Writing papers for American college students has become lucrative overseas • Hacker News Board

Re: Writing papers for American college students has become lucrative overseas

#101

Post by leetcrew » Sun, Sep 08, 2019, 3:20 AM UTC

ineedasername wrote: post #97

woopwoop wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Instructors are often unbelievably naive about this, saying things to the effect of "Cheaters are really obvious, so there can't be that much of it." No, the cheaters that you catch are really obvious.

I occasionally teach a college course as an adjunct (fun, and a little extra spending money). I don't know how wide spread cheating is, though if it were extremely common then students wouldn't struggle so much with some of the material. But personally, while I have an "instant F" policy if caught, I didn't really care: My philosophy and that of many other instructors is not one of indignant, "surely I'd know!" about…

> It's that it's the student's time, their future debt. If they want to waste it, that's on them.

I mean, it is pretty unfair to the kids who actually do honest work. if enough people cheat and get near perfect scores, it makes it hard for the instructor to understand what a reasonable two week project is. grades are also (unfortunately) pretty important for internships.

on the other hand, sometimes people who cheat are really bad at it. in one of the courses I TA'd, there were two groups of 3-4 students who would always sit together in labs. they would always turn in nearly identical labs and homeworks, including all the same mistakes! it looked like the only differences came from transcription errors. I never bothered to report them because they failed all the assignments anyway.

Re: Writing papers for American college students has become lucrative overseas

#102

Post by leetcrew » Sun, Sep 08, 2019, 3:28 AM UTC

michaelt wrote: post #82

throwawaysea wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That suggests that these assignments are more like busy work, since the students are otherwise talented and qualified? Maybe it is a good thing after all?

Perhaps doing the assignment improves the student's understanding of the course material, which the professor thinks is a good thing, but it's possible to pass the course with only a mediocre understanding of the material?

> but it's possible to pass the course with only a mediocre understanding of the material

probably this.

the most time-efficient strategy for studying that I found in college was simply retyping all the bullets from the powerpoints 2-3 times. I didn't understand what I was writing, but I basically trained myself to be a "chinese room" for test questions. I got As on all the tests for classes I didn't care about this way.

Re: Writing papers for American college students has become lucrative overseas

#103

Post by ineedasername » Sun, Sep 08, 2019, 3:28 AM UTC

leetcrew wrote: post #101

ineedasername wrote: post #97

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I occasionally teach a college course as an adjunct (fun, and a little extra spending money). I don't know how wide spread cheating is, though if it were extremely common then students wouldn't struggle so much with some of the material. But personally, while I have an "instant F" policy if caught, I didn't really care: My philosophy and that of many other instructors is not one of indignant, "surely I'd know!" about…

> It's that it's the student's time, their future debt. If they want to waste it, that's on them. I mean, it is pretty unfair to the kids who actually do honest work. if enough people cheat and get near perfect scores, it makes it hard for the instructor to understand what a reasonable two week project is. grades are also (unfortunately) pretty important for internships. on the other hand, sometimes people who cheat…

I've never had a problem determining what a reasonable project length or level of difficulty should be. I don't adjust it if I have a particularly apt group of students. Students who really shine are given direction to support that ability but that is case by case, not baked into the overall difficulty of the course. These things can be rubric driven based on what material should be learned and not just improvised based on perceived class characteristics.

There's no unfairness to an honest student who gets just as much out of a course with or without cheaters. Perhaps more if I'm not trying to put together complicated "gotcha" assignments and tests to catch potential cheaters.

Besides, I didn't say I ignored cheating. My fault if I gave that impression. I put in reasonable effort to look out for it, but don't obsess over it. if it went on without me finding out then by definition it wasn't something I could act on, and neither I nor the honest students were the ones losing time and money.

Re: Writing papers for American college students has become lucrative overseas

#104

Post by leetcrew » Sun, Sep 08, 2019, 3:30 AM UTC

cco wrote: post #47

spodek wrote: post #5

Visiting a high school my friend founded to be inquiry-driven project-based learning from the ground up moved me away from teaching in ways divorced from regular life. From a systemic approach, it's hard not to look at the universities and professors creating the system that this article describes: assign homework irrelevant to their lives and they'll find irrelevant ways to do it. Since I've never written an analyti…

You've never had to read and understand some data, analyze it, and then communicate your results via written word in your career? I'm totally willing to grant you that the majority of careers do not require this skill but most white collar work does. Agreed that essays are overused but I'm just surprised to hear you downplay them so much.

I suspect that arguing on forums has done much more for my communication skills than writing a bunch of essays on topics I didn't care about. the feedback is a lot quicker, and the criticism much sharper.

Re: Writing papers for American college students has become lucrative overseas

#105

Post by leetcrew » Sun, Sep 08, 2019, 3:40 AM UTC

goostavos wrote: post #55

spamizbad wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That’s true but I doubt the types dropping $ to have their papers professionally written are the types who would otherwise go and become plumbers or electricians. Who buys a paper? A lazy child of the ruling class.

The ruling class? You vastly over estimate the price of getting homework done. I used to pay for some of my books each semester by just burning through all the low hanging "do my intro to CS homework" posts on job sites. $10-$20 a pop for a few minutes of effort.

$20 was actually a lot of money when I was a college student. that's 2-3 meals off campus or enough cheap booze for a small party. I was pretty lazy and I never even considered paying someone to do my homework.

