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

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

#51

Post by MegaButts » Sat, Sep 07, 2019, 5:53 PM UTC

landryraccoon wrote: post #49

MegaButts wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm guessing it varies a lot by school. I went to a top engineering school as an undergrad and cheating was rampant - probably something like 1/3 of the graduating class participated in cheating to some extent. I then went to another top engineering school as a graduate student and I never saw anyone cheat.

Cheating in engineering is pointless. At every tech company I’ve interviewed at (on either side of the table) as soon as you get into the interview what school you went to and what grades you got don’t matter. If you can’t whiteboard some technical problems you aren’t getting in.

I know people that cheated, were utterly incompetent, and got prestigious jobs at tech firms.

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

#52

Post by mark_l_watson » Sat, Sep 07, 2019, 5:55 PM UTC

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 has never hit it big with her own writing but she works helping exchange students polish their application essays and the money from that pays her bills and lets her write creatively and she gets by with relatively small income from her creative works.

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

#53

Post by gumby » Sat, Sep 07, 2019, 5:56 PM UTC

I’d like to know who writes those essays — and hire them!

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

#54

Post by yardie » Sat, Sep 07, 2019, 6:02 PM UTC

TrackerFF wrote: post #25

When I studied business in college, I'd say that half of my senior year class were gunning for the same banking and consulting gigs. In either case, it was known and understood that those types of employers were obsessed with your grades. Unless you happened to have the most amazing and prestigious internship / experience, your GPA would make or break your chances at such firms. At the same time, we knew from interns…

> When I studied Engineering, however, I didn't see much of this culture.

When I studied engineering I saw almost the same culture. Firms were looking for the same students with similar GPAs and sadly I was not one of them. I distinctly remember going to the campus job fair and having my resume repeatedly being put into the "maybe" pile. My academic work wasn't amazing but my extracurriculars were a few engineering project competitions. But the recruiters never looked past the GPA requirements.

I would say IT and CS is far more democratic. I've met far more software engineers who don't have a traditional CS background but managed to hustle their way in somehow.

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

#55

Post by goostavos » Sat, Sep 07, 2019, 6:05 PM UTC

spamizbad wrote: post #33

jseliger wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We really need to move towards vocational ed and apprenticeships: https://seliger.com/2017/06/16/rare-good-political-news-boos... . Large numbers of students in colleges shouldn't be there.

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.

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

#56

Post by gumby » Sat, Sep 07, 2019, 6:10 PM UTC

High school tutoring appears to be the same thing but in person: the tutors basically do the homework for you (ahem, "with" you).

It was so bad that in one class at my son's high school, the kids were turning in great homework but failing the in class tests, so the parents protested and had the homework's weight increased (and test weight decreased) in the computation of the overall grade -- and had the change made in the middle of the year!

I was quite naïve and was shocked by this. I'd gone to schools where where external tutors or essay-writers weren’t really viable.

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

#57

Post by soulofmischief » Sat, Sep 07, 2019, 6:13 PM UTC

mathattack wrote: post #43

TrackerFF wrote: post #25

When I studied business in college, I'd say that half of my senior year class were gunning for the same banking and consulting gigs. In either case, it was known and understood that those types of employers were obsessed with your grades. Unless you happened to have the most amazing and prestigious internship / experience, your GPA would make or break your chances at such firms. At the same time, we knew from interns…

And these same folks continue gaming the system once employed by these banks. Go figure.

Maybe that's what they want. A lot of people in general hold the view that high grades just equate to work ethic, so in the case of financial institutions perhaps they are really just concerned with the ability to produce consistent results.

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

#58

Post by landryraccoon » Sat, Sep 07, 2019, 6:14 PM UTC

MegaButts wrote: post #51

landryraccoon wrote: post #49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Cheating in engineering is pointless. At every tech company I’ve interviewed at (on either side of the table) as soon as you get into the interview what school you went to and what grades you got don’t matter. If you can’t whiteboard some technical problems you aren’t getting in.

I know people that cheated, were utterly incompetent, and got prestigious jobs at tech firms.

As engineers? Like, actual individual contributions and not managers? Doing what?

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

#59

Post by MegaButts » Sat, Sep 07, 2019, 6:17 PM UTC

landryraccoon wrote: post #58

MegaButts wrote: post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I know people that cheated, were utterly incompetent, and got prestigious jobs at tech firms.

As engineers? Like, actual individual contributions and not managers? Doing what?

Yes, as engineers.

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

#60

Post by landryraccoon » Sat, Sep 07, 2019, 6:21 PM UTC

MegaButts wrote: post #59

landryraccoon wrote: post #58

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As engineers? Like, actual individual contributions and not managers? Doing what?

Yes, as engineers.

That company sucks then. It might be hard to measure between competent engineers but bad engineers stick out like a sore thumb. If that keeps happening it means the entire engineering department sucks at those companies.