YouTube Stars Being Paid to Sell Academic Cheating(bbc.com)
bbc.com
YouTube Stars Being Paid to Sell Academic Cheating
http://www.bbc.com/news/education-43956001
351 comments
One community particularly harmed by academic cheating is foreign students, particularly those from China and India.
Cheating amongst foreign students, particularly those from India and China, occurs at elevated frequencies [1]. But there is money to be made. Universities earn fat tuitions. And parades of scumbags take exams, write papers and falsify figures for a fee. The result is limited enforcement in the specific, i.e. against offenders and facilitators, in favor of a presumption of guilt in the general, i.e. against all foreign students from China and India.
I personally know honest individuals who had to overcome a presumption of cheating at school, at interviews and in the workplace. And it isn't just the cheaters who are complicit.
[1] https://www.wsj.com/articles/foreign-students-seen-cheating-...
Cheating amongst foreign students, particularly those from India and China, occurs at elevated frequencies [1]. But there is money to be made. Universities earn fat tuitions. And parades of scumbags take exams, write papers and falsify figures for a fee. The result is limited enforcement in the specific, i.e. against offenders and facilitators, in favor of a presumption of guilt in the general, i.e. against all foreign students from China and India.
I personally know honest individuals who had to overcome a presumption of cheating at school, at interviews and in the workplace. And it isn't just the cheaters who are complicit.
[1] https://www.wsj.com/articles/foreign-students-seen-cheating-...
When visiting a university in China, I saw a prominently displayed list of students who were caught cheating in the most recent term. I haven't yet seen such lists in American universities.
My partner is finishing their masters in China currently (native Chinese). The levels of cheating that go on within her course alone are mind boggling:
1. Girls asking their would-be boyfriends to complete their essays and attend modules.
2. Purchasing completed essays from Taobao.
3. Copy pasting others work from Baidu with only name alterations.
4. Paying exam setters for exam questions.
Of course this is anecdotal but she has often tried to explain the culture of "Getting. good result is more important than how you got it". Cheating and succeeding shows you're resourceful. Getting caught is the only shame. The pressure and competition drives people to cheat because if you don't, you're left behind by everyone else who is.
1. Girls asking their would-be boyfriends to complete their essays and attend modules.
2. Purchasing completed essays from Taobao.
3. Copy pasting others work from Baidu with only name alterations.
4. Paying exam setters for exam questions.
Of course this is anecdotal but she has often tried to explain the culture of "Getting. good result is more important than how you got it". Cheating and succeeding shows you're resourceful. Getting caught is the only shame. The pressure and competition drives people to cheat because if you don't, you're left behind by everyone else who is.
I've observed all of these in the USA. I suspect this sort of thing transcends cultural and international borders.
Possibly amusing anecdote: I know a smart* technical colleague who wrote at least 2 PhD dissertations for former romantic partners. As in "best dissertation award" + famous people on committee + etc , etc. The former romantic partners went on to have distinguished careers in management.
* Depending on your point of view.
Possibly amusing anecdote: I know a smart* technical colleague who wrote at least 2 PhD dissertations for former romantic partners. As in "best dissertation award" + famous people on committee + etc , etc. The former romantic partners went on to have distinguished careers in management.
* Depending on your point of view.
>I know a smart* technical colleague who wrote at least 2 PhD dissertations for former romantic partners
This is very hard to believe. From my experience this just couldn't work without near full time commitment by the ghost writer. The cheater would also have to be very familiar with the dissertation--to the point where they could have just written it themselves.
Pulling this off twice (or more since you said at least twice) is basically beyond belief (unless we're talking about a very disreputable university).
A PhD dissertation isn't something you can just turn in and you're done. And it's generally the result of years of work.
This is very hard to believe. From my experience this just couldn't work without near full time commitment by the ghost writer. The cheater would also have to be very familiar with the dissertation--to the point where they could have just written it themselves.
Pulling this off twice (or more since you said at least twice) is basically beyond belief (unless we're talking about a very disreputable university).
A PhD dissertation isn't something you can just turn in and you're done. And it's generally the result of years of work.
