Essays are considered as one of the most important course requirement in formal education. Its contribution to the learning process for students has always been taken advantage of by lecturers and professors to help them measure the extent of learning retention in their classes. It is also an effective tool to enhance the student's learning experience through research and analysis of data.

Before the advent of the internet, students have already been following the practice of swapping essays to be used as models for other essays that they have been tasked to write. This benefits the students by giving them a fresh insight on the essay writing process and other ideas on how to do their own essays. Now, with the internet dominating the information highway, this practice continues at a much larger scale. This is mostly due to the emergence of online essay help websites where students could post submitted essays for others to view or use as models. There are also companies which offer to write custom-made essays for a fee.

This latest trend has drawn the attention of academic circles claiming that such services have made worse the problem of plagiarism. Efforts have been made by the various concerned parties to curb this particular problem. An online database similar to an essay bank has been put up where lecturers could submit their students essays either for future reference or to be cross-checked against existing and verified essays for plagiarised content.