
YouTube Stars Being Paid to Sell Academic Cheating - Semirhage
http://www.bbc.com/news/education-43956001
======
majormajor
A bit of chatter here about "it eventually catches up to people anyway" that I
think misses the point.

You want people to learn when the stakes are low. This is better for them, and
it's better for all of us. School should gradually go from low stakes to
higher stakes, not be a low-stakes zone the whole time that then tosses people
into the real world. Otherwise you're presented with terrible choices like
expelling a 20 year old for a habit they learned when they were 8 and never
got called on, vs letting them get away with continuing to cheat.

Making it easy to cheat and lie when the stakes are low helps create
situations like "we can't trust anyone who says they know how to program so we
have to waste a lot of interview time on tedious crap."

The first solution that occurs to me seems to be smaller class sizes and
differently structured assignments with more of a "tell me about why you wrote
this" type interactive stuff. The same way you'd do when looking at someone's
github, to see how deep their understanding of the code there goes.

~~~
baddox
When are the stakes low vs. high when it comes to academic plagiarism? I would
think that the stakes are always quite low, at least until you get to post-
graduate academic work where plagiarism can have legal or serious ethical
(e.g. medical research) problems.

You seem to be claiming that at some point the stakes become _" truly"_ high,
and thus we ought to _artificially_ punish plagiarism so that people learn
that there are consequences.

~~~
joshvm
A recent TIFU (Today I Fucked Up) on Reddit, depending if you believe it - I'm
inclined not to, described such a situation:

[https://www.reddit.com/r/tifu/comments/8g33nv/tifu_by_plagia...](https://www.reddit.com/r/tifu/comments/8g33nv/tifu_by_plagiarizing_my_last_essay_in_college_and/)

They were allegedly expelled for plagiarising a 500 word essay.

> She sent me to the dean with the recommendation that I be expelled. Now the
> dean told me I can't graduate. I spent 4 years working on an engineering
> degree. I have over $100,000 in loans, and I can't be hired without my
> degree. My life literally vanished in the matter of 20 minutes.

The irony is they could have literally scrawled anything on the paper and
flunked, but passed the year.

Whether or not this story is true, universities certainly have grounds to
expel you immediately if you're caught cheating. And if you've spent $100k on
a degree that you need because of professional accreditation... those are
quite high stakes.

~~~
baddox
Aren't those the artificial high stakes we're talking about? I'm asking what
inherently high-stakes situation that is preparing you for.

~~~
joshvm
For a real world situation? Just look at the Google vs Uber trial. IP theft
and corporate espionage is incredibly high stakes. You can presumably make a
lot of money selling secrets, but if you're rumbled, that's your career over.

------
baldfat
As a former University Librarian and Residents Director

A) Cheating happens more then it doesn't. In a Philosophy Class which had a
dozen seniors all cheated in Spring Semester. Professor flunked them all by
giving them an F and told them they were lucky they weren't expelled.
President Graduated the students and fired the professor. Then on appeal the
President was fired and the Professor rehired with a raise.

B) Shocked that YouTube or any stock traded company would allow these videos
to stay up. Morally this is wrong since cheating hurts everyone in education.

EDIT:

C) No one was ever expelled for cheating, ever at my school.

~~~
sithadmin
As someone that used to write papers for cheaters: it doesn't bother me much,
because higher education is already eating itself alive in the US. The impact
of a few students paying others to author papers on their behalf is nothing
compared to the massive grade inflation one sees at top universities in the
US.

~~~
ocdtrekkie
It's always intriguing to see how people justify grossly unethical behavior to
themselves.

I don't think the issue is your disservice to higher education in general or
grade systems as a whole, but to your customers, who never receive the
education they were meant to, and that they paid for.

~~~
creep
Ethics are in the eye of the beholder.

~~~
always_good
...Something nobody ever said when they were on the receiving end of someone
else's poor ethics instead of the one partaking in it.

------
ChuckMcM
I get the outrage over cheating, and it really bothered me in classes that
graded on a curve that the cheaters would really adversely impact the people
who didn't.

But there is a meta question here, why does a youtube "star" even succumb to
the idea of advertising/promoting a cheating product, when doing so might put
all of their Youtube revenue at risk? Maybe it is because they get crap
Youtube revenue and 'several hundred dollars' is enough to push past their
moral compass.

People put a lot of heart and sweat into their Youtube channels. Perhaps it is
that Google is increasingly sucking more and more of the money that _used_ to
go to the channel in order to prop up their service which can't get
advertising revenues to support it.