I find it plausible in a narrow sense of “write” that doesn't mean performing the substantive work, but merely assembling the formal written presentation of that work.
It depends but I don't really view that as full on cheating then. It'd be nice for them to actually write a bit of it (otherwise, they're going to have a tough time writing papers once they're out of grad school) but the actually bulk of work is the real thing.
Also, you can't cheat on a defense. If you can, then your Ph.D is worthless and the institution you got it from is near worthless.
Reread learc83's comment and it's really true. You can't just turn in your thesis. Moreover, you have to defend it, and your committee will tear into it even on the minutiae (happened during my defense) so it doesn't matter how well you know it if it isn't your work because if it isn't your work, you won't be able to defend it. The only conclusion I can see is they are crap profs/schools but that doesn't square with the "famous people on committee" bit.
Also, you can't cheat on a defense. If you can, then your Ph.D is worthless and the institution you got it from is near worthless.
Reread learc83's comment and it's really true. You can't just turn in your thesis. Moreover, you have to defend it, and your committee will tear into it even on the minutiae (happened during my defense) so it doesn't matter how well you know it if it isn't your work because if it isn't your work, you won't be able to defend it. The only conclusion I can see is they are crap profs/schools but that doesn't square with the "famous people on committee" bit.
Even in PhDs there are people who slip through the cracks.
I knew a PhD who in a postdoc would routinely plagerize work (lifted verbatim from other papers, passed off as own work). I would be shocked if they didn’t do this to some degree in their thesis too.
This was from a relatively good university in the UK.
I knew a PhD who in a postdoc would routinely plagerize work (lifted verbatim from other papers, passed off as own work). I would be shocked if they didn’t do this to some degree in their thesis too.
This was from a relatively good university in the UK.
Sure some people plagiarize, but plagiarizing an entire dissertation is a much different. What are you going to do when you have to defend?
Also it takes a good bit longer to get a PhD in the US compared to the UK. In the US most STEM PhDs take around 5 years to finish--that's a long time to fake it without anyone noticing.
Also it takes a good bit longer to get a PhD in the US compared to the UK. In the US most STEM PhDs take around 5 years to finish--that's a long time to fake it without anyone noticing.
Don’t know about the US system. But I can imagine it can happen, at least in the UK system which I’m farmiliar with.
External examiner who is in a related, but not same field for example. Or they’re just a buddies with the advisor and only give softball questions etc.
The defense in the UK is not seen as a big deal, I don’t know anyone who has failed.
External examiner who is in a related, but not same field for example. Or they’re just a buddies with the advisor and only give softball questions etc.
The defense in the UK is not seen as a big deal, I don’t know anyone who has failed.
I can't imagine someone who isn't very familiar with their dissertation successfully defending here.
Also to even get to that point were the advisor thinks you're ready to defend would require constant back and forth your advisor. Then committee is going to grill you. And finally the vast majority of dissertation defenses end with recommended changes. It really would require full time devotion on the part of the ghostwriter, and excellent acting on the part of the candidate. Not to mention familiarity with the thesis to the point that they could have just written it themselves.
I can see someone helping out a lot with writing it, but there is no way someone could just do your dissertation for you at a reputable US school in a STEM field outside of some very rare fluke. A person doing this 2 or more times with different SOs--someone is lying.
Many people in the US have a low opinion of UK and Continental PhD programs. Perhaps this is part of the reason?
Also to even get to that point were the advisor thinks you're ready to defend would require constant back and forth your advisor. Then committee is going to grill you. And finally the vast majority of dissertation defenses end with recommended changes. It really would require full time devotion on the part of the ghostwriter, and excellent acting on the part of the candidate. Not to mention familiarity with the thesis to the point that they could have just written it themselves.
I can see someone helping out a lot with writing it, but there is no way someone could just do your dissertation for you at a reputable US school in a STEM field outside of some very rare fluke. A person doing this 2 or more times with different SOs--someone is lying.
Many people in the US have a low opinion of UK and Continental PhD programs. Perhaps this is part of the reason?
I think you’re correct in your last point (and others, though I have no direct experience).
I guess I’m skeptical that any qualification is 100% effective at evaluating/training (but that possibly says more about my own biases).
