An undergraduate dissertation can still be bought illegally in Lithuania for €1,500–€1,800, a journalist from LRT RADIO found out after calling a phone number listed on an online classifieds site.
Posing as a student at Vytautas Magnus University’s Faculty of Economics, the journalist asked how much it would cost to commission a thesis on “Corporate governance in Lithuania using AI tools”.
“I know VDU very well – we get a lot of work from there,” said a woman who admitted to writing academic papers for clients.
She said a dissertation written “from scratch”, where the student has produced nothing themselves, costs up to €1,800, while a single section typically costs around €600. Payment can be made in instalments, she added.
“If you’ve decided, I’d like you to let me know as soon as possible, because there’s a lot of work,” she said.
The issue of cheating was highlighted in a new analysis presented to the parliament earlier this month by the Ombudsperson for Academic Ethics and Procedures, Reda Cimmperman.
The analysis found that one in eight students had been offered the chance to buy an assignment or part of one, most often via social media.
“In autumn 2025, there were 200–300 active ads at any given time on popular classifieds websites and social networks. If such a supply is public, easy to find, and constantly renewed, it naturally raises the question of whether current regulation is adequate to the scale of this market,” Cimmperman said.
She added that students most often resort to buying work due to a lack of time, saying it is “quicker to pay and solve the problem”. The services are also relatively affordable and widely available. According to Cimmperman, this suggests gaps in academic culture where dishonesty is tolerated.
Gabija Juzėnaitė, vice-president of the Lithuanian National Union of Students, told LRT RADIO that a survey found 17% of students justify cheating and other forms of academic misconduct.
At present, commissioning or purchasing academic work is treated as an administrative offence, carrying a fine of €100.
Despite the potential scale of the problem, only two people were sanctioned last year. One had written a paper for someone else; the other had bought one and, dissatisfied with the result, reported the matter to the police.
Universities apply different penalties in cases of academic misconduct. For example, Mykolas Romeris University expels students found to have cheated. Others use a tiered system, starting with a warning and escalating to stricter measures, such as making the case public.
“Such cases are very rarely made public,” Cimmperman noted.
Dovydas Mačiulis, head of the classifieds platform Skelbiu.lt, said such adverts are removed. However, he added that it is more difficult to deal with coded listings, which do not explicitly offer to write papers but instead claim to provide “assistance” or “consultations”, which are not prohibited.
There have also been suggestions that not only providers and buyers, but also platforms hosting such adverts, could face penalties. Mačiulis said this would place a significant burden on websites.
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