TIRANA, Jan.26 – Bachelor and master theses can be easily purchased in Albania, the investigative television show ‘Fiks Fare’ aired on Top Channel found out this week. Internet cafes or stationeries near faculties often serve as places where diploma theses are widely available for purchase. Posing as an economics student, the undercover journalist was able to obtain a master thesis for as little as Euro 55, while she received guarantees from the seller that the thesis will not be tracked down.
This ‘business’ is not limited to brick and mortar, but also involves the internet with several websites offering such services towards payment. One of the sellers in the footage boasts of having as many as 5,000 theses available for sale with prices ranging from as little as Euro 30 when the thesis is semi-ready up to Euro 150 for a thesis started from scratch.
The investigation also discovered that often it is the professors themselves who provide the theses students have submitted in previous years to third parties, who in turn sell them to other students interested in purchasing a thesis. The lack of a database makes it difficult to track the authenticity of the work, thus facilitating the thriving of such a trade. Back in 2014, the Albanian government decided to close several private higher education institutions for failing to meet basic legal and quality standards. For years prior to the crackdown, critics had described some of these institutions as nothing more than diploma factories