I wonder when the Screen Actors Guild is going to figure out they have another
battlefront to engage on.

~~~
KaoruAoiShiho
"Several hundred dollars" heh.

These deals are worth at least 5 digits, sometimes 6.

~~~
ChuckMcM
From the article: *"Channels with tens of thousands of subscribers can be
offered hundreds of dollars for each advert."

Where do you get the 10's of thousands of dollars figure from?

~~~
magissima
Tens of thousands of subscribers isn't very many.

~~~
ChuckMcM
_" According to The Economist, influencers with at least 100,000 subscribers
on YouTube can get an average of $12,500 for a sponsored post, with payments
going up rapidly if you have one million subscribers or more. But those
figures refer to endorsements by people who are celebrities in their own
right. Someone who's only well known on YouTube might not command that kind of
pay."_

[https://www.inc.com/minda-zetlin/even-youtube-stars-
with-14-...](https://www.inc.com/minda-zetlin/even-youtube-stars-
with-14-million-monthly-viewers-earn-less-than-17000-a-year-research-
shows.html)

Suggests you can get low five figures for an endorsement with 100,000 viewers.

~~~
KaoruAoiShiho
Looks like if you scale it up from those numbers to the several million subs
category you'll easily get 6 figures, possibly 7.

~~~
ChuckMcM
I don't doubt it, but people with several million subscribers are in the 97 -
98th percentile. They are even less likely to risk their revenue stream by
pushing something that is clearly cheating. (Not that the guys who offer a
cheating service wouldn't love to have their endorsement of course).

I am thinking about people on the bubble who have enough subscribers to be
considered 'famous' but not so many as to be making bank like the top 3% do.
The economist article suggests that revenue as a 'youtuber' drops really hard
from the high end, into the not so high end personalities.

~~~
KaoruAoiShiho
The article mentions multiple people with millions of subs that's taking money
from cheating sites. I'm also thinking of one of my favorite channels:
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nFkbsvbJl7w](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nFkbsvbJl7w)
Definitely raking in the money these guys.

------
djhworld
Discussions about cheating aside, I find it hilarious watching these YouTube
influencers dropping these ads right in the middle of their videos without
even a hint of remorse. I mean, I get it, they want to make money, but still.

It reminds me of the days when some YouTubers would promote/endorse products
without specifically saying they were paid to do so. Or worse, promoting
products for gambling sites that they had business interests in.

It's interesting to see all this play out, it almost feels like it's the wild
west on YT right now. Every time the regulators try to come in and enforce
some policy, people still find the loopholes to create a quick buck.

------
at-fates-hands
As someone who worked as a grad student in a large Midwestern university,
these "paper writing" services have been around since the dawn of time.

As a grad student, it was hilariously easy to spot these for several reasons.
One, the writing style is usually inconsistent. You'll have a student writing
at about a high school level suddenly start using huge $5 words? Highly
unlikely. Or a student who writes almost exclusively on one topic (our school
had a ton of ag engineers so anything farm related was a favorite) and then
suddenly is interested in the micro-economics of island based economies? Yeah,
that's a big rad flag too.

As a University, our golden rule to clamp down on these was to require all
local sources, no internet sources, and have the ability to go back and look
at other papers the student has turned in for comparison. We'd normally bust
students, then give them two or three days to turn in a paper they actually
wrote with no penalties.

Most of these situations were just due to being lazy and not caring (I was in
the Sociology department) so it wasn't so much about cheating as it was just
getting the students to think critically and write better.

------
Renatewelgemoed
Have never been this hated by my husband who nearly killed me just because i
wanted to lay my hand on his Samsung phone and i was treated like i was a
small kid i endured for too long but i could not take it any longer then i was
informed of a hacker who saves relations by hacking into cell phones without
physical access to there phones and after contacting him mehn i got results of
what my husband has been hiding on his phone i got to read all his whats-app
messages, text messages and most especially his deleted text messages then i
knew what had been going on with him lately i found out my husband is a BIG
CHEAT but am happy that i found a helper please you all should feel free to
contact this hacker (BLACKHATTHACKER@TUTA.IO) he was the hacker that helped me
hack into my spouse phone and i must confess this hacker is fast and easy
going you all would love his hacking skills. Renate Welgemoed

------
sithadmin
I paid my rent and living expenses when pursuing my Masters degree by writing
papers for services that helped undergrads cheat on class/term papers.

I don't regret it at all. It helped me become a faster, more efficient author,
and in my experience, the sort of student that would pay someone else to buy a
paper will end up failing out one way or another regardless. I knew people
that paid for papers in undergrand, and most either flunked out, or barely
graduated and ended up worse off than our other classmates in terms of
job/grad school prospects.

