Should purchasing school essays online be made illegal?

essay - student writing an essay
@Uroborus (908)
Canada
July 31, 2008 6:33pm CST
There are an increasing number of websites that allow writers to sell essays online and students to buy them. This is obviously allowing students to cheat in school. Although this may be against school rules, it is strictly not illegal. However, would you want to be treated by a doctor who used such sites to get their degree? Or use the services of a lawyer or other professional who didn't really learn the material in school? Such type of cheating does eventually come back to affect society at large. So, should the law step in to stop it?
2 people like this
2 responses
@jdowens (42)
• United States
31 Jul 08
No, people make choices that they must live with as a society. We will be interfering with people choices.
@Uroborus (908)
• Canada
31 Jul 08
But if a doctor makes the choice to cheat, and then endanger his/her patients because they lack the adequate knowledge, then you're saying the patients have no right to protection. Some of the choices that people make lead to others being seriously hurt. The law is all about limiting people's choices. I don't have the choice to steal, murder, or run a red light for that matter. My question was, since cheating can endanger the public, should the law also have a say in this?
@Gorcon (320)
• United States
1 Aug 08
They already offer them for free online. And ultimately it's up to the individual and after the same paper's been circulated so many times, they professors/teachers will finally figure it out. Also, they're just cheating themselves by using someone else's paper. Those who cheat/plagiarize need to realize that that safety net is not always going to be there for them to rely on and eventually their dependence on it so much will make them ineffective and deter their character, work ethic and reliability trustworthiness in the future.