Selling Essays...

kriss_boy

Anyone know if you can legally sell your essays/dissertations?

Can you for example say 'this essay got an A for course bla bla bla'?

I cant find any info on the internet and Im assuming there may be some 'laws' on this, ie, perhaps not being allowed to mention the course or the university of course.

bestpud

Good question.

Ethically it is unsound imo but I don't know if there is anything the uni can actually do to prevent you from selling them.

kriss_boy

Well, if people were to plagiarise it then yes it would be ethically wrong and frustrating for the seller.

But I mean from a stance of "Heres my dissertation, I got an A, use it as a benchmark" sort of thing.

You could save all the documents as PDFs so they cannot be edited or copied and pasted. You'd hope too that people would have more sense than to copy it incase they did get caught.

But I suppose there would always be the risk of some nutter buying it and printing it off to hand in the next day....

MrsManda

If someone printed it off and handed it in they'd get caught - most of the time these days you have to hand in an electronic copy so the university can upload it to a plagarism software programe.
As your dissertation is often a piece of original research and therefore may be classed as commercially sensitive the university may own the copyright and therefore to sell it would be a breach of copyright law.
Plus any dissertation which is not classified is usually placed in the library so any one can read it but selling is a different matter.

Here you go:
http://www.library.bham.ac.uk/support/copyright/Theses.shtml

A quick Google of Dissertation Copyright brings up a lot of university websites stating that copyright lies with the author AND the university therefore to make any copies without permission from both parties is a breach of copyright

Mankysteve

As the above poster has stated you wont own the copyright to the dissertation the uni will selling it could possible get you sued for breach of copy right not sure about essays but I suspect there the same.

The_One_Who

Dissertations definitely belong to the university, but I think this might also expand to include all coursework.

I don't see the point in either buying or selling coursework.

atypical

kriss_boy wrote: »

You could save all the documents as PDFs so they cannot be edited or copied and pasted. You'd hope too that people would have more sense than to copy it incase they did get caught.

You can convert PDFs to Word documents to edit etc. As someone mentioned earlier, they put dissertations through TurnItIn which gives a % of likely plagiarism. Dissertations handed in at most (if not all) Universities across the UK are on there as well as essays.

rinkydinkpanther

I work in a University and selling or passing on essays, marked or unmarked is a disciplinary offence for students.

kriss_boy

rinkydinkpanther wrote: »

I work in a University and selling or passing on essays, marked or unmarked is a disciplinary offence for students.

But its not too dissimilar to writing a study aid as many authors do to be used in conjunction with coursework.

I mean surely theoretically I could write and sell and a textbook thats relevant to the material covered in a university course....

cazziebo

Yes you can sell them but it's wrong for students to copy and submit as own work. If they were caught, it's likely they would be expelled (or sent down as it was called in my day!) and that not only means no qualification but no reference either. Very difficult to explain two or three years of your life with no reference to back it up...

I suppose, students could buy essays to get an idea on format/style etc. I have seen them for sale on ebay (when I was looking for course books - honest!:A)

bestpud

rinkydinkpanther wrote: »

I work in a University and selling or passing on essays, marked or unmarked is a disciplinary offence for students.

What happens once the student has left though?