~~~
shifter
That shifts the "cost" to employers... and you profited from it. Does that
make it theft? :-)

~~~
sithadmin
I don't really feel sympathy for employers that don't adequately screen
candidates.

And who knows: maybe the cheaters are completely capable of meeting the
requirements of whatever job they end up in.

~~~
ambicapter
inb4 the next HN article decrying hilarious overwrought interviewing
practices...

------
estsauver
I did a little poking on some of the profiles that are listed as top essay
writers. A lot of them that claim to be "Professors" are actually photos of
professors, but are usually from radically different fields.

This one is clearly just a stock photo:
[https://edubirdie.com/writer/public/750289](https://edubirdie.com/writer/public/750289)
[http://www.humanresourcestoday.com/diversity/?open-
article-i...](http://www.humanresourcestoday.com/diversity/?open-article-
id=7197807&article-title=5-incredibly-easy-ways-to-increase-workplace-
diversity-this-year&blog-domain=brazen.com&blog-title=brazen-hr)

~~~
maddyboo
I tried going through their onboarding process up to the point where you get
bids and messages from the "professors".

They send you messages in broken English like this:

"hello esteemed customer. kindly assign me the order. i have read the
instructions and understood them clearly as the assignment falls under my
field of study.Thus i can guarantee high quality work, free from plagiarism
and grammatical errors. Timely delivery is also my priority."

This seems like an essay mill out of India, which isn't surprising.

[1] [https://i.imgur.com/MlTdNDq.png](https://i.imgur.com/MlTdNDq.png)

[2] [https://i.imgur.com/DqLO4Pj.png](https://i.imgur.com/DqLO4Pj.png)

------
ada1981
Academic Outsourcing or Cheating?

Isn’t learning how to arbitrage time / money / skills a critical understanding
for the Gig economy?

Also, don’t we praise ignoring rules that don’t serve you and force your
resources into lower yield activities? (Uber, AirBnb, etc)

Where else in the real world do you get penalized for paying someone else to
develop IP for you? You can have books ghost written, copy for articles,
pretty much anything.

Have there been any studies that show people who outsource papers fair worse
later in life?

Aren’t Universites largely a scam to extract money for credentialing leaving
students with gross amounts of unbankruptable debt?

\- Devils Advocate

~~~
sakuronto
Sorry, but can you please argue against your own devil's advocate, because I'm
having a hard time coming up with counterpoints, and as a student currently in
university, it's left me pretty depressed about my future. Cheating really
does seem to pay off both in university and in the real world, regardless of
how immoral it is.

~~~
ada1981
Sure. The biggest argument is that integrity trumps being clever.

If you don’t like school, just quit. Trust yourself and endure the pain of
going against the mainstream.

Following your bliss and intuition will be the hardest and most rewarding
experience of your life.

Find mentors, ignore people who are still contracted in their own trauma /
nightmare who will try to hold you back.

If you like, come join us on Majagual.org, I will gift you a journey with us.

------
rb808
On a related theme - does anyone know how many people cheat on the initial
round hiring tests? Seems pretty easy to outsource, but I'm not sure how
common it is. I've always assumed our applicants did the work themselves but
maybe I'm naieve.

TBH if I was applying myself I'd be pretty tempted as usually its just a time
suck.

~~~
wpietri
The downside would be that you'd be more likely to work at a place that either
isn't sharp enough to detect cheaters or can't get it together to care.

Personally, if I suspect somebody is a liar or a cheater, I won't hire them. I
build teams that are low on micromanagement and high on independence and
trust. Somebody inclined toward fraud can be a big problem in a context like
that, both because of the direct damage they do and because they lower ambient
level of trust.

I recently had somebody apply for an internship claiming extensive iOS
experience with a nice iOS project on GitHub. But the commit history was
shallow, so I did some digging. Turns out it was a group project, and one of
the other people did almost all the work.

That person was instantly dead to me. They surely got a job somewhere, but I
feel sorry for their coworkers, who at best had to pick up a lot of slack, and
at worst had to put up with a bunch of new rules and micromanagement because
one employee couldn't be trusted.

~~~
8_hours_ago
Maybe it was pair programming on the partner’s computer, with most of the work
being done by the candidate? I feed bad that they got immediately rejected for
something that could have easily been fact checked by a few interview
questions.

------
a-dub
I suspect that if training and social sorting weren't conflated in academia
the way that they are today, the training would be _much_ more effective.

------
RIMR
I would love to see universities set a precedent and just catalog these
YoutTbers by name, and then let them know that they are permanently barred
from ever being admitted to their schools.

That would send a very strong message about how dishonorable academic cheating
is. Anyone promoting it is unfit for higher education, for obvious reasons.