I guess I’m skeptical that any qualification is 100% effective at evaluating/training (but that possibly says more about my own biases).
I think your colleague may be lying. It’s next to impossible to be granted a PHD you didn’t write yourself after years of hard work.
It’s really hard to even have your work accepted by the review board if the empirical evidence and the methods aren’t solid.
A PHD is not a candidate or a bachelor, it’s where your work is reviewed by a board of experts in your field. Often some members of the board won’t necessarily want you to pass either, because it’s very likely they disagree with your thesis.
I mean, it’s a cute anecdote but there is virtually no chance it actually happened.
It’s really hard to even have your work accepted by the review board if the empirical evidence and the methods aren’t solid.
A PHD is not a candidate or a bachelor, it’s where your work is reviewed by a board of experts in your field. Often some members of the board won’t necessarily want you to pass either, because it’s very likely they disagree with your thesis.
I mean, it’s a cute anecdote but there is virtually no chance it actually happened.
Out of curiosity, do you have a PHD?
Management huh? Sounds like they were training to take credit for others work all along.
The level of patent / trademark infringement disagrees a bit with your statement.
That's the exact same thing that happened to the cycling sport.
You'll notice that 2 items in your list are about having money. If you come from a well off background, then you care about getting your degree, but not about actually acquiring skills/knowledge. Once you graduate you'll get a fictitious job for your parents' company, or something like that.
I'm not sure if any data is available/accessible on the topic, but I'd be willing to wage that the young Chinese person who is the first of their family to attend university cares much more about understanding the material so they can then get a high paying job than those who can afford to buy essays from Taobao.
I'm not sure if any data is available/accessible on the topic, but I'd be willing to wage that the young Chinese person who is the first of their family to attend university cares much more about understanding the material so they can then get a high paying job than those who can afford to buy essays from Taobao.
I guess this might explains where there are so many cheaters in online games that are Chinese. Results are prioritized about integrity and self-respect I suppose.
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That’s because American universities don’t put your name on a list when you cheat. They expel you.
Actually, not usually for first offenses (from my experience as college instructor)
But usually only for first offenses (which in my experience still automatically fail that class).
Could you explain? Policies and experiences will differ
I mean that there is usually very limited tolerance for repeat cheating, in the small amount of experience I have. You might not get expelled at first offense (unless you are leading a cheating ring of some sort, something that happened at my high school) or it involves publishing research, but a second or third generally does result in expulsion.
This is assuming that the school actually reached an incriminating verdict, ignoring possible incompetence and/or apathy towards catching and "convicting" cheaters.
This is assuming that the school actually reached an incriminating verdict, ignoring possible incompetence and/or apathy towards catching and "convicting" cheaters.
They expel you or they sweep it under the rug and do nothing at all.
That would likely be a major FERPA violation.
In the US what happens if someone on that list kills themselves? Lawsuit from hell probably, at the very least.
You'd have a very hard time making that lawsuit go anywhere, I think.
It isn't just students that are cheating, it goes all the way up to the top of academia. I know a professor that reviews for a major journal who says he can't even keep up with the submissions from Chinese researchers because most of the time the entire paper is plagerised, the submission is canned without a second glance. Fucking sucks for the legitimate Chinese students and researchers but I guess when, "if you can cheat, then cheat." becomes one of the most well known idioms in your culture, you can't be too surprised. Just have to try extra hard to break the mold, I guess.
I think you are probably talking about wealthy students who gets into Ivy league through $2M+ donations. Vast majority of foreign students are too finance constrained even to survive with basic needs, let alone go shopping for paid cheating.
> Vast majority of foreign students are too finance constrained even to survive with basic needs, let alone go shopping for paid cheating.
Where did you get this idea? Foreign students are overwhelmingly paying the foreign student tuition (much higher than domestic tuition) without receiving any financial aid.
Where did you get this idea? Foreign students are overwhelmingly paying the foreign student tuition (much higher than domestic tuition) without receiving any financial aid.
Exactly. Foreign students also have to prove they can support themselves (on top of paying full price for tuition) before they're even allowed in. The majority of them are pretty well off.
