writers who have vast experience in academic writing and with educational backgrounds. You can be sure that they can look at any topic from an original perspective and provide great ideas for your writing.
If you're new to academic writing, a sample composed by experts can give you a vision of how a well-structured and well-formatted text should look. You may learn more about transition words and phrases, argumentative strategies, and formatting from professionals.
Starting point
Writer's block is a common phenomenon, especially for tired students. When you need some motivation, a good essay example can become a great starting point for your work. Well-written samples may help you to overcome your fear of the first page and encourage you to start working.
All right, the legal aspect is DONE.
What do we have now? Right! Morals... Actually, it's really hard to define the level of morality or immorality of any action, as all of us have different points of view, different upbringings, and different values.
But we can try!
Paying for College Essays: The Moral Aspect
Let's take into consideration the most general moral principle of all time: you can do whatever you want if your actions don't violate the basic rights of others.
Does paying for essays violate someone's rights? Unlikely. You aren't killing anyone, nor are you stealing anything.
Legal use of these services is also TOTALLY MORAL. You are not taking advantage of anyone - you are simply getting necessary academic assistance from professionals.
However, if you and other students use writing services in an illegal way, it may result in a range of unwanted problems:
It might devalue higher education
Today, your experience and skills are more important for the employer than your diploma. However, for some companies, it's still an essential factor when it comes to the hiring process. Illegal use of writing services causes the depreciation of higher education.
It might form bad decision-making habits
If you use essay writing services regularly out of laziness, you'll get used to this way of solving problems. But you have to understand that sometimes, money can't solve any problem, and you have to work hard to achieve success in real life.
It might kill the spirit of competitiveness
When we study, we're motivated, among other things, by the desire to be the best. If we discover that our classmates cheat, we lose our motivation. We justify ourselves by saying that we can't be better than professional writers and stop trying entirely.
ConclusionAs well as any other phenomenon, essay writing services have two sides. In fact, using these sites is legal and moral if we don't try to cheat and lie about our works. We can use the written samples as a source of information and ideas, as templates, or as a starting point for our writing.
We can also order the editing or rewriting of our work if we aren't 100% confident about our language skills. But we shouldn't use writing services in an illegal way, as it's immoral and might lead to undesirable consequences.