~~~
warent
Disagree. I argue that a poorly educated person would be more likely to cheat.
In a sense, that punishment would be refusing education for the crime of
lacking education.

~~~
RIMR
A poorly educated person is the most likely to benefit from an education.
Cheating just means they intend to get credit for an education without
actually becoming more educated.

Cheaters have no place in academia.

------
fma
I think the solution to this is...classes have homework assignments throughout
the semesters, but your final paper is one that you write in class. And it's
like 50% of your grade. The purpose of the homework assignments throughout the
semester is to prepare for the final. If you ace the final, even having paid
for essays - then congrats you were able to learn.

Cheating is too easy now. There's a website where you can get solutions manual
for free. I've even seen websites that give solutions to Kumon homeowork. For
those who don't know Kumon - it's an after school curriculum to help kids
develop academically, to get to grade level if they are behind, of to
accelerate ahead even further if they are already ahead. What's the point of
cheating on those...

When I was in high school in the late 90's, babelfish had come out and kids
were cheating on their Spanish homework because it would spit out poor
Spanish. Now with the gig economy I'm sure you can scan your homework, upload
it and a native Spanish speaker would give you the perfect translation. I
remember reading that adjunct professors writing essays to supplement their
dirt poor income.

As far as YouTube Stars getting paid to advertise...meh.

~~~
Kalium
> I think the solution to this is...classes have homework assignments
> throughout the semesters, but your final paper is one that you write in
> class. And it's like 50% of your grade. The purpose of the homework
> assignments throughout the semester is to prepare for the final. If you ace
> the final, even having paid for essays - then congrats you were able to
> learn.

Isn't this a blue book exam?

~~~
fjsolwmv
Yes but those have fallen out of fashion because students don't like high-
stakes objective hard-to-cheat tests. (And there is _some_ argument against a
brief timed written test as an assessment for a whole semester. A friendly but
rigorous oral exam would be better.

Also, you can cheat a blue book test by hiring a stand-in. There's a story
about Ted Kennedy being caught at a pub by his TA, at a time when he was
supposedly taking a final exam at Harvard.

------
eecsninja
Anecdote: I remember in a scientific writing class in college, the professor
told us that we should always give credit when citing someone. I asked her if
that was just a good practice and courtesy, or an actual moral obligation. She
just repeated herself "you should always give credit" and didn't seem to
understand my question.

~~~
ThoAppelsin
It seems like she meant to say that it is wrong not to give that credit, i.e.
it is not just a good practice, not only a _moral_ obligation that you become
only immoral for not complying, but a requirement, a must that if you do not
do it, then you are in the wrong.

------
chrisseaton
I don't understand how this works. Surely you lecturers are going to know your
unique voice, your skill level and your opinions and a random essay by someone
else is not going to be passable as your own. Plus don't you have to discuss
in seminars essays that you submit? Won't it become apparent that it's not
your work when you can't defend it? Plus where do they find people skilled in
the particular curriculums of every school?

~~~
ISL
Many classes have a student/teacher ratio that makes such individual attention
impractical.

Furthermore, if someone is ghostwriting for you all semester, the
ghostwriter's voice is the voice that the teacher knows.

~~~
sithadmin
>if someone is ghostwriting for you all semester, the ghostwriter's voice is
the voice that the teacher knows.

This is also true. My agencies took care to assign repeat clients back to the
same writers.

------
djangowithme
"What do you have to lose? Stop being a bitch. Be a boss"

\- im sold

------
xenihn
I know two people who are currently doing a CS MS who barely do any of their
own assignments. They have friends help them, either by doing most of it or
all of it. They can pass programming classes because tests are leniently
graded, and at least half of the score comes from multiple choice questions
that can be answered without actually understanding the material.

------
ryanx435
All the people in this thread that think most people get a degree for
knowledge, instead of the truth that a degree is just a piece of paper that
tells employers "I am a normal member of the middle class and I can do basic
stuff so please hire me".

