Recently I’ve been starting to wonder if the Internet is such a good idea. Sure I love that it makes it easy to find out just about anything I could ever want to know. It’s great that SMEs can find hundreds of competitively priced freelancers world wide. The problem however, is that as a result we’re getting lazy. We expect to find the answers on the Internet and we expect to be able to pay someone a pittance to do things for us.
In the last month or so, I’ve been approached to write the software for a team of students coursework, I’ve been asked if I can write a business student’s essay and I’ve been approached for advice on how to help turn an academic research/essay writing sideline into a business. In each case I’ve ignored the requests and I hope others will too.
I’ve also been working hard on my own academic essays for my masters degree, as part of which I’ve looked for guides to academic essay writing on Google and I was disgusted to find that Google with its “do no evil” motto is selling adverts for services that offer to write a students essay for as little as £4.99! The regular results aren’t much better, on the first page there is a site offering academic essay writing for $11 per page.
Slightly (only slightly) less underhand are those who just copy their work from someone else, either another student or from work published in a book or on the Internet. It’s clear to me that academic plagiarism a problem. A problem that needs addressing too and one which I’m sure may universities would like addressed too.
It therefore also presents a business opportunity. If you can provide software that can scan an essay and compare it to the thousands of published books and journal articles and the billions of web pages detecting plagiarism or potential plagiarism then I’m sure the universities would be interested. You might also be able to sell hardware to scan in hard copies too. There are however already a few companies that provide this service, but as it’s not yet universal I believe there’s plenty of opportunity for a newcomer to do well.
The technology could also be used to detect copyright theft or duplicate content on the internet which could be another business opportunity worth exploring.
Photo by Digirebelle
This blog is about business opportunities and ideas that I spot, think of or hear about and think are useful and interesting. It is intended to provide ideas and inspriation for you to help you find the right business idea for you to then grow it into a successful business.
Hi John,
your dream has been fulfilled, or at least in part, there is a service called turnitin located at http://www.turnitin.com which the Universities and schools use to check for plagiarism.
Lindsay,
Yes I’ve heard of it via my Uni, but their not using it. Nor are many others apparently so I think there’s room for more providers in the marketplace.