I was sent a link to this page, I read the article, and I was shocked. Utterly shocked. If you paid for papers, turn yourself in. If you are writing papers for others, stop. Nothing short of academic prostitution. Here’s a short clip. Read the whole if you have time.
This is the confession of a paper-writer.
I’ve written toward a master’s degree in cognitive psychology, a Ph.D. in sociology, and a handful of postgraduate credits in international diplomacy. I’ve worked on bachelor’s degrees in hospitality, business administration, and accounting. I’ve written for courses in history, cinema, labor relations, pharmacology, theology, sports management, maritime security, airline services, sustainability, municipal budgeting, marketing, philosophy, ethics, Eastern religion, postmodern architecture, anthropology, literature, and public administration. I’ve attended three dozen online universities. I’ve completed 12 graduate theses of 50 pages or more. All for someone else.
You’ve never heard of me, but there’s a good chance that you’ve read some of my work. I’m a hired gun, a doctor of everything, an academic mercenary. My customers are your students. I promise you that. Somebody in your classroom uses a service that you can’t detect, that you can’t defend against, that you may not even know exists.
I work at an online company that generates tens of thousands of dollars a month by creating original essays based on specific instructions provided by cheating students. I’ve worked there full time since 2004. On any day of the academic year, I am working on upward of 20 assignments.
In the midst of this great recession, business is booming. At busy times, during midterms and finals, my company’s staff of roughly 50 writers is not large enough to satisfy the demands of students who will pay for our work and claim it as their own.
I read some stats in the last couple of years on cheating in MBA programs and was equally shocked.
My mother-in-law has gone back to school for her master’s and just told me last night how a grown man next to her was openly asking her for answers to the final exam during the exam. Worse, the teacher’s pet in the course called my mother in law after the exam, and asked her if she had seen what the professor had done: he had given the test key to this woman and told her to take whatever she needed.
Enron wasn’t an isolated event for a few prominent execs and a very prominent accounting firm. It was a revelation of a much larger reality: We have darwinian internal ethics wearing remnants of Christiandom’s ethical clothing.
Wow. On one hand this is completely shocking. On the other hand I have to admit that it almost seems too shocking to be true.
On another note:
“I can write a our-word sentence in 40 words. Just give me one phrase of quotable text, and I’ll produce two pages of ponderous explanation. I can say in 10 pages what most normal people could say in a paragraph.”
Sounds like 95% of academic papers.
This is the bit that shocked me:
I do a lot of work for seminary students. I like seminary students. They seem so blissfully unaware of the inherent contradiction in paying somebody to help them cheat in courses that are largely about walking in the light of God and providing an ethical model for others to follow. I have been commissioned to write many a passionate condemnation of America’s moral decay as exemplified by abortion, gay marriage, or the teaching of evolution. All in all, we may presume that clerical authorities see these as a greater threat than the plagiarism committed by the future frocked.
Last summer a prof told me a story of a freshman boy who was obviously struggling on a relatively simple assignment and then turned in a paper that was easily found on the internet. It turned out that HIS MOTHER–a TEACHER at a CHRISTIAN high school was writing his papers! This makes me weep on many levels.
He writes well.
Sad and pathetic and whaddya know, seminary students are among them. Sigh…. As I’ve observed in some of my co-workers who are working on degrees, a lot of people are just interested in getting by and getting through, not with actually learning something. A degree is just a means to an end for many and these are adults I’m talking about–people who are raising children! Some example they’re setting.
“Enron wasn’t an isolated event for a few prominent execs and a very prominent accounting firm. It was a revelation of a much larger reality: We have darwinian internal ethics wearing remnants of Christiandom’s ethical clothing.”
That was basically my response to the Clinton/Lewinsky scandal, that it was not an example of a political leader leading the country into an ethical/moral abyss, but that President Clinton was nothing more than a mirror held up to expose us for what we already are, not what we could be lead to be. People always scowled when I said that, but no one argued it wasn’t true.
