China’s new breed of academic paper mills promising a shortcut to grad school
Students can pay to get their independent research papers published, helping their applications stand out from the crowd
The agency’s advertisement promised just the kind of “cutting-edge” expertise that Chris Wong was looking for.
The 21-year-old arts student was aiming to get into a graduate programme overseas after completing his studies in Australia, and the “commercial research” firm could give him a ticket in.
For nearly 20,000 yuan (US$2,800), the Beijing-based agency would guide Wong through a three-month independent online course of study in his field to produce a research paper that would be published in a leading journal.
The paper would help him stand out from the ever-growing crowd competing for limited places in graduate programmes in China and abroad.
“I thought it would be better to have some extra academic knowledge and a solid paper as a sample for future applications,” he said.
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The agency Wong signed up with is part of a rapidly expanding educational consulting sector that has cropped up to help ambitious students fine-tune their applications for graduate programmes or overseas schools.