I honestly don't care if people cheat.

~~~
sakuronto
As a person who just started university, I have to ask: how else do I get
employers to not entirely ignore my application on account of "insufficient
qualifications"?

------
foobaw
How is the quality of writing for this? I know essays are extremely important
for college admissions so I'm wondering if this site's work is actually
contributing to changing people's future.

------
bambax
Why do students have to write essays at home? Get them all in a classroom or
big hall for 4-6 hours and let them write something on an imposed topic, the
same for everyone.

Cheating would be much harder this way.

~~~
jamesb93
This is what I did to get my BA only 2 years ago. We had exam essays and
prepared essays. It very quickly weeds out the people who don't know what
they're talking about.

------
mgleason_3
Interesting. Maybe it’s cause teachers will rely less on homeworkers and more
on in-class work?

------
YellowCode
Here is an interesting read

[http://www.culturewars.com/2008/BrooklynExistentialism.html](http://www.culturewars.com/2008/BrooklynExistentialism.html)

------
snambi
Ha... people find another way to do the same thing. Fundamentally the
education industry is failing to inspire students to study.

~~~
warent
Agreed with this. There's a disproportionate number of students that are doing
the work because they feel forced to. If the education system isn't willing to
somehow alter itself to engage its students rather than force pointless crap
on them that they'll try hard to forget after finals, then the education
system can continue to expect a large number of people attempting to game the
system.

Should it be condoned? Obviously not, but the point is this cheating thing is
only a symptom of a much bigger issue

------
2close4comfort
Too bad they do not possess the moral standing to do better with the audience
they have. But hey, Capitalism is great right as long as you have zero
character and are vapid enough to believe that any of this fake crap matters.
I say it is fine because they are the crabs at the bottom of the bucket...

------
mirimir
It's more than a little ironic that drug companies typically pay respected
medical-school professors to publish articles by ghostwriters.

And yes, I know, whataboutism. But aren't faculty supposed to set examples for
students?

------
roseadams
Hey guys i don't really do this but i promised Mr

Supreme i was going to let people know about his

hacking skills once he gets me a proof that he is

really genuine and i really wanted to know what my

husband has been up to lately as I seem not to be

getting his attention, but supremehacker440@gmailcom was able to hack into

my husband’s Fb, Snapchat, WhatsAp, Instagram and

full phone text, call logs and all the pictures datas

on the phone successfully; and he also help fixing

hacked applications as long its Electronics.

------
misterbowfinger
This reminds me of a story from my AI professor in college. Not exactly his
words, but it was something like...

"You have to do all of your work on your own. But let's say you decided to
copy someone else's homework. Well, to make sure you don't just plagiarize it,
you're going to start changing variables and function names, and maybe alter
the structure of the code altogether. As it turns out, the more you alter the
copy, the more it actually becomes your own work and eventually you would
have, in a sense, done the work yourself."

~~~
bad_good_guy
I may not have grasped the intended point to be made from your quote, but I
don't see how changed variables names or functions or whatever results in the
understanding of the logic.

~~~
fjsolwmv
They mean that if you can change it enough to not be detected as plagiarism,
you must be rewriting it in your own ideas, aka learning.

------
eecsninja
I'm really disappointed by the downvotes that sithadmin, misterbowfinger, and
I have been receiving in this thread.

Let me restate the argument, not in favor of cheating but why it's not the
moral issue that everyone makes it out to be:

1\. Cheating is only an issue in the artificial world of academia, where it
goes against how the system is supposed to work.

2\. We only think it is a moral issue because it's been drilled into us since
we were kids, and that we think it is not fair to those who don't cheat and
devalues the value of their degree.

3\. The current system is stupid. Academic grades and degrees, to the extent
that they affect your life after academia, should be based on what you can
accomplish or explain, not how well you can write answers.

4\. Employers should be using other methods to screen prospective employees --
looking at past projects, word of mouth, etc.

The sooner we can put to rest the notion that we should spend ages 6 through
22 in an artificial system that has no relation to the real world before we
can enter the real world as functioning adults, the better.