I think this just further proves that most college degrees are nothing more than commodities to purchase and then list in your portfolio (resume), and that most people also believe that even if they won’t admit.
Honestly, given the cost of education and the statistics pointing to life long earnings and quality of life, this story is further evidence that students know a degree really doesn’t “buy” you anything. I’m not saying college is worthless or pointless. What I’m saying is that responsible parents (and educators) need to stop pushing the notion that everyone MUST go to college to get anywhere in life. Young adults know that it’s not true so they treat it about as valuable as it generally is.
Apart from that tirade of mine, cheating is despicable but I’m not surprised this is going on. College degrees are generally nothing but buying a hall pass into an entry level job. It’s not surprising that some students think a few extra dollars spent (on cheating) is just the cost of doing business (efficiently).
DJ|AMDG
This is no surprise. When we start believing truth is not truth, cheating is easy. People willing to be paid to write whatever swill is asked of them are (pardon my English) whores. People willing to pay for said services are (pardon my English) johns.
MBAs- a dime a dozen primarily for the reasons above. The MBAs I know are some of the most inept critical thinkers I have ever met. They appear unable to lead anybody out of a paper bag and they have a sense of entitlement. These are the ones who I would bet had someone else do their papers and cheated on exams or had someone else attend class for them. I won’t even mention what I think of their profs and institutions of higher ed. I also won’t mention what I think they are up to in the office.
No fear of God.
I gladly pass or fail on my own merits (or lack thereof?). Can’t learn anything any other way. My school has an anti-plagarism program that papers get run through. It WILL do comparisons to online material, too.
No surprises here. It is one of the reasons I rely on essays outside of class in my undergrad classes.
I recall the story of the Tower of Babel in Genesis. The lesson in this part of prologue (Gen 1-11) of the Bible is that sin becomes organized: People working together to do that which is not God’s will. Sin becomes an organized process.
The internet provides unique opportunities for people to work together (creatively, even) to do that which is contrary to God’s will.
About ten years ago Harvard Business school was given $20M to establish a curriculum for business ethics. Two years later they returned the money stating they could not find a foundation for such a curriculum that the faculty could agree on.
If the teachers have no foundation, how can the students.
I think it comes down to personal integrity and character. (Quoting Andy Stanley: “Character is doing the right thing, as God defines the right thing, even when you don’t have to.”) 1 bachelor’s degree and 1 master’s degree for me, and I wrote every word of every paper. Every person, including the person who is writing the papers for students, makes choices whether to be people of character or not. In our “me-first”, self-cenetered, adaptable-morality culture, why are we surprised?
In a 2004 survey of kids under the age of 18, 88% understood that downloading pirated music was wrong, but 56% admitted to doing it anyway. That suggests a cultural indifference to cheating in “small” things that is bound to translate to cheating in big things, like doing the work to earn a degree from a very expensive institution of higher learning.
I have doubts about Ed Dante’s story — he is, after all, participating in a scheme to defraud, so it’s hard to take everything he claims at face value — but I have every confidence that plagiarism and every sort of cheating are on the rise, and have been made easier by text messaging, the internet, and by the steady cultural pressures on all moral fronts to define deviancy down.
I’ve read about these folks before and it makes me hate myself for spending hours and hours, struggling to find the right thoughts and the right words and then put them in Chicago / Turabian / APA format when these guys do it so easily. In fact, I think it permanently took some of the fun out of writing papers for me. I used to think of it as an exercise in personal growth, and, stupid confession, used to fantasize about my paper being so wonderful it would go in the prof’s permanent file. Ever since reading about this a while back, it just seems like an exercise in me taking forever to do what some guy in a cubicle could do in a fraction of the time.
LOL…This story really brought out the Eeyore in me!!
I agree with Dan Jones 100%. College has become a rite of passage, something to be endured (or enjoyed) before getting to the business of earning a living. Our fixation on attributing a degree to one’s sense of worth has given us degrees that are worthless.
That said, I’m willing to bet this could be curtailed with a modicum of enforcement. Do a random screening for cheaters. Those found cheating can be expelled, and have their records expunged. Subject those students receiving federal funding (loans, pell grants etc…) to prosecution.
