Mary may be complicit but she cannot very well plagiarize herself and is in any case way out of your jurisdiction, but blame here for taking soiled coin if you will. The problem lies with those who commission the work. I take it that as an academic you are familiar with the need to proofread and edit one’s work and this is often better done with a second set of eyes. Copy editor here with 17 years experience proofing Chinese students foreign university applications. I do not manufacture any works. It is rare that I see a work free of grammar errors. These are all application essays and personal statements - I never see course work essays. Suffice to say that the quality of work ranges from inspiring to very ordinary and often makes me think that here is a student who will struggle to cope at tertiary level. But that is not my concern - there is ample language tuition assistance available - if they avail themselves of it. My regular work is rendering into acceptable English the work of translation companies.
Please allow an academic search engine to dispel your breathtaking ignorance about self-plagiarism.
While self-plagiarism typically entails copying in whole or in part (verbatim or paraphrasing) one’s own work and publishing it as novel scholarship, attempting to conceal one’s authorship by lying about one’s role as author, is also self-plagiarism.
It may swing on the interpretation of “publishing”. For Mary it is a private transaction. The student for whom the work is created is not the public - though it is he who goes on to publish it as his own. Mary does not publish a document under her own or anyone else’s name. Nor does she attempt to lie about her role as the author. Who does she lie to? She does not even submit the work. She puts neither her own or his name to the work. He does that.
Probably, a charge of forging and uttering is closer to the mark. Maybe.
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