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YouTube Stars Being Paid to Sell Academic Cheating

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Re: YouTube Stars Being Paid to Sell Academic Cheating

#21

Post by openasocket »

chrisseaton wrote: post #9

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 ev…

I'm guessing the target of this kind of service are large classes where the professor can't practically get to examine each person's essays and internalize that unique voice. Classes like that also tend to not require a lot of in-class participation, again because it isn't practical to do with a large number of students. As for finding people "skilled in the particular cirriculums," I'm guessing this is meant for some of the lower level/introductory classes where the cirriculum is going to be more or less the same everywhere.

Re: YouTube Stars Being Paid to Sell Academic Cheating

#22

Post by sithadmin »

ISL wrote: post #16
chrisseaton wrote: post #9

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 ev…

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.

>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.

Re: YouTube Stars Being Paid to Sell Academic Cheating

#23

Post by whatshisface »

chrisseaton wrote: post #9

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 ev…

The lecturers don't know your voice if you've been paying a surrogate the whole time! As for the seminars, there are very few classes that involve actually defending your papers. Perhaps you'd find one at a very small school, or at a very senior level in a major with a heavy emphasis on writing. Even then, the cheater might just end up known as someone who can't speak very well but writes passable papers. (Don't just focus entirely on someone paying to fake a position as the brightest student around, that might not even be possible due to the rarity of people like that in any pool including the pool of paper-writers. You've also got to consider that someone who is not remotely qualified might pay to appear barely-competent.)

Re: YouTube Stars Being Paid to Sell Academic Cheating

#24

Post by wpietri »

matz1 wrote: post #15
baldfat wrote: post #2

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) Sh…

>cheating hurts everyone. Not the paper writers and some of the students who can benefit from it.

I think it hurts them too.

Have you even done a shitty job? It's soul-destroying. In high school I answered an ad in the paper and ended up doing "charity fundraising" by telephone. It turned out that the charity only got ~15% of the money raised. The people working there were all sleazeballs. I'm sure had I stayed there I would have ended up a sleazeball as well.

Re: YouTube Stars Being Paid to Sell Academic Cheating

#25

Post by soperj »

shifter wrote: post #5
sithadmin wrote: post #3

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, an…

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

This is a cost they should be bearing.

Re: YouTube Stars Being Paid to Sell Academic Cheating

#26

Post by chrisseaton »

openasocket wrote: post #21
chrisseaton wrote: post #9

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 ev…

I'm guessing the target of this kind of service are large classes where the professor can't practically get to examine each person's essays and internalize that unique voice. Classes like that also tend to not require a lot of in-class participation, again because it isn't practical to do with a large number of students. As for finding people "skilled in the particular cirriculums," I'm guessing this is meant for som…

> I'm guessing the target of this kind of service are large classes where the professor can't practically get to examine each person's essays and internalize that unique voice.

They say they can write your PhD thesis for you. How on earth can that work? You'll have years of intense one-on-one tuition with an expert in the field and they're not going to notice someone wrote the thesis? How are you going to withstand several hours of viva for something you didn't write? How can the EduBird author make an original contribution to the field on demand?

Re: YouTube Stars Being Paid to Sell Academic Cheating

#27

Post by wpietri »

sithadmin wrote: post #4
baldfat wrote: post #2

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) Sh…

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.

Oh, really? By that logic, since you're eventually going to die, probably horribly, then you'll be ok with me coming by and taking out one of your kidneys. Or, as in The Big Lebowski, lopping off a toe. Those are as nothing to a death from a brain tumor, after all.

Re: YouTube Stars Being Paid to Sell Academic Cheating

#28

Post by majormajor »

baldfat wrote: post #6
sithadmin wrote: post #4

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

A) Cheating hurts everyone. > is nothing compared to the massive grade inflation one sees at top universities in the US B) Because student at top universities (For the most part) have higher GPA in high school and a higher SAT scores already. Unless your morals require a strict bell curve of 10% F, 10% A, 40% C and 40% B?

Do you want to be able to identify the best of the best? That's the fundamental question here - if that's a useful thing for society, to have credentials that distinguish beyond "did well in high school," then you don't want grade inflation.

And if you don't - you could make a solid case that the extreme ends of those skills may not be that useful in general outside of academia - than do Harvard et al need nearly as much money as we throw at them today?

Re: YouTube Stars Being Paid to Sell Academic Cheating

#29

Post by 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.

Re: YouTube Stars Being Paid to Sell Academic Cheating

#30

Post by wpietri »

baldfat wrote: post #2

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) Sh…

I recognize that my first instinct, solving cheating via firing squad, is probably too extreme. But perhaps we could at least try it out and see how it works?
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