Cheating Goes Global as Essay Mills Multiply
chronicle.com
chronicle.com
It's a really interesting situation to think about. If these foreigners (from places with much less opportunity) are able to produce work of this caliber (while the students paying for them are either unable or unwilling), it makes one wonder whether those foreigners should be in the students' places. For a long time, one's success was more a function of where one was lucky enough to be located rather than one's ability. Manufacturing workers in America would be paid better than skilled labor in less fortunate areas. However, that seems to be breaking down as advances in communication and transportation tear down the old barriers.
I can't imagine this situation staying indefinitely - those writing the essays must know that they are getting a pittance in return for the gains they're helping the students achieve. How long will people accept being outsourced to while others realise the gains of their hard work? That sounded a lot more "the people will rise up" than I meant. Like, it's one thing to be offered less than the value of your production - corporations won't take the risk of us not producing value without that and we, in exchange, get guaranteed revenue. It's a fine situation and I'm personally happy to have the stability. However, in this case the students getting their degrees are potentially gaining a few million in lifetime earnings and these essay writers are getting a paltry $2-3 per page. Sooner or later, more of the people with these skills will want to compete with those students - given the chance.
An educational degree is supposed to be about learning, not about of how many tests you have taken, homework assignments completed, essays turned in. I mean, when I was in college, I was highly aware of my credit requirements too and planned for them. My point is that the tests, the assignments, credit requirements all are simply proxy measurements of learning. Learning is what really matters. By gaming the system, and skipping the actual learning, the rich and lazy students are not getting anything in return either.
I guess it's a little naive but I'd like to believe that if you really got nothing out of your education, it will show. The paper only gets you so far.
Basically, a moron will still be a moron even if they have all the paper to get into a job. There's no doubt a few people who can get by in a job despite not being the smartest, but once companies start catching on I expect there'll be lots more loop holes to fire people.
Personally, I found that my ability to write papers decreased as I wrote more of them. In that sense, I didn't learn anything by writing; in fact, I unlearned things. Maybe I would be a better writer if I had outsourced my papers.
Maybe the word alert in the above sentence is where it breaks down.
On a side note, I looked into writing for essay mills before, but the money wasn't worth it for me.
1) Understand that outsourcing this way is an important skill and start training for it.
2) Teach subjects that are so damn engaging that students actually want to learn them.
2) You can't engage a student whose sole objective in life is the pursuit of money. Many, many students see universities as a path to greater income, nothing more. They have no interest in the subjects at hand.
Delegation is a good skill for a manager, but you don't go to a technical university to learn skills like this. You can pick it up in real life. (Also, it's most certainly unethical to delegate something and take complete credit -- and that's what the essay mills are supporting.)
On the second point, the subjects already are engaging, it's just that people pick the wrong topics. If you think data structures are boring, don't get a computer science degree. If blood makes you ill, don't become a surgeon. If you think the law is boring, don't become a lawyer. Pick something that you enjoy, not something that you think will be "in demand" after you graduate. Predicting the future is not easy. Pick something you like instead.
Take home assignments are usually a mess - what I did was to force people to write tests. If there are 3 people in a group and only one is working - it will also come out.