British students are using Indian expertise in information technology to complete their courseassignments by posting them on outsourcing websites and buying the completed coursework.

Called “contract cheating” in academic circles, lecturers in computing department in universities are in a tizzy since such coursework is of high quality and difficult to detect through normal plagiarism detection software.

The students pay amounts ranging from £5 to 50 for the completed coursework that they then pass off as their own work and gain their degrees.

The trend is particularly seen in IT courses, in which students need to write programmes.

The students use legitimate websites normally used by business, offering freelance project work or tutorial sites specifically set up for the purpose.

India and Romania are popular destinations where such assignments are completed for a fee. IT professionals bid to complete the assignments and British students who post them then select the lowest bid.

The phenomenon was detected by Thomas Lancaster and Robert Clarke, lecturers at the Birmingham City University’s Department of Computing.

“Businesses are off-shoring their call centres to India so there is a connection. The money someone will pay in this country is very good pay over there,” Lancaster said.