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The ‘helpers’: the Yemeni students doing homework for the Saudis
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Yemen’s universities are absent from the Times Higher’s world university ranking, lagging behind their Saudi counterparts. But a group of Yemeni students have nonetheless found themselves working for the benefit of their neighbours. They offer services that include completing homework and essays, and even sitting in, long-distance, at exams. They are known as the ‘helpers’.

Ali Saleh (not his real name), a fourth-year undergraduate at the University of Sana’a, is among those who have resorted to this type of work while stuck at home amid the country’s war and the coronavirus pandemic. “I was asked to solve a physics exercise on behalf of a Saudi student. This was my first paid assignment, for a sum of 50 Saudi rials ($13). It was awarded full marks and I earned a good reputation as a provider of student services,” he said.

Saleh was subsequently hired, via a friend, by students at Jazan University in Saudi Arabia to complete a number of homework assignments in English. According to Saleh, Jazan is one of the leading sources for requests for help with assignments.

“This is a well-known phenomenon in many countries,” said Mohammed Abd Alwahab, a professor of communication in the media department at Sana’a University and a former head of department of journalism and media at Jazan. “But it’s more rampant amongst Gulf students given that they have access to money.”

The cheating did not originate with the COVID-19 pandemic, but it has greatly increased since March 2020, as education has moved online.

In Yemen, owing to the poor resources available to both students and universities, in addition to slow internet speeds, students have had to stay home without work or regular study, and were forced to look for new job opportunities. “My friend started two weeks before me when he received a request from a mechanical engineering student who had been in the business of facilitating this kind of work for Saudis for over two years,” said Saleh.

How it works

Sana’a-resident Abdallah Jamal (again, not his real name) is an undergraduate student who specialises in artificial intelligence. Like Saleh, Jamal was introduced to the work by a friend. This friend asked him to answer a programming question for free, supposedly on behalf of a relative. As the requests kept coming, Jamal started to suspect that his friend was actually making money from them.

Jamal decided to look for Saudi student groups on the messaging and social networking app Telegram, so he could offer his services without intermediaries. The prevalence of groups, especially on WhatsApp and Telegram, show how common this phenomenon is in Saudi Arabia. Alongside semi-official groups that allow students to ask for information informally, some groups allow people to offer specific paid-for illicit services. Sitting an exam on behalf of someone else, for instance, can cost up to 250 Saudi rials ($66).

[1] Url: https://www.opendemocracy.net/en/north-africa-west-asia/the-helpers-the-yemeni-students-doing-homework-for-the-saudis/