Today, the internet offers good opportunities for the student who wants to submit a text in English but does not want to do the job himself. On various sites you can easily order academic texts that are priced according to level, scope and time required.

Behind the keys may be a writer in a completely different continent. In August, the British newspaper Daily Mail talked about Kenyan "essay factories", where low-paid academics work long working days to write texts for cheating British and American students.

"There are as many as possible, and many sites guarantee that it is plagiarism-free," says Sonja Bjelobaba, a researcher at Uppsala University who leads a research project on academic integrity.

Uses the family

Within the project, surveys have been conducted showing that Swedish students use ghost writers to a much lesser extent than students in other countries. You are also more likely to use family and friends for ghost writing, than commercial networking services. But according to Sonja Bjelobaba, there is still reason for vigilance.

- One teacher once asked me: "Why would the students cheat? Then they will learn nothing ”. When I tell that story in other countries, the teachers laugh. There is a naivety here in Sweden, you don't think it can happen.

The commercial network services currently do not offer texts in Swedish, but in many cases do not have to be an obstacle - on the contrary. An increasing part of higher education in Sweden is currently conducted in English. According to the magazine, the University Teacher last year, almost a third of all courses at Swedish universities and colleges were English-language.

Sonja Bjelobaba believes that the risk that a student chooses to utilize a online fraud service will increase if the work is to be submitted in English.

- Many people have problems writing in another language and then they are tempted to use these services, she says.