Alan in Belfast: The Shadow Scholars – Kenyans being paid to complete other people’s university educations (screened in Queen’s Film Theatre as part of Docs Ireland) #docsireland7

As I walked up towards Queen’s Film Theatre for this evening’s screening, I was passed by scholars in their finery accompanied by their families fresh out of this afternoon’s graduation ceremony (School of Medicine, Dentistry and Biomedical Sciences) in the Whitla Hall. Years of study, assignments and exam success being celebrated.

Tonight’s film – The Shadow Scholars – examined the work of talented graduates in Kenya who cannot find employment and instead write essays and complete assignments for paying students in European and north American universities. How many of those graduating at Queen’s University Belfast had bought an essay or procured help with their coursework along their way to getting a degree?

How many – or how few – were caught?

Professor Patricia Kingori has been investigating this academic industry for a long time. It’s a step up from plagiarism. A transaction initiated by those with the financial resources (a 2,000 word essay with a seven-day deadline might cost the guts of £150) but lacking the time or the ability. The talented individuals – entrepreneurs you might say – will never be publicly credited despite completing someone else’s homework to a standard that won’t be spotted by markers.

Kenya became independent in 1963, ‘taking back control’ or ‘making Kenyans great again’ as modern political rhetoric might phrase it. Yet today, the lack of employment opportunities for graduates who ably demonstrate their subject knowledge, intellectual prowess and work ethic (often churning out papers for submission as students panic close to deadlines) means that some Kenyans are silently working for those descended from the colonisers. Both client and service provider benefit, though not in equal measure. The authors’ work isn’t acknowledged, their pay is low, and often reduced by the cut taken by account managers on popular websites.

It’s estimated that 40,000 people in the Kenyan capital Nairobi are working as shadow scholars. But the students paying for other people to do their coursework are also shadows. Millions of people have been awarded degrees that along the way involved passing off other people’s work as their own.

A 97-minute documentary that just unpacked the practice and ethics of faking essays could be quite a stretch. But the documentary writer and director Eloise King is a queen of her craft. Every time it felt like the story was about to complete its circle of discovery, the radius would pull out and another aspect would be thrown in for the next revolution.

While Kenyan people who successfully graduated from their own university courses continue to prove their academic proficiency in the high-pressure factory ‘essay mills’ where they may dispatch several pieces of coursework a day (not just a few times a term), their qualifications and their bank accounts will usually not gain them entrance to study post-graduate courses in the kind of institutions whose students are already paying them to do their work.

Born in Kenya before moving to St Kitts and then to London, Prof Kingori became the youngest black professor at Oxford or Cambridge, and the youngest woman to ever become a full professor at the University of Oxford.

The film reveals how her own PhD research was ‘stolen’ by a senior academic who submitted a paper to a journal. To say that the process of challenging this shady incident was disempowering would be an understatement. Despite her academic reputation and research topic, the film documents another more recent incident of a high-profile organisation using her work with duly acknowledging its provenance.

These experiences feed into Prof Kingori’s belief that there’s a racial and geographic dimension on top of a gendered way of looking at this disrespect. Another example of invisible power being wielded.

Eloise King rightly keeps The Shadow Scholars’ focus on those doing the work and writing the essays. (A failing student in the US is interviewed. She sold nude pictures in order to raise the funds to commission a stranger to complete an assignment.) This spotlight on the uncredited talent extends to Prof Kingori’s experiences of academic malpractice.

The documentary circles around again and explores the impact of generative AI on the fake essay industry. The number of requests is falling, causing financial hardship for the otherwise unemployed Kenyan providers (this on top of some governments cracking down and trying to ban selling websites – treating the symptom of contract writing not the condition of cheating students). Yet, students seem more likely to be caught using (free) AI to produce coursework than using (paid) shadow scholars. Maybe the tide will turn again? After all, it’s the students – whether panicking or lazy or inept – who create and sustain the market.

Does the practice of having the opportunity to complete a university education but getting someone else to the work mark those individuals forever? Will they carry on taking credit for other people’s effort in the workplace?

What is the point of a university degree if you haven’t done the work? (The value is already questionable in some subject areas as what is taught is of zero use in the workplace. My maths degree gave me the opportunity to pick up lots of computer skills in the huge gaps between lectures: the applied maths was of zero use in 21 years of full-time employment, and in the last 10 years as a freelancer, no one has asked if I even have a degree, never mind what the classification was.)

At the halfway point of the Docs Ireland festival of international documentary film (which continues until Sunday 29 June), The Shadow Scholars is my favourite film by far, well crafted, good storytelling, keeps expanding the viewer’s mind, presents complicated subjects without disguising their complexity. Keep checking in for other reviews in case something betters it!