121–130 of 354 posts
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You are a terrible person.
There were far worse ways that I could have kept myself afloat, income-wise. I'm pretty okay with this one, thanks.
"Your honor, you should not judge me for stealing. For I could have also murdered."
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>cheating hurts everyone. Not the paper writers and some of the students who can benefit from it.
One of the basic foundations of economics is competitive advantage. No one makes everything themselves, they defer to specialists. I don't see why writing papers should be any different, considering most of the work is not about technical competence, it's about proper formatting and writing skills. If scientists could spend all their time performing experiments, statisticians did all the statistics, and technical wri…
I still talk to a rubber duck when writing code that I don't have to explain to anybody (probably).
The purpose of an academic paper isn't to explain anything, it's to force the student to form an idea about a thing, then find and apply evidence to support that idea. The purpose is learning, and demonstrating to the professor proof that they have learned.
None of those boxes get ticked if you pay someone to write your papers.
And nah, Shakespeare lit 101 is not the place where you "learn how the world works" by demonstrating how you can "game the system" by paying someone else to do the work. The professor is concerned with the students learning about Shakespeare and maybe a bit about literary criticism, that's it.
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Many of my customers could barely compose a cogent e-mail. In most cases I was left wondering how they could possibly be admitted at whatever school they were at. Sure, my assessment of my customers was limited to a few back-and-forth e-mail exchanges, but I was usually left with the impression that they were enrolled at a school they didn't 'deserve' to be at. Further, you're just completely discounting the agency o…
I presume they ended up enrolled in that school because there was always a way that money got them out of learning the hard lesson of failure. Case in point that they could pay someone to write papers for them. Failure is arguably an important part of the process of learning.
There's a thing that happens with loopholes. There's the guy that finds the loophole and tests it out for himself. Then there's the small group that follow him in if it suits their needs, and then word spreads and a good proportion of people also follow. If the loophole threatens the existing system in any way, then the upholders of that system will attempt to barricade the loophole. A few upholders might change the system itself, but that is rare.
The one guy who first used the loophole will always be on the lookout for new loopholes, and there's nothing you can do about it. You can say it's wrong, you can say it's not fair, but it's a fact of life. And by using that loophole that one guy can create change all around him. He can change it himself, or he can open the door for other people to see the change that needs to happen. Maybe it's good to patch the loophole, maybe it's good to change the system in which the loophole was found-- either way, it comes down a great deal to our explorer friend. He learns from failure too, but his goals are different and that's fine.
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You're a lesser purveyor of counterfeit goods, but you're still a counterfeiter.
Counterfeit implies a copy of something that has a defined market value. Academic papers don't. What I did is closer to a tailor creating a suit for someone from scratch, rather than someone operating a sweatshop to produce fake suits from some known brand.
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That's like saying "stealing isn't morally wrong - inventory control is retailers' responsibility and therefore it's their job to reduce loss".
Academic cheating is NOT morally wrong in a general sense. We only think it is because it's drilled into us from a young age by the educational system. But there's really no equivalent of "cheating" in real world industries where it's the results that matter. e.g. nobody cares if you took wrote the software yourself or got it from someone else's library, as long as the software product works. If cheating happens, it…
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…
I totally agree with this. However, I'm not sure that students in middle/high school realize that the stakes are, in fact, low. The teachers and programs emphasize exactly the opposite.
"Oh this is going on your permanent record", whatever that is. "If you screw this up there's no way you'll be ready for university-level classes." On and on, and what a load of bull it was.
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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 agree. I got fairly close to finishing but was disillusioned by a few teachers and students who clearly weren't there for the right reason. I had a graduate professor that specifically forbid us to work in groups on problem sets. When I would only make it half way after days of work, my professor would ask what is wrong with me and why im not completing work. When I mention I saw the rest of the class working toget…
I was working towards a degree in the social sciences at a top 5 (for my field) university/top 10 in general. I was mostly disillusioned by the professors that put little to no effort into leading engaging seminars (some of which were the top living 'experts' in their fields), and the fact that so many other postdocs from other top 5 schools were adjuncting at my university and just sitting in on my classes, with no hope for actually obtaining a tenure track position anywhere.
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Academic cheating is NOT morally wrong in a general sense. We only think it is because it's drilled into us from a young age by the educational system. But there's really no equivalent of "cheating" in real world industries where it's the results that matter. e.g. nobody cares if you took wrote the software yourself or got it from someone else's library, as long as the software product works. If cheating happens, it…
Morality is relative anyway.
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>cheating hurts everyone. Not the paper writers and some of the students who can benefit from it.
One of the basic foundations of economics is competitive advantage. No one makes everything themselves, they defer to specialists. I don't see why writing papers should be any different, considering most of the work is not about technical competence, it's about proper formatting and writing skills. If scientists could spend all their time performing experiments, statisticians did all the statistics, and technical wri…
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.