~~~
clairity
do you really not understand that railing against the system is not the same
thing as advocating cheating, as you seem to be doing?

and really? cheating is only an issue in artificial constructs like academia?
so if i design a building and crib the stress analysis from another building,
it's ok because that's not an artifical situation?

it seems academia really did fail you, as your argument just falls apart
_prima facie_. the learned person would reflect on the wealth of the feedback
that you're getting here rather than assuming that you've unsheathed some
gloden nugget of truth that the rest of us silly fools can't glean.

aversion to cheating is embedded in the social systems of all sorts of living
creatures. might you want to read up on that and update your arguments, or is
that too academic and artificial (as compared to typing into an emphemeral
textbox)?

~~~
eecsninja
My point is that cheating is at worst a violation of rules/contracts. I'm
saying there's a different way of thinking to understand why somethings are
wrong -- not just that they are wrong, but the underlying reasons as well.

Every example that has been provided could be counted as wrong by some other
existing real world standard. In the case of copying the stress analysis, that
is called FRAUD in the real world.

I sound like I'm being pedantic here, but I hope some people out there can
understand.

As far as social systems go, the object of aversion is deception and the
associated harm. That's bad. I think we mentally conflate that with academic
cheating (plagiarism), when it is something different.

~~~
fjsolwmv
You keep failing to explain the difference between academic fraud and
commercial fraud.

~~~
eecsninja
Commercial fraud: > The theory of contract espoused here demonstrates that
fraud is properly viewed as a type of theft. Suppose Karen buys a bucket of
apples from Ethan for $20. Ethan represents the things in the bucket as being
apples, in fact, as apples of a certain nature, that is, as being fit for
their normal purpose of being eaten. Karen conditions the transfer of title to
her $20 on Ethan's not knowingly engaging in 'fraudulent' activities, like
pawning off rotten apples. If the apples are indeed rotten and Ethan knows
this, then he knows that he does not receive ownership of or permission to use
the $20, because the condition 'no fraud' is not satisfied. He is knowingly in
possession of Karen's $20 without her consent, and is, therefore, a thief.

source: [https://mises.org/wire/problem-fraud-fraud-threat-and-
contra...](https://mises.org/wire/problem-fraud-fraud-threat-and-contract-
breach-types-aggression)

There is no equivalent of harm done to property or person with plagiarism in
an academic setting.

> Finally, it is curious that the first thing that occurs to people on first
> hearing the anti-IP case is plagiarism: “You mean it would be okay for
> someone to take an author’s work, put his own name on it, and sell it?”

> Two issues are conflated here. One can plagiarize without violating a
> copyright, and one can violate a copyright without plagiarizing. Under
> copyright law you may use brief verbatim excerpts of another’s written work
> without permission as long as you use quotation marks and attribute the text
> to the author. It’s called “fair use.” (Question for copyright fans: Isn’t
> even fair use a violation of an author’s rights?) If you were to use an
> excerpt that otherwise would qualify under the fair-use principle but
> without attribution, you would be guilty of plagiarism but not copyright
> violation. The same would be true if you quote Shakespeare without
> attribution. (Shakespeare wrote without benefit of copyright.)

> On the other hand, if you publish Atlas Shrugged with Ayn Rand’s name on it,
> you would be guilty of copyright violation but not plagiarism.

> For the sake of clear thinking, let’s keep these issues separate.

> Well, is plagiarism okay? No, it’s not! Obviously it is dishonest and
> dishonorable to represent someone else’s work as one’s own. But note,
> according to LegalZoom, “plagiarism is not a criminal or civil offense.” Nor
> should it be. It’s a breach of good conduct, and there is a plentitude of
> nonviolent, non-State ways to deal with it, especially in the Internet age.

Source: [https://mises.org/wire/slave-labor-and-intellectual-
property...](https://mises.org/wire/slave-labor-and-intellectual-property-
misplaced-analogy)

Look, I get it's a bad in a practical sense if someone cheats or plagiarizes,
especially to the cheater. It could even be a breach of contract between the
student and the school. But it's not a crime against another person. It's a
"victimless crime" essentially.

If someone falsifies licensing or safety requirements, like with an airplane
or a building, that's a legal matter. Call that "professional fraud" \-- it's
illegal. But there is no law against cheating in school.

~~~
learc83
> It's a "victimless crime" essentially.

It's not a victimless crime.

1\. Every CS class I took had some form of curve. People cheating directly
lowered the grade of people who didn't.

2\. Cheating devalues the credentials that other students paid for. You can
argue about the benefits of the credentialing system, but that doesn't change
that fact that students cheating directly financially harms students who don't
cheat.

3\. It harms job seekers who now have to spend time going through additional
screening steps because their credentials are no longer trusted.

It really seems like your trying very hard to justify some past behavior here.

~~~
eecsninja
Dude I've been out of school for almost a decade. I didn't major in CS. And
the only stuff I learned that was useful for my future career was through a
project class where it was impossible to cheat or otherwise bullshit your way
to an A. Most of my programming skills were learned from coding games in my
spare time.

~~~
learc83
What does any of that have to do with what I said?

