
The Term Paper Artist - robg
http://www.thesmartset.com/article/article10100801.aspx
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jcl
Fascinating, and a little creepy. I found this part hilarious:

 _You have to make your own fun. In business papers, I'd often cite Marxist
sources. When given an open topic assignment on ethics, I'd write on the
ethics of buying term papers, and even include the broker's Web site as a
source. My own novels and short stories were the topic of many papers --
several DUMB CLIENTS rate me as their favorite author and they've never even
read me, or anyone else. Whenever papers needed to refer to a client's own
life experiences, I'd give the student various sexual hang-ups._

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TrevorJ
I'm becoming more and more convinced that "Idiocracy' was a documentary. It's
truly scary to me that not only does this happen a lot, but that professors
have class sizes so largest that it's literally impossible for them to get to
know students well enough to put two and two together.

~~~
robg
up-vote for Idiocracy, but this current election gives me some hope.

I'm actually less concerned about people getting through school by cheating.
Sooner or later they'll have to actually prove themselves or face the
consequences. Character is destiny.

~~~
jumper
Well, see, except that's the problem! A lot of time they don't have to prove
themselves for a long time, certainly not in school, almost never in certain
bureaucratic blobs, and when the consequences come for them... often they come
for us as well.... see any massively incompetent's screw up that cost us all
dearly.

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jbert
My theory is that if you try to "manage by metrics", the quality of what you
are managing will go down.

Unhappily, this often leads to more metrics, since more quality control is
clearly needed...

To me, the alternative of "managing by metrics" is knowing your staff and
being familiar with their work. This is hard to do and harder to scale (say,
to national level), since it requires that the managers are doing a good job.

Metrics scale much more easily. But - those who care have to fight the
measurement system to produce quality. This reduces their effectiveness or
drives them to leave, leaving you with the less-motivated.

Being a teacher, being a student and software development are areas which can
and do suffer from this. (Students perhaps less so, they have to learn to play
the system since they have fewer alternatives.)

~~~
timcederman
Um, what?

~~~
mlinsey
One of two possibilities:

First possibility: Jbert was arguing that the reason students can get away
with this is because classroom grading standards are too mechanical (did you
fill at least X pages? Did you have a thesis statement? Did you cite at least
Y sources). Furthermore, many teachers are themselves evaluated based
"metrics" like standardized tests which don't test writing ability very well.
I don't really think that this explains the paper mill business, but you could
make the argument.

Second possibility: Jbert is paying a starving blogger a couple of bucks to
write his comments for him!

~~~
jbert
> I don't really think that this explains the paper mill business, but you
> could make the argument.

I was thinking along those lines (then thought it relevant to the way students
are judged too, as well as coders). Teaching used to be a well-regarded
profession and has instead become much lower status (and low paid). Some
random stats I googled for seem to support this (possibly biased source):
<http://www.nea.org/edstats/losingground.html>

I would think that you would be less likely to get away with the paper mill
business if your teacher was a highly motivated professional.

In the UK at least, teaching is rigidly controlled, with schools' success or
failure being evaluated according to various metrics. These are can be easily
gamed (e.g. # of pupils achieving 5 A-C grades at GCSE. You focus effort on
the C/D students, and push kids towards 'soft' subjects) - but only by
teachers who are prepared to put the score-against-metric above the quality of
the education they give. Of course, if you don't perform to those metrics, the
school suffers (lower in league table => fewer pupils => less cash for school
=> worse education for kids), so you're effectively screwed either way.

Basically it's the old perverse incentive business, but yes, I do appear to
have pulled a random rant out of thin air, so apologies to the regular HN
readers. We now return you to your regularly scheduled viewing.

HN question: given that management needs info to make decisions and metrics
are often gameable/perverse, how does one approach this problem? Is it just
"good metrics"?

> Second possibility: Jbert is paying a starving blogger a couple of bucks to
> write his comments for him!

Now that's a startup waiting to happen:

karmachameleon.com - "building your online reputation"

(name appears to be squatted).

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sdp
This does a good job of exemplifying the Sex & Cash Theory
(<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=333278>).

One sexy writing job, and another that pays the bills in a pinch.

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Dilpil
Note that this only happens in humanities classes. It says something about a
class when a passable term paper can be produced in the space of 4 hours.
Imagine asking someone to complete your engineering term project in a similar
fashion.

~~~
utnick
Outsourcing CS projects and homework actually seems to be a pretty big
business on most rentacoder and freelancer sites.

~~~
eru
I hope math is not tainted, yet.

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radley
I wish I had something intelligent to say as a response, but I can't. Teh
awesomez!

~~~
noonespecial
I think for about $20, that guy will write one for you! :)

