Lecturers at two local universities were "understandably shaken" to find out from the media some of their students had been ordering term papers from websites offering such services.

A term paper costs at least S$300 (US$176), the Straits Times said.

Teachers however said that even if they had been aware of the websites it would be difficult to ascertain if a student's work was original or not.

"It is virtually impossible to verify if a student's work is his or her own," Lee Chun Wah, a lecturer in Singapore's Nanyang Technological University, told AFP.

"It is a time-consuming and futile attempt (to find this out)."

However, he expressed trust that undergraduates generally would be mature enough to know the consequences of such an action.

He also pointed out that papers which could be downloaded from the Internet were often too general and lacked a specific focus.

"Most downloadable term papers lack serious methodology. They lack the accepted sequence of an academic paper," Lee said.

"The bibliography they carry is usually questionable or even non-existent."