If seminary students, Bible college students and other professing Christians are using such “services” it is no wonder that we are making no dent for Christ in the the society around us. How can those who follow the one who is the Truth, so hypocritically lie and cheat? The truth will out. God is not mocked.
I wonder how much we parents are culpable in creating a climate in our families that implicitly condones “cutting corners”, thus communicating to children that taking steps such as cheating in this way isn’t really a big deal. For example: do we ignore speed limit signs, do we ignore it when a supermarket checker forgets to scan an item, do we fudge our taxes, do we skirt rules and laws in other areas of our life in ways our children can witness and ultimately will emulate? If so, perhaps it isn’t so surprising that by the time they get to be adults and are in charge of their own progress and learning, they don’t mind breaking the rules because they have been raised to think it’s all right to do so. Just wondering…
OTOH, I do still get joy out of trying to fit the word “limn” once in each paper, if at all possible, along with a few choice placements of the semicolon. It’s silly but it’s also fun and a part of my personal style. Do others here purposely indulge writing tics or is that something you guys try to avoid?
How does this differ from the popular Christian writers who publish work under their names without referencing their ghost writers?
Be sure your sins will find you out.
As a professor, I can say two things with some certainty:
1. Even if they cheat on my papers, they’ll still get hammered on my exams which include copious writing.
2. If cheating like this is the way that a student gets through a degree, they will likely not go too far in life beyond that. Sure, there are the occasional folks who find a way to cheat, cheat, and cheat to get ahead. But even they will eventually get caught.
#16… random screening? How do you do this? With plagiarism detection software, we can screen all papers coming in. But, if someone is paying the big bucks to buy an “original” paper from someone like the person in the article, then even that won’t catch it.
In other words, easier said than done.
Despite the whole lack of ethics thing, his job would be pretty fun. Maybe that just means I’m a nerd but you would learn so much.
I ran across a article and video a few days ago about a prof from the University of Central Florida who recently confronted his class after about 1/3 of them cheated on a mid-term. I’m not sure if I can link directly from here, so I’ll try, but if the link doesn’t work, search for “200 students admit cheating after professor’s online rant”. The article with video are on the telegraph.co.uk site.
Link: http://bit.ly/bO69qX
Like so many have said already in the comments, I’m not sure whether to be shocked or just disappointed. It seems to be an epidemic, and certainly helps explain the lack of ethics in business, and in general, when these sorts of things are so prevalent.
I graduated a couple of years ago (all my own work!) and wanted to get some writing work. I found a company who wrote original papers and articles for clients and who said they didn’t take on any work that they thought was for academic assessment. So I applied and got a job with them. When all the paperwork came through it was pathetically obvious that 99% of their “clients” were students trying to pass off our work as their own. It was just “don’t ask, don’t tell”. They knew full well who their clients were, it was such a farce. At least Ed Dante was telling it how it is!
Needless to say I didn’t do any work for them after that! Two years on and still struggling to make it as a writer (not being paid a bean for it at the moment) I trust that God has better plans for me than helping others cheat.
Ghost writers and speech writers fall into the same bin: they are also paid for their writings.
I read this article a few days ago. Frankly, I find it hard to believe. That is to say, I think the author is exaggerating. Beyond the obvious problem of the cheating (if what he writes is true) I think there’s a problem with professors (no offense, Scot)especially at the masters level. It seems to me that the ghost writer would have to have to learn an awful lot in a short time and use specialize and technical language to pull this off convincingly. Is this really possible to do and do it well enough to fool a prof?
This writer said he made $66K for ghost writing papers. That’s a lot of money and there’s a lot of unemployed writers out there these days.
If there’s a choice betweening eating or cheating– seems like cheating would be hard to resist.
Not surprised at all.
Academics is one of the most scandalous fields to work in right now. We demand students get a (mostly) worthless degree to show they can finish but require no final exams to prove they’ve actually learned something during their several years of collegiate experience. The ratio of students to professors is so high a prof and reasonably go five years and only know a handful of students personally. The whole system is broken.
