Nina Nagawa (not real name) is a former student of Kyambogo University. She said she decided to enlist the services of a research ghostwriter because she did not have the time to do the back-and-forth work involved in compiling a research report for submission while doing other activities to make ends meet.
“Using these mercenaries for my research was an opportunity for me to avoid the stress of research. Secondly, colleagues before me had also used the same people and they had graduated in record time. I surely had to take on this opportunity even if it came at a cost. It was all worth it since I eventually graduated,” she said.
Meanwhile, Francis Heeya, another student, said that he has decided to opt for the ‘research mercenaries’ because the requirements from the university are too many.
“You find that before graduation, my course expects of me to have done internship, a project and also have done research not forgetting the day-to-day classwork which is so demanding for someone like me doing a science course that is very practical,” he said.
LUCRATIVE BUSINESS
One of the most popular figures in ghostwriting goes by the moniker Oketayot. Reached out for a comment, he said working as a research ghostwriter is good business and he has been at it since 2014 when he was in his final year of undergraduate studies at Kyambogo University. In fact, he said, he has now spread his wings to aid students from other universities around the country.
“While still a student, I realized that several students did not like the stress of doing the research straight from choosing a topic for research. I spend quite a reasonable amount of time on the internet identifying different researches that have been done. I download them, tweak them to fit the university’s format and I then sell them to these students at a cost. I mostly sell already-done research for social sciences at Shs 500,000, education at Shs 600,000, nursing department and other fields of sciences are at Shs 700,000,” Oketayot said.
According to him, when a student comes with their own topic for research, he charges each chapter at a negotiable price of Shs 100,000. He added that when the report has been done and is ready for submission, he takes the students through the findings of the study so that they are familiar with their research during defence.
Another ghostwriter based at Bugema University who preferred anonymity said that ghostwriting has become a fulltime job. He said the business has grown drastically that he now owns two boda bodas, rents a double-room self-contained house and now employs four assistants with whom he works currently.
To him, this has been a steady growth for his business since he started alone in a single room in 2013. “The most expensive research is for those students doing science courses like engineering. I charge Shs 500,000 for the science courses and Shs 300,000 for all the courses that fall under social sciences. I am proud to say that this is now my fulltime job,” he said.
Though the two ghost researchers were cagey about how much they earn, they said they get 20 to 30 student clients a month.
EXPERT VIEW
To mitigate the situation, Prof Venansius Baryamureeba, the former vice chancellor of Makerere University, recommends that universities should use open-source software to track the interactions between supervisors and the students. He recommends that at the bare minimum, supervisors at postgraduate level should meet with their students at least twice a month to discuss the progression of the student.
“There should be a trail to track interactions between a student and the supervisor to do online interactions till the time of final submission,” he said.
He also noted that there are institutional weaknesses on the part of supervisors. For instance, he cites the salary differentials between lecturers in private universities with their counterparts in public universities as one of the factors that have led to the growth of these tendencies of enlisting services of research mercenaries and ghostwriters.
“The salaries of professors in public universities have been raised to about Shs 14 million yet those of private universities are still averagely at a paltry Shs 4m. Quality lecturers have left these private universities for the public universities looking for higher pay,” he said.
His reasoning is that due to the financial attraction in public universities, there has been an exodus of good lecturers from private universities and this has lowered the strictness in some private universities.
It is on this background that Prof Baryamureeba suggests that since private universities offer a public good, government should incentivize their services so that they are able to offer quality degrees since all the degrees awarded by private universities are a representation of the quality of education provided in the country.
He also offers tips to the policymakers in the education sector.
“The National Council for Higher Education should establish an online database for all research dissertations in Uganda so that before someone duplicates existing work, they can refer to the database. This would rule out cases of duplication and plagiarism,” he said.
Prof Baryamureeba further recommends that for research that is intended to solve a problem in communities, the regulatory organ should work with the institutions to ensure that there is an improvement in the standards and quality of academic work that students are submitting for award of a university degree in the current times where almost everything is done online.
Meanwhile, Prof Michael Mawa, the deputy vice chancellor in charge of Academic Affairs at Uganda Martyrs’ University Nkozi, concurred with Baryamureeba and added that a national database for postgraduate research dissertations should be established.
He added that this national database should be widened to East Africa and Africa. This could help in limiting the cases of plagiarism at least at continental level.
He added that for postgraduate submission of dissertations, the university has a policy where dissertations are submitted with their anti-plagiarism reports to university. He added that for online interactions, he maintains a trail of email communications.
“It is very hard to eliminate fraud in academics since it is now like a pandemic. I have a trail of communications with all the students I am supervising. I first review all the previous comments. It means that if the student is using a mercenary, he will have to go to the mercenary very many times.”
