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Date Available

7-16-2026

Year of Publication

2026

Document Type

Doctoral Dissertation

Degree Name

Doctor of Philosophy (PhD)

College

Education

Department/School/Program

Educational Policy Studies and Eval

Faculty

Eric Weber

Faculty

Neal Hutchens

Faculty

Margaret Mohr- Schroeder

Abstract

Contract cheating has become an increasingly complex challenge for higher education, particularly as digital platforms, global academic labor markets, and generative artificial intelligence reshape the production and detection of academic work. While much of the existing literature examines contract cheating from the perspectives of students, faculty, and institutions, less attention has been given to the individuals who produce ghostwritten academic work. This dissertation addresses that gap by exploring how shadow scholars understand their roles, ethical boundaries, and participation within the academic integrity ecosystem.

Using an exploratory qualitative design, this study draws on twelve semi-structured narrative interviews with six freelance academic writers who had experience with compensated academic labor, including work that crossed into contract cheating. The study is informed by sociocultural theory, institutional theory, neutralization theory, consequentialist ethics, and scholarship on gray markets and moralized exchange. Data were analyzed through iterative thematic and narrative coding to examine how participants described their work, justified their participation, interpreted student demand, and anticipated the effects of artificial intelligence on academic labor.

Findings indicate that participants did not generally frame their work as simple deviance or moral indifference. Instead, they described ghostwriting as a form of structural adaptation shaped by credential inflation, labor-market instability, product-oriented assessment, institutional inconsistency, and student pressure. Participants also constructed distinct ethical boundaries around authenticity, transparency, authorship, cognitive engagement, and professional responsibility. Across cases, they complicated individualistic explanations of academic misconduct by locating responsibility across students, shadow scholars, institutions, technologies, and broader credentialing systems. Artificial intelligence emerged as a central disruptive force, not because it created academic dishonesty, but because it exposed existing weaknesses in assessment design, authorship norms, and the assumption that polished academic artifacts reliably demonstrate learning.

The study argues that contract cheating should be understood not only as student misconduct, but as a hidden academic labor market embedded in larger institutional, technological, and economic systems. These findings have implications for academic integrity policy, assessment design, credentialing, AI governance, and institutional accountability in higher education.

Digital Object Identifier (DOI)

https://doi.org/10.13023/etd.2026.352

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