Contract cheating is a form of academic dishonesty in which students pay others to complete their coursework.[1] The term was coined in a 2006 study by Thomas Lancaster[2] and the late Robert Clarke (UK),[3][4][5][6] as a more inclusive way to talk about all forms of academic work, as opposed to more outdated terms such as "term paper mill" or "essay mill", which refer to text-based academic outsourcing. In contrast, Lancaster and Clarke are computer scientists who found evidence of students systematically outsourcing coding assignments. Hence, they coined the term "contract cheating" to include all outsourced academic work, regardless of whether it is from text-based or non-text-based disciplines.
^Eaton, S. E., Curtis, G. J., Stoesz, B. M., Clare, J., Rundle, K., & Seeland, J., (Eds.). (2022). Contract cheating in higher education: Global perspectives on theory, practice, and policy. Palgrave-MacMillan. ISBN 978-3-031-12679-6 https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-12680-2
^Lancaster, T., & Clarke, R. (2016). Contract cheating: The outsourcing of assessed student work. In T. Bretag (Ed.), Handbook of academic integrity (pp. 639-654). Singapore: Springer Singapore.
^Clarke, Robert; Lancaster, Thomas (2006-06-19). "Eliminating the successor to plagiarism? Identifying the usage of contract cheating sites". CiteSeerX10.1.1.120.5440. {{cite journal}}: Cite journal requires |journal= (help)