Ex-lecturer offers to sell word skills to students

A former university lecturer is offering students an "academic rescue" service over the internet.

Elizabeth Hall, a former lecturer at the University of Central England, is apparently cashing in on student concerns about the quality of their tuition, selling her "ghostwriting" services via her website, Elizabeth Hall Associates.

Ms Hall declined to discuss whether or not her services were helping students to cheat: "The decision to submit any material rests with the student," she said.

The site says that the business will write "anything you need - for your eyes only". "Why wrack (sic) your brains trying to get those words just right when there are other ways you'd rather spend your time... Or maybe you have a heavy business schedule and just cannot find the time to write... that MBA dissertation," it says.

Students can get help with assignments. "Even if your tutor had the time to help... they can't because, in the end, they have to mark the work. Their commitment is to the college or university that is paying their salary, and that means putting 'academic integrity before students'."

Her website claims that customers will be "working with people who know the academic world from the other side of the fence, as tutors, assessors and as external examiners (assessing the markers)". She told The THES : "My academic and teaching credentials... are more than ample for the work upon which I am engaged."

Ms Hall was a careers guidance lecturer at the University of Central England and was redeployed in a clerical post after a period of ill-health.

She was dismissed from the university but said: "I chose to leave of my own volition having been vindicated" during a legal dispute.

The university confirmed that Ms Hall left five years ago. It said it had no evidence that any of its students were using her services.

This article is subject to a legal complaint