Dave Tomar
Academic Integrity Director
Dave Tomar is an expert on plagiarism and contract cheating in higher education. In his first book, The Shadow Scholar: How I Made a Living Helping College Kids Cheat (Bloomsbury, 2012), Tomar details how for a decade he worked as an academic ghostwriter before bringing widespread attention to this thriving cheating industry that undermines higher education.
This book arose out of an earlier 2010 article that Tomar authored, titled ”The Shadow Scholar.” Under the pen name ”Ed Dante,” “The Shadow Scholar” became the most widely read article in the history of The Chronicle of Higher Education. It called for significant reform in higher education to combat contract cheating and received a special citation from the Education Writers Association.
Tomar has written for Huffington Post and The New York Times. He has appeared on ABC World News, Nightline, Fox Business, and The Today Show. He has advised leading plagiarism detection companies, including turnitin.com.
In June of 2022, Tomar published with Academic Influence The Complete Guide to Contract Cheating in Higher Education. This latest book details the ongoing challenges that academic ghostwriting and contract cheating pose to higher education and offers actionable recommendations on how to redress this problem.
Today, Tomar consults on various issues in higher education, and serves as Managing Editor as well as Senior Content Developer for Academic Influence, overseeing its opinion, editorial, and news analysis journal, Inflection.
