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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

#41

Post by 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."

Re: YouTube Stars Being Paid to Sell Academic Cheating

#42

Post by ttoinou »

badlucklottery wrote: post #33
sithadmin wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Personally, I don't really see meaningful value in degrees anyway, so I don't really buy that line of argumentation. My only reason for pursuing graduate studies was to pass the barrier to entry for an academic position, but I gave up on that and went into consulting.

>I don't really see meaningful value in degrees anyway Do you see how that's a rationalization strategy? Maybe you honestly don't but discounting the value of the degree to zero makes your actions victimless. But, if the value is non-zero, damage has been done.

He acted morally right to me. Lowering value of shitty diplomas you can cheat easily is useful to society, and brings future competition to this industry

Re: YouTube Stars Being Paid to Sell Academic Cheating

#43

Post by misterbowfinger »

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…

> Morally this is wrong since cheating hurts everyone in education.

Going to slap a big "NOPE" to this bit. It's the school's responsibility to educate and assess students, and therefore it's their job to reduce cheating.

IMHO, if it's really easy to cheat on a test (mostly rote memorization), then students SHOULD cheat. It's a bad test and and insanely huge waste of everyone's time and money.

Re: YouTube Stars Being Paid to Sell Academic Cheating

#44

Post by dsfyu404ed »

ulrikrasmussen wrote: post #20
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.

Your argument seems similar to somebody saying that it is okay to litter because the environment is screwed anyway. You may be correct in your criticism of the educational system, but how does that justify you making the situation worse?

On some level things have to get worse before there's willpower to make progress toward a solution.

Re: YouTube Stars Being Paid to Sell Academic Cheating

#45

Post by 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 http://www.humanresourcestoday.com/diversity/?open-article-i...

Re: YouTube Stars Being Paid to Sell Academic Cheating

#46

Post by s17n »

misterbowfinger wrote: post #43
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…

> Morally this is wrong since cheating hurts everyone in education. Going to slap a big "NOPE" to this bit. It's the school's responsibility to educate and assess students, and therefore it's their job to reduce cheating. IMHO, if it's really easy to cheat on a test (mostly rote memorization), then students SHOULD cheat. It's a bad test and and insanely huge waste of everyone's time and money.

That's like saying "stealing isn't morally wrong - inventory control is retailers' responsibility and therefore it's their job to reduce loss".

Re: YouTube Stars Being Paid to Sell Academic Cheating

#47

Post by openasocket »

chrisseaton wrote: post #38
openasocket wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They can? I didn't see anything about that in the article. I've got no clue how you would pull that off

https://uk.edubirdie.com/thesis-writing

Wow, I have no idea. I skimmed around their little review section and couldn't find anyone who wrote a full dissertation for someone, though I did find one person who apparently wrote a chapter for someone's thesis. That might be achievable, if you give them your outline and partially completed sections and they fill it in? Though it really doesn't seem worth it. I haven't written a thesis, but I imagine most of the work is in doing the actual research and creating something that furthers the state of the art, the writeup seems much easier.

Though a sibling comment mentioned that this might be a complete scam, which I wouldn't doubt. Or none of their writers actually accept offers to write an entire thesis, and they just advertise the possibility of someone on their site doing it.

Re: YouTube Stars Being Paid to Sell Academic Cheating

#48

Post by dofly »

matz1 wrote: post #32
wpietri wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Its not a shitty job for some of the right people. I can easily think few possible advantage of this job: - flexible time - potential to earn lot of money - sheer enjoyment of writing - improve one writing skills

I think it all depends on incentives. If one goes to school with a sole purpose of learning something(employment, career track being non-issues), I'd imagine, they wouldn't care about the cheaters as they wouldn't be competing with the cheaters for jobs, promotions etc. This reminded me of a Russian pop star from the early 2000s who became a philosophy major at a major Russian university. Presumably, she didn't mind the cheaters as I doubt she was aiming at tenure track or something to that effect at the school. Although, I can't be sure :)

Re: YouTube Stars Being Paid to Sell Academic Cheating

#49

Post by sithadmin »

GW150914 wrote: post #37
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.

You were a professionally immoral person, so it not bothering you much is probably a shitty metric. Surely the people who gravitate to this work are the least reliable people to assess the impact, sort of like pimps and dealers.

I never claimed to be a 'reliable person' to assess the impact. Just sharing my thoughts and experiences.

Re: YouTube Stars Being Paid to Sell Academic Cheating

#50

Post by openasocket »

ttoinou wrote: post #42
badlucklottery wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>I don't really see meaningful value in degrees anyway Do you see how that's a rationalization strategy? Maybe you honestly don't but discounting the value of the degree to zero makes your actions victimless. But, if the value is non-zero, damage has been done.

He acted morally right to me. Lowering value of shitty diplomas you can cheat easily is useful to society, and brings future competition to this industry

Is stealing from stores that don't have good security also useful to society, by bringing future competition to the industry? And if so, does that make stealing moral?
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