> I think you are probably talking about wealthy students who gets into Ivy league through $2M+ donations
The BBC article to which this thread is attached talks of a company advertising "essay[s]...starting at just $18.00 per page" [1]. Furthermore, the documented frequencies of foreign students cheating is too large to explain with solely income discrepancy.
[1] https://edubirdie.com
The BBC article to which this thread is attached talks of a company advertising "essay[s]...starting at just $18.00 per page" [1]. Furthermore, the documented frequencies of foreign students cheating is too large to explain with solely income discrepancy.
[1] https://edubirdie.com
> You want people to learn when the stakes are low.
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.
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.
I think that they think the stakes are in fact higher than they are is the point.
This is a good point. I had thought that my high school grades were extremely high stakes, even though they weren't. Of course, now I know how silly I was. If the stakes weren't so high, I wonder if I would have been more tempted to cheat to get more free time. I think not, but no way to know for sure because can't run that experiment anymore.
On the other hand, in countries with huge populations like China and India, it seems that cheating is rampant because the stakes are so high? Can't recall what happens in India, but in China, the university you're allowed to choose is limited based on your final gaokao (high school examination) score. That in turn also determines what you're allowed to study, and that in turn determines what kind of jobs you can get when you graduate.
Pressure exists because it all comes down to a single score. But on the other hand, because of the scale of the population, I imagine it becomes an issue of efficiency. If it didn't come down to a single score, can't imagine the monstrosity that would be the admissions process for all the top universities. For example, I hear about Canadian universities that now say they don't prioritize GPA; they'll consider extra-curricular activities and so on too. Good luck with that if your admission applications explode a hundredfold.
So like someone else commented in this thread, the many become suspected instead. One department at my alma mater decided that GRE scores were not reflective of quality of students coming from China for masters degrees. So they threw GRE out the window and decided to only look at students that came from top ten universities in China when it came to Chinese student applications.
As with most things, the issue is multi-faceted and complicated.
On the other hand, in countries with huge populations like China and India, it seems that cheating is rampant because the stakes are so high? Can't recall what happens in India, but in China, the university you're allowed to choose is limited based on your final gaokao (high school examination) score. That in turn also determines what you're allowed to study, and that in turn determines what kind of jobs you can get when you graduate.
Pressure exists because it all comes down to a single score. But on the other hand, because of the scale of the population, I imagine it becomes an issue of efficiency. If it didn't come down to a single score, can't imagine the monstrosity that would be the admissions process for all the top universities. For example, I hear about Canadian universities that now say they don't prioritize GPA; they'll consider extra-curricular activities and so on too. Good luck with that if your admission applications explode a hundredfold.
So like someone else commented in this thread, the many become suspected instead. One department at my alma mater decided that GRE scores were not reflective of quality of students coming from China for masters degrees. So they threw GRE out the window and decided to only look at students that came from top ten universities in China when it came to Chinese student applications.
As with most things, the issue is multi-faceted and complicated.
I've heard about plenty of people who won large payouts in the lottery, it doesn't mean I'd go to them for financial advice. Places that rely on a single test or data point create perverse incentives to inflate the data point. I was a fairly intelligent student throughout most of my school career, but I flunked more than one class in college because of bad teachers who were incapable of teaching the subject matter(There was a single student who passed with a C in that class every other student failed, I passed easily with a different teacher) or real life issues taking priority (working a full time job distracts from grades). I agree with your statement that the issue is complicated, but perhaps some things shouldn't be simplified.
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Your solution would cure a lot of ills besides just this; in fact it has long been known to be the formula for improving schools in lots of measurable ways. In other words you are describing "good education." They should be doing it already whether cheating is an issue or not. But they've already rejected it, at least in many public schools, because they're too resource-constrained.
...or believe they are.
...or are made to believe they are.
...or are given so much pointless BS to do that even though they're not, they are.
...or believe they are.
...or are made to believe they are.
...or are given so much pointless BS to do that even though they're not, they are.
I had a fellow masters student in tears during a group project once because she had already failed our first assessment. Apparently in her 4 year undergraduate degree in Nepal she had never once had to cite sources. All work was from proscribed textbooks only. Imagine her shock when starting a masters in Australia and having to do Harvard referencing for everything.
