Review: The Shadow Scholars

Kingori is a professor at Oxford University

University students desperate to get a research paper completed can pay a few hundred dollars for a ghostwriter to write it for them -- sometimes in hours. These are "shadow scholars", but who are they?

They are the subject of a documentary by Eloise King, who uses the research of Professor Patricia Kingori, a sociologist and the youngest female black professor at Oxford University. King follows the academic as she discovers these online essay mills are a $15 billion industry, with 72 percent of writers coming from her home country, Kenya. Some 40,000 of them live in Nairobi alone.

She goes to Nairobi to meet Kenyan ghost writers

She goes to the Kenyan capital city to meet these shadow scholars to find out who they are and why they are churning out these papers. Kingori discovers they are bright, hardworking, but also desperate for work. They have all graduated from university, but can't find any decent jobs except ghostwrite someone else's research papers.

There's Mercy who has to support not only herself but also her daughter in kindergarten; Chege has made enough money to not only support his sister through tertiary education, but also built his parents' a house, and bought himself a car. There's also a married couple who also write essays for a fee.

Not only do they have to write these papers, but also bid for the work too. After the film was screened, King explained the writers only get 30 percent of the fee -- the lion's share goes to the online platform advertising these writers. They also get fined if they don't make the deadline, or don't make revisions ot the client's requirements.

And the writers can't even promote themselves -- they give themselves Western names and white profiles otherwise no one would believe someone from Kenya is able to write their papers to ensure they can graduate and get a degree.

Kenyan grads have difficulty finding jobs

For Kingori this is infuriating: why can't these Kenyans show their true identity and be credited for the work that they do? But these shadow scholars don't seem to mind. For them this is a decent job and in the process of writing these papers they also gain more knowledge.

On the other side of the world, professors and educators are sounding the alarm of these essay mills and politicians start cracking down on them. There are hundreds of thousands of students who have been able to graduate because they paid someone to write their essays or tests for them. Are there people who are now doctors, nurses and lawyers really qualified for their jobs?

One student in the United States talks about how desperate she is to graduate from university because it's what her parents want and have poured their savings into her education. Meanwhile she saves up money for a shadow scholar to write a research paper for her by selling nudes of herself online.

However, now with the advent of artificial intelligence, students are turning to ChatGPT, which scrapes all the research papers online -- some of which were written by these ghostwriters... how is that any better?

King was inspired by Kingori's research

The Shadow Scholars asks many ethical questions, like who is taking advantage of who, why isn't the Kenyan government supporting this generation of young bright graduates, how have essay mills been allowed to exist and how can the message be sent across to students that they should do their own work?

King explained after the screening that The Shadow Scholars was originally supposed to focus on these writers and shine a spotlight on them, but as countries like the United Kingdom and Australia were cracking down on these ghostwriters, the director could not specifically focus on them anymore, and so she had to turn to AI generated digital disguises to protect these writers. 

Instead King focused more on Kingori, how her mother drilled it into her head to do better than her by studying harder. For a long time people believed getting a good education would lead to good jobs, but that isn't the case anymore. The system of education is broken, so what can fresh graduates do now?

It's a fascinating documentary that makes viewers sympathetic to these writers, and how they are caught up in the system. In the end they just want to make money, but at what cost?

The Shadow Scholars

Directed by Eloise King

Starring Dr Patricia Kingori

98 minutes