Thousands of students buy essays online

Thousands of university students a week pay for essays to be written for them.

Internet companies offering coursework claim they sell to hundreds of students daily.

They charge from £9.99 for a short, off-the-peg work to £5,000 for a specifically written Masters dissertation. Some also promise to deliver customwritten essays within 12 hours for £50. Essays can be worth up to 10 per cent of the final degree mark and universities estimate plagiarism has doubled annually for three years.

Dorit Chomer claims she sells 500 to 1,000 essays a week online. "I've got three systems working 24 hours a day," she said. "I'm using my brain so [students] can sit in the bar."

The firms source the essays from students who have received at least a good 2:1 mark. Typically they promise them a 50 per cent cut from every sale.

The websites carry disclaimers saying the work is for guidance only. However, one firm's boss, interviewed in a BBC investigation, said: "I can't see any reason why you can't just hand it in."

Some universities use screening to stop students copying from the net but many admit they can do little to detect custom-written work. A universities spokesman said: "The penalty for cheating could be that the student is failed and not permitted to retake."