Editing Herzing Issues: Academic Integrity (section)

=== HU-107: Academic ghostwriting service advertised directly in Herzing MSN-DE Facebook group ===
{| class="wikitable" style="width:100%"
! style="width:14em" | Severity
| High
! style="width:14em" | Status
| CONFIRMED
|-
! Issue type
| Academic Ghostwriting Service Solicitation in Student Community
! Date added
| 2026-05-05
|-
! Owner
| colspan="3" | Academic Integrity Office / Dean of Nursing
|}
'''Finding.''' Lauren Wangu posted an advertisement on January 27, 2025, in the Herzing Direct Entry MSN Facebook group for homeworkhubwriters.com, describing it as offering professional nursing and medical writing services. This constitutes direct solicitation of academic ghostwriting services to the program's student community, in a forum where students actively discuss assignments and seek academic help. Academic ghostwriting services exist to enable students to submit purchased work as their own, constituting academic fraud. The advertisement appeared during the Spring 2025 semester when students in the program were managing heavy assignment loads (documented at 40 to 100 assignments per week in {{HU|HU-096}}) and expressed frustration with writing-intensive coursework. No documented institutional response to this advertisement appears in the Facebook archive. The advertisement is distinct from legitimate tutoring services (Knack, student-to-student tutoring) also advertised in the group; it specifically offers writing services for nursing coursework.

'''Evidence.''' Advertisement posted by Lauren Wangu in the Herzing Direct Entry MSN Facebook group, January 27, 2025, in the same student community where students regularly share course materials, seek assignment help, and discuss academic strategies. Source Group: Herzing Direct Entry MSN Facebook Group Export (Dec 2022 to May 2026), Exhaustive Line-by-Line Review, 34,887 lines, 1,350 posts, 14,112 comments, 8 passes (Volume 7).

'''Reported statement.''' <blockquote>homeworkhubwriters.com, professional nursing and medical writing services, posted by Lauren Wangu in the Herzing Direct Entry MSN Facebook group, Jan 27, 2025.</blockquote>

'''Standards.''' 34 CFR §668.14 (administrative capability): institutions must maintain academic integrity and respond to documented academic dishonesty threats in their student communities. ACEN Standard 4: assessments must reflect genuine student competency. Academic ghostwriting violates the fundamental principle that submitted work represents the student's own effort. The presence of ghostwriting advertising in the program's primary student community, without documented institutional response, indicates either institutional unawareness of the student community or institutional failure to monitor and respond to academic integrity threats within that community. If nursing students submit purchased written assignments, their documented competency is fraudulent, a direct patient safety concern.

'''Impact.''' Students who purchase ghostwritten nursing assignments and pass the program without genuine competency in written professional communication and clinical reasoning represent a patient safety risk. The advertisement specifically targets nursing and medical writing, the exact genre of assignments used in the MSN-DE program. The heavy assignment load documented at {{HU|HU-096}} (40 to 100 assignments per week) and the 80-20 self-teaching expectation documented at {{HU|HU-077}} create conditions where overwhelmed students are more likely to seek and use ghostwriting services. The advertisement's presence in the Facebook group, without removal or institutional warning, may have normalized the option for students who saw it.

'''Notes.''' This finding, combined with {{HU|HU-106}} (paid exam answer sales), {{HU|HU-078}} (systematic HESI content sharing), {{HU|HU-026}} (Notion HESI posting), {{HU|HU-037}} and {{HU|HU-051}} (in-cohort and cross-cohort exam sharing), and {{HU|HU-027}} (AI cheating), establishes a comprehensive academic integrity ecosystem failure: exam answers are commercially available, ghostwriting is advertised, AI is used for assignments, and HESI content is shared across cohorts, with documented institutional non-response across all channels. Cross-reference: all academic integrity issues above. Verification recommended: whether homeworkhubwriters.com can be confirmed as an active ghostwriting service; institutional records of any response to the advertisement.

<span id="HU-115"></span>