Patricia Kingori is the youngest woman and Black professor in Oxfordʼs 925-year history. Captivated by the hidden, multi-billion dollar ʻfake essayʼ industry, Patricia enters the world of the ʻshadow scholarsʼ – an estimated 40,000 highly-educated, underemployed Kenyans making ends meet by writing academic papers for global students. Scholars like Mercy, a single mother, struggling to support her daughter while writing thousands of words every night to help students in wealthy countries graduate and move into lucrative jobs. In the US, a desperate student sells nudes to pay for the promise of a passing grade for her midterms. The tension grows between the demand and the parallel threats of UK and Australian crackdowns and the rise of AI, and Patricia asks: If the worldʼs elite can pay for degrees they didnʼt earn – and educated Kenyans cannot find jobs outside this industry – then what is the real value of education?
The inner workings of an entire global online network are brought to life in the film. The identities of the scholars have been synthetically veiled by the filmmakers as protection from international government clamp-downs on the essay-writing industry.
Filmed across three continents, ʻThe Shadow Scholarsʼ illuminates how the underground academic economy supports success in the global North, yet deprives Africans and reveals the profound future consequences for us all.
