Hitchings went to Oxford and wrote a doctoral dissertation on Samuel Johnson.

NEWYORKER: The English Wars

Jonathan Frye, a doctoral degree candidate who is writing his dissertation on video games and player types, said that when he started his program at NYU's Steinhardt School of Culture, Education and Human Development he had to ask permission to take classes at the university's Tisch School of the Arts.

WSJ: NYU to open center for studying games in Brooklyn

Beyond the potential ethical problems and ease of finding ghostwriters for academic dissertations (go ahead, Google it), accusations of plagiarism have stung the British academy: the son of the late Libyan Colonel Gaddafi was investigated last year for allegations that his doctoral dissertation at the London School of Economics was penned by a ghostwriter.

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