RIYADH, 30 May 2004 — Buying of dissertations and term papers is rampant around Saudi Arabia’s universities, with students saying they have neither the talent nor the skill to do the work themselves.
The streets around any university in the Kingdom are dotted with stationers and photocopy shops where discrete arrangements can be made — at a price.
Dissertations routinely sell for anything between SR500 and SR2,500 depending on the subject.
Saudi university students are VIP customers in these shops, whose backrooms sometimes generate the bulk of the operations’ income.
In one such shop, near a university in the capital, a student is negotiating with an Arab foreigner. He needs a dissertation in three days — all that is left of the 75 days the professor gave the class.
When the foreigner protests that the time is too short, the student raises his offer to SR5,000. Meanwhile, staff keep a lookout for any unknown faces in the street.
According to Waleed Al-Shalhoub, a student here, students buy dissertations for many reasons, chief among them the fact that it is convenient. “These shops make it easy for us,” he said. “They do all the work and gather all the information and resources for us.
“Some students have jobs and don’t have the time to write a term paper,” he added.
But most importantly perhaps, many Saudi students wouldn’t know how to start. “Writing up research is a skill that needs to be taught, and the university does not teach us how to do it,” he said.
Mamdooh Ahmad is from another Arab country but makes a comfortable living here. “I have been a full-time research writer for eight years. I am making a lot of money from this job,” he said.
“I keep copies of the papers I write, and if I can I reuse them the following semester.”
There is no shortage of customers willing to pay a premium. “Many students that are rich are willing to pay good money to get a paper with minimum effort. There are many lazy students; it’s good for us.”
Most of his customers are university and high school students, but he said the practice exists at all levels.
