Recently, an article in The Denver Post reported that students who attend public colleges in Colorado earn, on average, about $9,000 more than those from private institutions. This is a huge boost to public education in Colorado, and certainly, an incentive for students to attend the less expensive public institutions.

And students in Denver have several options for public college. From the University of Colorado at Denver to several community colleges and technical schools, there is a program of study to meet any student’s needs.

One area which all students will face, no matter what post-secondary program they pursue, will be academic writing – essays, papers, reports, etc. There is just no way to get around it. Students must write in almost every class. 

Where Can Denver Students Find Writing Help?

All public colleges have writing labs – places where students can go to get extra help with their essays and papers and receive remedial instruction. The University of Colorado, in fact, has more than just a lab. It's writing center operates as all others do. But it offers even more. It also offers free writing workshops and online consulting, 24 hours a day. This if the first source of help.

Beyond that, however, where else might students find help? Here are some possibilities:

1. Relatives who have good writing skills are often good sources for help, especially editing and proofreading. Students have the ability to email their writing products to relatives back home and receive revised pieces back quickly.
2. Students can also find fellow students who, often for money, will write essays and papers for them. This can be risky business, but many do take advantage of these offers and are willing to pay to get these assignments finished.
3. Students with the means can hire private tutors, among the student body or within the tutoring community. There are lots of tutoring services, many of them with good national reputations, into which students can tap. Here they will get teachers or former teachers with degrees in English to help them.
4. Students can also contract with online writing services. This option bears some closer study and scrutinizing.

Using Online Writing Services

If a student “googles” the term, “writing services,” he will get well over 100,000 results. Weeding through these to find those that are reputable is a difficult task. Here are some clues to guide the student as they consider using online writing services.

• Look at the entire website of a writing service. Is the content written in proper English? If not, then you have found a service that, even though they claim otherwise, are probably not using native English-speaking writers. Think about it. If they were using native-English writers, wouldn’t they have one of that writer craft their content?
• Beware of really cheap prices. A lot of writing services are using foreign students from developing countries as their writers. These students take existing pieces of writing and try to “spin” them. Unfortunately, this does not work, and the resulting writing pieces will be clearly inferior and not submission-worthy. Any service is promising an original, well-researched piece for less than $14 dollars a page is probably fraudulent.
• Check out contact information. Can you call this service and speak with a live person? If you do call, are these representatives knowledgeable, and can they answer your questions?
• Will you have access to the individual who is going to be writing your piece? If not, do not consider the service. It has something to hide.

Now, students can find online writing companies that will provide an array of services and that are reputable, in the sense that they use degrees and English-speaking writers with expertise in specific academic disciplines. The operate with transparency, communicate openly and provide answers to students’ questions. They urge communication between students and their professional researchers/writers/editors.

In short, students can find the best writers online if they do the solid research they should, in order to find trustworthy agencies.

Writing is Critical

No student can thrive and truly succeed in college without completing writing assignments and getting good grades on them. They must pass basic English comp courses. They must write essays, papers, and reports in almost every other course they take, and these assignments become large portions of their grades in those courses.

Students who struggle with writing will need to take the initiative and work to improve their skills and to use the resources they can find to assist them.

College costs continue to rise. Students who are paying for and/or taking out loans to get their degrees cannot afford to do poorly in their courses – they need good GPA’s, and they must not risk having to re-take courses (and pay for them again) because they received poor grades. When writing challenges threaten grades, solutions must be found.