Re: Writing papers for American college students has become lucrative overseas

#106

Post by Spooky23 » Sun, Sep 08, 2019, 3:44 AM UTC

bsanr2 wrote: post #96

Spooky23 wrote: post #92

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There are plenty of jobs in banking that don’t require much beyond the ability to get a BA in whatever and a personality that tends to follow the rules. Even in tech jobs, the narrow scope of jobs for compliance reasons enables all sorts of wacky. I had a buddy who basically performed a single task related to zoning SAN volumes and made an obscene salary for doing so. GPA correlates to a personality that the function…

I see these type of comments as an underemployed college grad and don't know how to feel.

As the other reply said, it’s a numbers game. Making friends and building relationships are key. You can stack the odds with a friendly face.

Re: Writing papers for American college students has become lucrative overseas

#107

Post by leetcrew » Sun, Sep 08, 2019, 4:17 AM UTC

ineedasername wrote: post #103

leetcrew wrote: post #101

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> It's that it's the student's time, their future debt. If they want to waste it, that's on them. I mean, it is pretty unfair to the kids who actually do honest work. if enough people cheat and get near perfect scores, it makes it hard for the instructor to understand what a reasonable two week project is. grades are also (unfortunately) pretty important for internships. on the other hand, sometimes people who cheat…

I've never had a problem determining what a reasonable project length or level of difficulty should be. I don't adjust it if I have a particularly apt group of students. Students who really shine are given direction to support that ability but that is case by case, not baked into the overall difficulty of the course. These things can be rubric driven based on what material should be learned and not just improvised ba…

> I've never had a problem determining what a reasonable project length or level of difficulty should be. I don't adjust it if I have a particularly apt group of students. Students who really shine are given direction to support that ability but that is case by case, not baked into the overall difficulty of the course. These things can be rubric driven based on what material should be learned and not just improvised based on perceived class characteristics.

first of all, I don't mean to criticize you personally.

I'm not talking about adding or removing topics/depth to or from a course semester to semester based on the group of kids. in aggregate though, I think you'll definitely notice that the topics covered in a particular class vary a lot from school to school based on the expectations they have for the students. there's a lot more depth in a data structures course at a tech school than in the same class at some liberal arts school's vestigial cs department. if, instead of having brighter students, a school actually just has a much larger proportion of effective cheaters, the professors might unknowingly assign too much work to complete honestly. you personally might not change your assignments much, but I'm not sure how you could prevent this drift from occurring across an entire department over the span of a decade.

> There's no unfairness to an honest student who gets just as much out of a course with or without cheaters.

this depends on what you think the point of college is. if it's strictly about mastery of material for its own sake, sure, cheating only hurts the cheater. unfortunately, most students don't just go to college for the pleasure of learning. they go because they believe it will help them get a job. when you apply to your first internship, your GPA likely one of most important things on your resume. it is very much unfair to be competing against people who didn't earn theirs honestly. if a cheater takes your spot in the recruiting pipeline, you're out for this round. the company isn't going to call you up out of the blue because they realized the other person is an incompetent clown halfway through the summer.

Re: Writing papers for American college students has become lucrative overseas

#108

Post by meowface » Sun, Sep 08, 2019, 4:37 AM UTC

leetcrew wrote: post #102

michaelt wrote: post #82

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Perhaps doing the assignment improves the student's understanding of the course material, which the professor thinks is a good thing, but it's possible to pass the course with only a mediocre understanding of the material?

> but it's possible to pass the course with only a mediocre understanding of the material probably this. the most time-efficient strategy for studying that I found in college was simply retyping all the bullets from the powerpoints 2-3 times. I didn't understand what I was writing, but I basically trained myself to be a "chinese room" for test questions. I got As on all the tests for classes I didn't care about this…

Pretty much exactly what I did, as well. And I'd usually do it an hour or two before each test.

Re: Writing papers for American college students has become lucrative overseas

#109

Post by sosodev » Sun, Sep 08, 2019, 5:36 AM UTC

I paid to have a few history essays written for me. Judge me if you please but the class was ridiculously hard for an introductory history class and I had my plate full already.

The writer I stuck with for the semester was excellent. She was very well written, followed instructions well, and always delivered on time. I'm sure she was making good money doing it. If anything she was under charging.

Re: Writing papers for American college students has become lucrative overseas

#110

Post by rahimnathwani » Sun, Sep 08, 2019, 10:11 AM UTC

mark_l_watson wrote: post #52

lettergram wrote: post #2

One of my family members paid their way through school writing papers for others... in the 80s. I don’t think this is a new thing. I used to do consulting / tutoring for programming. Tutoring was $50 per hour, consulting was $100 per hour. Probably 50% of the students I tutored asked me to write programs for them. I’d tell them my consulting rate, in an attempt to persuade them against this path and most wouldn’t bat…

I accepted a ‘do my computer science homework’ gig from a student in China about 15 years ago, but when I was done, I decided to not do it anymore. A few years later, a married couple (two professors in Saudi Arabia) hired me to remotely tutor their daughter who was an under graduate in CSand that was fun, and I hoped I helped her. I have a niece who has two masters degrees(literature and screenplay writing) and she…

"helping exchange students polish their application essays"

Do those assessing the applications care if the applicants have had this type and extent of help?