When are the stakes low vs. high when it comes to academic plagiarism? I would think that the stakes are always quite low, at least until you get to post-graduate academic work where plagiarism can have legal or serious ethical (e.g. medical research) problems.
You seem to be claiming that at some point the stakes become "truly" high, and thus we ought to artificially punish plagiarism so that people learn that there are consequences.
You seem to be claiming that at some point the stakes become "truly" high, and thus we ought to artificially punish plagiarism so that people learn that there are consequences.
I'm claiming that encouraging plagiarism artificially punishes the "I can do the work but I freeze up in a high-pressure/high-stakes do-or-die situation like an interview" crowd - because it means that that's the only tool I can trust to weed out the people who've just coasted on bullshit their whole lives.
The high-ness of the stakes at the college level seems to depend on if you have scholarships or similar - I've seen those be pulled, but haven't seen people I've known personally be actually expelled. So if you're fully dependent on them, it's bad, otherwise, it's no big deal. After college it depends on the type of job - some bigco or government orgs seem perfectly happy to carry a bunch of dead weight around.
Pre-college is mostly a super-low-stakes area for kids these days, but complicated by something 'tcfunk points out in a sibling comment, where authority figures lie about that - claiming everything is dire - but the kids also know their teachers/administrators are full of shit. My friends and I were very good at finding out which rules we could break with impunity - having too many rules, if anything, watered down the seriousness of the important ones.
So where you see problems are e.g. kids who could get away with anything suddenly running afoul of drug laws, or losing their scholarship over rules that didn't have teeth in high school, etc. Of course, the better off you are, the more easily you can weather that stuff - but to me, the root is that we're very opaque with our kids about what you'll get into real trouble over or not, and it changes in a very lumpy manner.
The high-ness of the stakes at the college level seems to depend on if you have scholarships or similar - I've seen those be pulled, but haven't seen people I've known personally be actually expelled. So if you're fully dependent on them, it's bad, otherwise, it's no big deal. After college it depends on the type of job - some bigco or government orgs seem perfectly happy to carry a bunch of dead weight around.
Pre-college is mostly a super-low-stakes area for kids these days, but complicated by something 'tcfunk points out in a sibling comment, where authority figures lie about that - claiming everything is dire - but the kids also know their teachers/administrators are full of shit. My friends and I were very good at finding out which rules we could break with impunity - having too many rules, if anything, watered down the seriousness of the important ones.
So where you see problems are e.g. kids who could get away with anything suddenly running afoul of drug laws, or losing their scholarship over rules that didn't have teeth in high school, etc. Of course, the better off you are, the more easily you can weather that stuff - but to me, the root is that we're very opaque with our kids about what you'll get into real trouble over or not, and it changes in a very lumpy manner.
I don't know, I don't really see a parallel between a writing assignment and a high-pressure situation like an interview. The latter is essentially impossible to cheat on with anything resembling plagiarism.
What the parent means is that when cheating isn't accorded a serious enough response, the signaling value of a degree is watered down, so parent must rely more heavily on the interview, which is unfair to those who perform poorly in interview enviornments but are otherwise good at their job.
A recent TIFU (Today I Fucked Up) on Reddit, depending if you believe it - I'm inclined not to, described such a situation:
https://www.reddit.com/r/tifu/comments/8g33nv/tifu_by_plagia...
They were allegedly expelled for plagiarising a 500 word essay.
> She sent me to the dean with the recommendation that I be expelled. Now the dean told me I can't graduate. I spent 4 years working on an engineering degree. I have over $100,000 in loans, and I can't be hired without my degree. My life literally vanished in the matter of 20 minutes.
The irony is they could have literally scrawled anything on the paper and flunked, but passed the year.
Whether or not this story is true, universities certainly have grounds to expel you immediately if you're caught cheating. And if you've spent $100k on a degree that you need because of professional accreditation... those are quite high stakes.
https://www.reddit.com/r/tifu/comments/8g33nv/tifu_by_plagia...
They were allegedly expelled for plagiarising a 500 word essay.
