Digenis.org

If you ride the Moscow metro’s circle line during the busier times of the day, you’ll notice sooner or later the ladies standing near the magazine racks holding paper signs that say дипломы.

The Russian word диплом sometimes means the same thing as its English cognate (diploma), but it can also refer to the реферат or курсовая работа that a student is required to write in order to graduate from a particular year of schooling. You could think of it as a final paper if you want an English equivalent.

I usually walk right past them, but yesterday, remembering my little blog series, I decided to stop and see what the deal was. Well, in fact, I walked past her at first out of fear that someone I know would see me and actually assume that I was using such services, but then turned back because I was incredibly curious to find out how much something like that costs.

Pulling a tiny notebook out of her purse, the lady recited the spiel that prices varied depending on the topic, length of the paper, and how soon it was needed. I asked her how much a 15 page paper on the Octoberist Revolution would cost, but she just scribbled down a telephone number and the name ‘Vlad’, ripped the page out of the notebook, and told me to negotiate a price with this fellow. I asked her again how much something like that generally costs, but she just told me to call this guy.

As I continued on my way home, I decided not to call Vlad. Having spoken with this woman and seeing that she had several pages of telephone numbers of folks who would write these academic papers, I figured that aside from the price I knew how the system worked.

I’m imagining now what would happen if someone were to stand in the middle of a shopping mall in the US offering to write reports for students. It’s hard for me to picture such a scene, but I suppose they would just be asked to leave.

I’m sure that very few students actually buy their research papers from these folks in the metro (it’s definitely not on the scale of shpargalki or plagiarism), but there must be at least a few who do it if such a ’service’ is offered.

If you have any info, articles, knowledge, or opinions on this, I hope you’ll comment.

UPDATE: A quick internet search produced the following article from Известия:

ДИПЛОМ НА ЗАКАЗ : рынок рефератов и курсовых переживает лучшие времена

At the end of the article, there is a price table which gives the following information:

Referat (15 pages)
on Literature: 450-600 roubles ($28-30)
on Economics:450-650 roubles
on Law:450-600 roubles

Kursovaya (25 pages)
1000-1500 roubles ($34-50)
800-1500 roubles ($28-50)
600-800 roubles ($20-28)

Diplomnaya (70 pages)
$200-250
$250-300
$250-300

These figures are from 2002, so like the price of everything else in Moscow they have probably risen.