46 Misrepresentation: Contract Cheating
Tulsa Community College
There are various levels of misrepresentation, ranging from intentional to accidental. The following pages show the most common ones.
The most severe form of misrepresentation of something as your own is called Contract Cheating, which happens every time a person completes an assignment for a student, and the student then submits it as their own. It will have the most severe consequences. Contract cheating includes:
- submitting a paper from a so-called “tutoring” service or “essay mill” as your own, for which you paid
- submitting a paper that someone else wrote for you (for example, a friend or a family member) as your own, no matter if you paid for it or not
- swapping papers with another student, and submitting each other’s papers as your own, even if you made some changes
- producing a work for a fellow student (with or without being paid), and they submit it as their own. In this case, you are deliberately aiding another student to behave fraudulently, and both of you will be subject to disciplinary actions
Image Source: (Steel, 2019); reproduced with permission.
