Captivated by the hidden, multi-billion dollar "fake essay" industry, Patricia Kingori, the youngest woman and Black professor in Oxford's 925-year history, enters the world of the "shadow scholars"— roughly 40,000 highly-educated, under-employed Kenyans in Nairobi making ends meet by writing academic papers for students in the Global North.
37 million students across the Western World are estimated to have benefitted from hiring Kenyan essay writers and passing the work off as their own, also called "contract cheating." In the U.S., lucrative "fake essay" companies aggressively target customers on social media, where satisfied students boast about the speed and quality of their paid-for essays. On the other end of the transaction, the Kenyan scholars struggle to make ends meet as they bid against one another to write thousands of words every night on tight deadlines, while the platforms that connect them to university students cut into their earnings with significant commission fees. All the while the writers are kept from actually attending Western universities because of unfeasible tuition fees, their education and expertise instead benefitting students in wealthier countries who will move on to higher-paying careers built off the Kenyan's knowledge and labor. As Professor Kingori meets more scholars and learns about the intricacies of their work, she is compelled to address her own understanding of what her Western education means to her and the world. In Kenya can education truly be a tool of social mobility if one's employment options remain limited by deeply-entrenched global relations? And in the countries where students who haven't done the work become the next generation of doctors, lawyers, politicians, and other workers critical to functioning societies, what will is the actual social benefit of a degree from a prestigious university?
Patricia's investigation takes her to some of the best regarded experts in the world who makes clear the threats to data and privacy of sensitive personal research information being shared on the fake essay platforms and the future consequences of under-qualified graduates going into the labor market. With the contract cheating industry estimated at $15 billion, Patricia questions who the true "shadow scholars" are and makes the case for centering the perspectives of the writers in her framing of this global underground economy. Additionally, as the use of AI as a new form of fake academic essay writing expands, itself having been trained of countless academic essays ghost-written by Kenyan writers, they are shifting their services to "humanize" auto-generated papers so that they can pass as original work. And with some countries taking measures in an attempt curb contract cheating, the writers' futures are becoming defined by increased uncertainty.
Filmed across three continents, The Shadow Scholars illuminates how this lopsided academic economy supports success in already advantaged countries, yet deprives qualified Kenyans of substantive employment, reifying extractive practices of the colonial past for the digital era, and creating profound future consequences for us all.
FILMMAKER'S STATEMENT: "As a Black woman raised in London by a single parent and in a family of community organisers and educators, I was taught I could be anything I wanted to be. There was just one caveat: 'Whatever you do, you will always have to work twice as hard as your white counterparts.' I put myself though university and was the first person in my immediate family to access higher education. I understand immediately the effort to replace inequality through education, and how higher education is a promise you grab onto if you are someone with limited access to opportunities.
Through collaborating with Professor Patricia Kingori, we have been able to work with a team of extraordinary Kenyan-based writers, which no previous film team has had access to. This film presents a rare opportunity to subvert ideas about the superiority of prestigious white academic institutions. For the last 400 years, much of society has been constructed under the ignominy of the belief that Africans and their descendants are intellectually inferior to their white counterparts. Slavery and evolutionary theory cast the millions of black and brown people in the Global South as sub-human and incapable of sophisticated thought, which has directly contributed to discrimination through the implementation of racist economic structures across the world. Led through this examination by our protagonist Professor Patricia Kingori, our film holds up a mirror to the Global North's role in the unequal valuation of knowledge. We explore how the commodification of education and the advent of technology have paved the way for poorer students in the Global South to prop up our institutions and job opportunities, these writers are forced to secretly do work for the highest bidders. Our access to the world of the film's Kenyan protagonists like Mercy and Chege, prompts the question — is education the great equaliser?
Mercy, Emmanuel, Chege and thousands of others don't demand our pity. Instead, we hope the film will bring respect to the skilled workforce and recognition of the injustice represented by this vast industry of under-served talent. A remarkable group of people who are invested in using education to liberate themselves from the oppressive systems that constrict their lives."
— Eloïse King
Shopping CartItems0
