

Cheating Goes Global as Essay Mills Multiply - ksvs
http://chronicle.com/free/v55/i28/28a00102.htm?

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mdasen
Ah, and another screen that firms use for potential employees turns to mush.

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.

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mustpax
I think you have a valid point about exploited labor, but I think you're
conflating education and essay writing.

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.

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jibiki
But everything's a proxy for everything. Employers don't really want educated
employees, they just use the college degree as a proxy for the skills and
qualities they actually want. The college degree itself doesn't certify
learning or the qualities desired by employers; it just certifies that you
found a way to make it through college. Ultimately, anything anybody does is
largely based on luck, their ability to game the system, who their friends
are, etc. If some rich kid has an essay written for him, he's just equaling
out the luck some other rich kid had in getting an easy teacher.

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.

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madcaptenor
I don't understand how somebody could actually hand in a PhD dissertation from
one of these places. Are there really schools where nobody would be suspicious
that the student hadn't been working on this particular dissertation before
they handed in the final version?

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lacker
Even at many top grad schools, hardly any dissertation will be rejected. If
you spend a long time there, grad schools will often be eager to hand you a
PhD for a junky dissertation just to get you out the door.

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timcederman
Really? From what I've seen, if it's that junky that will request major
revisions in the hope to either deter you enough just to quit, or to encourage
you enough to clean it up.

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makaimc
I cringed when I saw a quote by a student at my undergrad university. Not sure
why anyone would respond to a reporter's inquiry on such a controversial topic
that could get you expelled from school.

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biohacker42
Use a stupid metric - don't be surprised if that stupid metric is gamed.

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AndrewWarner
It's useless to fight this trend. Schools need to recognize the need for
change. They can:

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.

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jrockway
I disagree on both points.

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.

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ams6110
Don't graduate students have to defend their dissertations? Should be pretty
easy to spot those who didn't actually do their own research.

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dhimes
I suspect that these are the operations that are causing my trouble with
Google. I am punished yet they get through!

<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=534249>

