How to Buy a Degree in Italy

Time required: five days. Cost: €800-€2,000

MILAN – “You don’t need to do anything. Just give me the title of the thesis. And the money. I’ll do the rest”. Forget about months of gruelling research for notes and bibliographies. Your degree thesis is as good as written. All you have to do is give the “job” to a professional and a text that generally takes six to eight months to write can now be delivered in just five days.

THE MARKET – The scene is Naples but buying degree theses goes on all over Italy, as a glance at university message boards or specialist web sites will confirm. Lawyers, teachers, university assistants and new graduates are among those who make extra cash in the highly profitable thesis market. Michele, as we will call him, has been writing and selling degree theses since he was a second-year law student. In fact, that’s how he has paid for his studies at the Federico II university. Unaware that he is being filmed, Michele tells us: “Once you’ve worked out how to do it, you just have to be able to write, use the right programs and Bob’s your uncle”. Needless to say, he never told his clients he didn’t have a degree. Today, Michele is a lawyer at a practice in Naples with its own thesis-writing business. Yours for a mere €1,200 each.

THE ITALIAN WAY – In Germany, this sort of thing sparked off a scandal that led to a minister’s resignation but in Italy, “it helps people to get by”, as one of the thesis-writers said, listing his clients, who include many working people keen to give their career prospects a boost. How much does it cost? Prices start at €300 for run-of-the-mill titles with a reasonably accessible bibliography to €2,000 for more complicated theses. The system is straightforward. Every so often, they send you part of the manuscript that you pass on for correction to the assistant or professor who is supervising your thesis. “Some professors will say quite openly: ‘What am I doing correcting this when I know Rosaria wrote it?’” Rosaria is so well known in university circles at the Santa Maria Capua Vetere campus that her name is a guarantee for students looking to graduate with full marks. In other words, this is the ideal way to round off a student career if you started out by purchasing an accountancy school-leaving certificate in little more than 24 hours – as our recent video-investigation showed – and now want to get a degree in record time. Of course, there are exams to sit but a way round those can always be found.

English translation by Giles Watson

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