Getting a head start in IT

Information technology students at universities are outsourcing assignments to cheap code cutters in places like India.

Typically, assignments are put out to tender on the internet sites and coders bid to complete them.Students can pay anywhere from under $100 to several hundred dollars, depending on the amount of work required.

Universities are finding it hard to combat the practice. Part of the problem, said Paul Compton, head of the school of computer science and engineering at the University of New South Wales, was that existing automated plagiarism detection tools, such as Turn It In, can’t detect outsourced work. They could only tell if multiple students submitted highly similar assignments or if a piece of work had passages copied from the internet.

IT companies, on the other hand, most likely see students who outsource their work as potential future management material. The business is highly globalised, with offshoring to places like India, China and Latin America very prevalent. Such initiative from students is simply giving them early experience with using low cost countries to supply cheap resources to perform work.

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