Ironically, and I’m sure we all know this, there is a HUGE industry out there doing research, exegesis, and even sermon writing for large church and mega-church pastors. From what I’ve seen I’d be willing to bet a significant portion of these pastors (above 65%) haven’t done their own work in years. They rely on others’ work, a final personal polish, and their ability to speak to get their Sunday work done.
If we can’t model authenticity for our people why should we expect them to assume it for themselves.
That said the vast majority of students do their own work. This shadow industry has been around for eons.
This practice has existed long before the inception of the internet and commercial business. In the early 80′s there was always someone on the hall of the dorm willing to earn a few bucks for writing a paper. I saw the same thing being done in the seminary I attended. I believe that each of my professors did the best they could, but let’s be honest. How much time does a seminary professor really have to verify every paper? Some professors carry a pretty heavy teaching load. On top of that, they have to publish to meet criteria of the institution. In addition to that, most of my profs took on interim pastorates to supplement their meager incomes.
Face it. There are only two types of students: those who want an education and those who want a diploma. God knows the difference, and sooner or later so do the sheep.
Oh, almost forgot to add this. I actually know a couple of people who used services like this. All but one have been satisfied with their experience and were happy to the leave the money on the nightstand for the pass. (Which told me volumes about them.)
One person did have an extraordinary story though. She went with a fly-by-night company she found using a google search. She gave them her syllabi, college login info, credit card info, assignment details, and two previous writing samples. They provided her with two assignments for a semester and she turned them both in and passed the classes. Then she got her credit card statement and saw the company charged her triple the price it quoted her. She called them and eventually talked with someone who said that if she filed a complaint, challenged the charge, or tried to get her money back they would report her to the college dean’s office. So she was stuck. She now has an MBA.
So what honor is there amongst thieves I suppose…
“#16… random screening? How do you do this? With plagiarism detection software, we can screen all papers coming in. But, if someone is paying the big bucks to buy an “original” paper from someone like the person in the article, then even that won’t catch it.”
Each semester, require every student to defend one paper in an oral exam. Compare papers from different courses to check for consistent writing style. Flag students who do poorly in test-based classes, but well in writing based classes. Pop quizzes on writing material.
That’s all off the top of my head.
It wouldn’t be long before you caught a couple of students, made an example out of them, and deterred other students from attempting similar.
I was a lecturer at a small, middling quality UK university in 1997. Two of my students handed in obviously downloaded term papers which was quite a new deal back then! I was confident of their guilt as they were native Spanish speakers spending a year at a British university and they’d handed in papers in perfectly colloquial American English.
I gave them both zeros for the assignments which meant they failed the course overall, and I reported their cheating to the appropriate senior faculty member.
At the end of term, I was sent a letter with the final marks for my class. The administration had raised their marks to a pass and not dealt in any way with the blatant cheating.
I quit and didn’t look back – except to tell this story a few times.
(I also turned my own son in for downloading a creative writing assignment in high school. Now in his 20′s, he’s the one who tells that story.
)
Tricia, if the Admin didn’t discuss this with you, shame on them.
#31: “Each semester, require every student to defend one paper in an oral exam. Compare papers from different courses to check for consistent writing style. Flag students who do poorly in test-based classes, but well in writing based classes. Pop quizzes on writing material.”
Oral exams – the student can study from “their” paper.
Compare papers from different courses – Easier said than done in practice. However, yes, we use software for that these days. Turnitin.com among the packages. And, beyond that, yes, sometimes this catches a few folks. Tip of the iceberg, though.
Consistent writing style – easy within a paper (I’ve caught numerous plagiarists this way), harder between papers, very hard between classes. A student could just claim that their style is developing.
Flag students who do poorly on exams – Student defense “well, I’ve never been good at exams… the pressure, etc.” He said, she said.
