The Shadow Scholar

I can see that, but I'm an academic myself, and somehow it doesn't bother me much (it does bother many of my colleagues).

I guess I'm most strongly motivated by providing assistance and resources to people who want to learn, so whatever happens with the people who don't want to learn doesn't bother me that much. I'll enforce whatever rules I have to, to the extent the institution provides me a means to do so (and requires me to), but it just isn't a big motivator for me.

I would prefer the proportion of students who are there to learn to be higher (it'd be a more enjoyable and motivating environment), but I don't think being more of a hardass on cheating is going to solve that problem. It's probably true that there are students who, while tempted to cheat, would be great students if they were scared away from that temptation by vigorous enforcement. My guess is that number is fairly small, though.

I think most of the people who cheat are the kind of student who doesn't really want to be in this major at all, but feels they need to get this degree to get a job. I think vigorous enforcement with those students, even if it successfully stamps out cheating, will just result in a bunch of students grudgingly doing the work because they now have no choice. But that kind of student still isn't that fun to teach, so my motivation to expend more effort than I have to on converting "cheaters" into "grudging teeth-gritters" is pretty low.

It's far easier to write four to five pages of bullshit than to sit there, come up with creative thoughts, then think about how you would say it, back it up with citations, and then condense it for 8 page papers.

Four to five pages of crap is pretty easy. Like the author said, all you need is a toolbox from the "style guide" of bullshit.

I live in a country where cheating is rampant (although it has gotten a little better in recent years). Most of the best students (in terms of grades) at my university were outright cheaters, or employed other indirect means of academic dishonesty. Most blamed the teachers for making the courses "unpassable".

You know what, no course is "unpassable". Its just something people make up to justify their incompetence and laziness. Yes, some educators are pretty bad, while others just don't care enough to stop this. But no matter what the teachers and authorities try, you cannot stop a reasonably adept cheater from using some way of gaming the system. People who are not interested in learning will cheat no matter what.

Trying to lay the blame on the education system and the students is like a drug dealer saying he is not to blame but the addicts are. By providing this service, people like him are making the cheating option easier for students.

I just seem to get the vibe that he is just frustrated that his novel got rejected by his university. This, compounded by financial (and perhaps academic and social?) problems, possibly results in him being bitter about university and the education system as a whole. He has every right to have whatever opinions he has. But IMHO he is no rebel working to dismantle a corrupt system. He's just a bitter writer exploiting and fueling the immorality of some people to make a buck.

(Disclaimer: I am not an educator (I work as a software engineer) and I don't even have any post-graduate degree. I just don't like people who go about buying and cheating their way through life while the rest of do it the hard way.)

Student cheating is a systemic part of the culture and there is nothing that can be done about it.

I mark logic papers. There might be a question where you have to provide a model that makes the logical formula come out as true or false - the sort of question which has an infinity of possible answers.

They never follow the particular method I suggest for working through these which would lead them to the simplest answer in each case (usually a model with only one object in the domain). Yet, somehow, one paper after another, they all come up with the exact same model, with the same number of objects in the domain, the same extensions... everything.

So they all just copy from one another. One student complained to me this year that a large group of them were copying answers from one another right in front of the office where they have to submit papers. Largely the university can't do much more than turn a blind eye - for without absolutely concrete evidence the students can (and often do) sue, and win.

I was a lab instructor for one of my favorite professors after excelling in his class. I caught one of his students cheating blatantly (assembly code was nearly identical to another students, just shifted around a bit)

The professor is a good man, and was very upset. It was almost kind of sad, he was angry but it was almost like he could've alternatively started tearing up at any moment. Damn administration didn't do anything about it though, and that very student I caught cheating has since been in several classes with me. Burns me up.

Guess it shouldn't surprise me that the prof. hasn't had any courses for several quarters now. I swear, the good ones don't seem to last. The only one we've got left in the department that cares about the students, I'm not even sure how he manages.