As an instructor, what I usually do is make the paper assignment so specific that a stock paper bought off of the internet is easily detected as such (e.g., I concoct hyopethtical situations that they must use the learned material to address). While they could still get away with paying someone else to write the paper, it discourages many forms of plagiarism.
It also helps just to be very explicit about what counts as plagiarism - sadly enough, many students still don't understand WHAT constitutes plagiarism (and WHY it's a bad thing).
Slashdot Mirror
As an instructor, what I usually do is make the paper assignment so specific that a stock paper bought off of the internet is easily detected as such (e.g., I concoct hyopethtical situations that they must use the learned material to address). While they could still get away with paying someone else to write the paper, it discourages many forms of plagiarism. It also helps just to be very explicit about what counts as plagiarism - sadly enough, many students still don't understand WHAT constitutes plagiarism (and WHY it's a bad thing).