Pop quizzes – Like exams, they can punish perpetrators by reducing their class marks (since they likely don’t know the material). But those who do poorly on quizzes or exams may just do poorly on that type of assessment tool, or they may be having a bad day… or a bad semester. Heck, I recall a physiology class that I took back in the day. Exams were half multiple choice and half written. When you looked at the class averages on both parts of the exam, it was as if two classes had taken the exam. People did dismally on the MC section. That’s within *one* exam. Between exams (and papers), again, all bets are off. He said, she said, again.
In my experience, the only thing that works consistently is… consistency. Whenever I catch a plagiarist in my class, they end up in my office for a talk (not a pleasant experience for me, and less so for the student). I also write up the student – no exceptions – on the proper academic dishonesty reporting form. That form has two major outcomes:
1. The student either has to sign it to admit to it or they can opt to contest it. I have never had a student not sign it. I am careful to collect as much evidence prior to the office discussion as I can. The form, and the student’s signature, drives home the point to the student that this is not a trifling matter.
2. The form then heads off to the Registrar’s office. It sits on the student’s file until they graduate. This provides institutional memory. Often I see a particular student for one course. I have no idea what their prior history has been. And I have no way (or allowance) to track their ongoing history. But, when I fill out a form, someone in the Reg office has to physically file it and, at the same time, checks to see if there are priors. If there are, then much stronger action can be taken. So, the form also is a major warning to students… they had better not attempt dishonesty again.
Anyhow, it’s a heck of a lot more complicated than just “random checks.” Each course is structured differently. Each institution (and each jurisdiction) allows and disallows various methods of keeping an eye on things. But the important element is a robust process with sure consequences that is applied in a consistent manner.
Even then, cheats are bound to slip through. I know of no net that cannot be breached.
In the past decade there have been a handful of articles and exposes of this kind of enterprise. Some offer original writing and others have a repository of papers from which clients can choose. I remember even in my college days in the late 1970s and early 80s (pre internet) that this kind of service was available; just had to look in the small print ads in the back of certain magazines.
As an instructor of academic English for academic bound ESL students at a Big Ten university, plagiarism is something on which I have to remain very focused. It usually takes the form of copying from the internet (google is an ESL teacher’s best friend), and sometimes has cultural antecedents. In some academic cultures, to copy verbatim without citing is not considered a form of academic dishonesty, but rather a demonstration that one is aware of the issues of a particular topic. By weaving together various sources into some sort of cohesive whole, the writer has shown that s/he understands the topic and the salient points. If one is lucky, there is also some analysis. But, that is all a different face of the issue, and not directly illustrative of the point made by the article.
Anyway, the issue of plagiarism and cheating is a large one and is not limited to any one population or demographic. Our university has specifically targeted plagiarism committed by domestic students. While the policy is harsh, the reality is that it is difficult to implement because of litigation and the burden of “proof” on the institution. A professor recently caught plagiarizing portions of a major public document kept his job.
So, I am not surprised by Ed’s report in the Chronicle. It may be the tip of the iceberg. You wouldn’t believe some of the cheating scandals and techniques we uncover. It is increasingly difficult to maintain the validity of institutional tests, and technology has upped the ante considerably: wrist watch recorders, cell phone cameras, texting, etc. make the cheating game ever more so sophisticated and difficult to detect.
Okay, enough commenting. Back to grading student essays, with an ever vigilant eye for writing that looks too good to be true, and with google open on my computer!!
I don’t know who this man is trying to blame. If he’s trying to blame the educators, then he clearly is not as smart as his article might lead some to believe. The teachers that I’ve had in the past love teaching and they love learning, and they love seeing students love learning, Too often, however, many are caught up in systems that they have no control over, but must conform to in order to maintain their jobs. The systems they conform to are largely concerned by top-down money-making policies that are little-concerned about educating. Students, who care about their education as much as their administrators who are making bank off of them, use whatever means necessary to get a degree that, as a result of the system, is increasingly meaningless. So really, who is he blaming?
@E.G.
So, the penalty for cheating is that your name goes into a file? Well, suffices to say, we have differing definitions of what constitutes a “major outcome”.
