In Lithuania, bachelor’s theses are still quite freely available for buying, usually 1,500 to 1,800 euros, and universities are looking for ways to eradicate this practice.
A journalist for LRT Radio pretended to be a student at the Faculty of Economics of Vytautas Magnus University and, calling a number published on an online classifieds website, inquired about the possibility of ordering a bachelor’s thesis on the topic “Corporate governance in Lithuania using AI tools.” The woman who answered the call said that she was well acquainted with Vytautas Magnus University, and that its students often order academic theses.
The thesis writer informed that a thesis written from scratch, in the creation of which the student does not participate at all, will cost up to 1,800 euros, and one chapter usually costs around 600 euros, and payments can also be made in installments.
The issue of cheating is well-known, and in early March, the Academic Ethics Ombudsman Reda Cimmperman highlighted the problem in a new report she presented to parliament.
The report found that one in eight students had been offered to buy an academic paper or parts of it,
and most of the students were approached on social media.
Cimmperman said that in the fall of 2025, there were 200-300 active advertisements for writing academic papers on social media and classifieds sites at any given time. She added that such a large number of offers in the public space raises the question of whether the current regulation is adequate. Students most often choose to buy a paper because they do not have the time to write it themselves, and the offer is relatively cheap and widely available. Cimmperman believes that this shows shortcomings in the academic culture, where dishonesty is tolerated.
Gabija Juzėnaitė, vice president of the Lithuanian National Students’ Union, told LRT Radio that the survey found that 17% of students condone cheating and other academic misconduct.
Currently, buying and selling academic papers is an administrative offense, punishable by a fine of up to 100 euros. Despite the likely scale of the problem, only two people were punished last year. One had written a paper for another student, and
the buyer was not satisfied with the result, and then reported it to the police.
Universities take different approaches to punishing academic misconduct. For example, Mykolas Romeris University expels students caught cheating. Other higher education institutions use a multi-tiered system, ranging from warnings to stricter measures, such as making the fact of the violation public. However, Cimmperman noted that such cases are very rarely made public.
There have also been suggestions to punish not only buyers and sellers of academic papers, but also platforms where advertisements are found.
Read the full article in English here: https://www.lrt.lt/en/news-in-english/19/2871078/bachelor-s-dissertation-for-eur1-500-universities-in-lithuania-aim-to-curb-cheating
The post Lithuanian universities struggle against the purchase of theses appeared first on Baltic News Network.