Kevin S in #32:
“Each semester, require every student to defend one paper in an oral exam.”
I teach at a public, 4-year university. This semester I’m teaching a total of 165 students. Some semesters I teach over 200. Time doesn’t allow an oral exam for every student.
“Compare papers from different courses to check for consistent writing style.”
A good idea, but since my colleagues are teaching as many students as I do, when we will have time?
“Flag students who do poorly in test-based classes, but well in writing based classes.”
Not sure what you mean here. I have many students who do poorly on multiple-choice exams using Scantrons but are considerably better at in-class essay exams. Many people are better at one kind of assignment than another.
“Pop quizzes on writing material.”
Not sure of the meaning here.
How about funding public education at an adequate level so professors teach smaller classes, and thereby actually get to know their students and thereby gain first-hand impressions of student abilities? Smacks of socialism I suppose.
@34 E.G.,We have a similar system at my school, though it is an Academic Integrity Committee that keeps the files. It is an effort to prevent serial plagiarism, but it depends on faculty taking the time to report.
@37 Kevin,at our school, the teacher who catches the student also penalizes the student in his/her class (anything from rewrites, to grade reduction, to failing the class, depending on the case).
I found his comments regarding why students cheat and how the system is failing many students to be very thought provoking. I’d be interested in hearing from educators if they think the system we have in place gives incentive (unintentionally of course) for cheating by students?
What surprises me is not that such services are out there (they have been for years), not that professors are often overworked (and often underpaid particularly within the Christian academic community) and not that seminary students are amongst the cheaters but the fact that these things seem to be a surprise to many. Have we buried our heads so deeply in the sand that we are unaware of the obvious that has been going on in plain sight for many decades? The system is broke from kindergarden on up and it shows in the finished product. Post secondary education is big money and big business, the emphasis on education left many schools a long time ago. The whole system needs an overhaul from top to bottom. There are plenty of good hearted, well qualified profs out there but they are buried beneath a crumbling system that is foundationally flawed.
Hmmm, I just posted a comment, but it didn’t appear.
Basically, to kevin @37… I didn’t say that, did I?
The course instructor has leeway to impose a fail on the assignment, reduce the course mark, or fail the student in the course.
Of course, he/she has no leeway beyond that. However, the Registrar and the Senate have the power, if more than one dishonesty form is found in a file, to put a student on probation, suspend them, or expel them.
Of course, a course instructor couldn’t impose those latter sanctions.
It’s all about due process. Innocent until proven guilty. All that stuff, you know… fairness.
I think Dr. Bob in comment 12 is right. On what grounds should students not cheat?
Sounds absurd for universities to want students to ascribe to some subjective moral code. Also, for most students they have received the message from parents and culture loud and clear; college is not so much about learning as it is opening doors to a job or future that will allow you to prosper.
Think in the MBA realm, which is highly competitive and driven by one ethic only, obtaining profits. Why should their educational experience or process be anymore noble or different?
Ryan #43. Subjective moral code?
As believers in Christ, we have a foundation.
For those that are not, we as Christians can ascribe some level of morality (in this case fairness, honesty, justice, etc.) to common grace… whatever the nonbelievers want to call it.
As a Christian, I have trouble with an assertion that our consciences are “subjective.” Thus, I expect a level of morality from fellow believers and non-believers alike.
Otherwise, why bother having any laws at all? In your “subjective” ethic, isn’t every law called into question.
From junior high through undergrad, I encountered cheating. Only at the Booth School of Business (MBA) did I encounter zero cheating. Maybe that just means the students were smarter about hiding it, but there it is. Honestly, I was surprised. But given the slams on MBAs (even though I agree with most of the comments to some extent), I find myself in the position of defending the integrity of my MBA classmates, the most honest I’ve encountered to date.
EG I am with you. I was merely commenting that the confession of the paper writer shows we have an epidemic of cheating going on at Universities throughout our country. Sadly though there is no real ethical code or shared moral beliefs to speak against this.