> She sent me to the dean with the recommendation that I be expelled. Now the dean told me I can't graduate. I spent 4 years working on an engineering degree. I have over $100,000 in loans, and I can't be hired without my degree. My life literally vanished in the matter of 20 minutes.
The irony is they could have literally scrawled anything on the paper and flunked, but passed the year.
Whether or not this story is true, universities certainly have grounds to expel you immediately if you're caught cheating. And if you've spent $100k on a degree that you need because of professional accreditation... those are quite high stakes.
Agreed. But nothing special about it. People's lives are ruined for stupid mistakes all the time. Some of those mistakes cost a hell of a lot more too. I'm talking of course about encounters with the criminal justice system
I had a classmate like this. My high school has a graduation requirement where each senior delivers a speech to the student body on a topic of their choice. At the time of his speech, it was spring and my classmate had been accepted to Princeton on a tennis scholarship--all he had to do was sit back and coast into the Ivy League. Despite this, he plagiarized his speech. The administration found out and notified Princeton, which rescinded his acceptance. (He ended up attending the local state university.)
Aren't those the artificial high stakes we're talking about? I'm asking what inherently high-stakes situation that is preparing you for.
For a real world situation? Just look at the Google vs Uber trial. IP theft and corporate espionage is incredibly high stakes. You can presumably make a lot of money selling secrets, but if you're rumbled, that's your career over.
Well, how about getting blackballed professionally?
After all, surely the main upside of acing university is to get into a high-stakes position.
After all, surely the main upside of acing university is to get into a high-stakes position.
At the University of Arizona, there was a strict expulsion and forfiture of earned credits policy for plagarism amongst undergrads. I'd say having wasted $20k is pretty high stakes, though I suppose not as high as jail time.
But that's the artificial stakes we're talking about, right? The school chose to make and enforce that rule. What inherently high-stakes situation is that preparing them for?
You can’t cheat without rules; all rules are socially constructed. Does that make them artificial as opposed to inherent?
Or have I missed your point?
Or have I missed your point?
> The first solution that occurs to me seems to be smaller class sizes and differently structured assignments with more of a "tell me about why you wrote this" type interactive stuff. The same way you'd do when looking at someone's github, to see how deep their understanding of the code there goes.
What you are really saying is money. You need more money to do your solution.
What you are really saying is money. You need more money to do your solution.
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) Shocked that YouTube or any stock traded company would allow these videos to stay up. Morally this is wrong since cheating hurts everyone in education.
EDIT:
C) No one was ever expelled for cheating, ever at my school.
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) Shocked that YouTube or any stock traded company would allow these videos to stay up. Morally this is wrong since cheating hurts everyone in education.
EDIT:
C) No one was ever expelled for cheating, ever at my school.
> Professor flunked them all by giving them an F and told them they were lucky they weren't expelled
My university flunked cheaters with an X instead of an F, a mark that carried onto their official transcript. By the time kids are in college, I think it's fair to be so final with judgements in respect of integrity.
My university flunked cheaters with an X instead of an F, a mark that carried onto their official transcript. By the time kids are in college, I think it's fair to be so final with judgements in respect of integrity.
Maybe not with Freshmen, but Seniors sure.
Why not with Freshmen? They're usually around 18 years old and they've been in school for 12 years at that point. I think they outta know by now that cheating is wrong.
I learned this the hard way.
When I was at university I happened to be 'fluent' in 68000 assembly language, so I was able to do that assignment within minutes of the task being set, no cheating needed. I actually understood what I was doing and wrote an assignment that was not cribbed from the work of others.
I thought this was going to be marked well, passing was expected. However, when the results came out a 'see me' was on the board. The lecturer was angry at me because I wouldn't say who I 'copied my work from'.
But then I remembered showing my code to a colleague in the minutes before handing in the assignment. Mine worked perfectly the first time but when I ran it again it failed. I realised I had cleared a 'byte' instead of a 'word' and changed my work accordingly before handing it in. Nobody else had this change, just my work. That one byte of real difference showed I knew 68K assembly when nobody else did.
So it turned out that my original 'done in ten minutes' code had been fished out the bin and typed in by someone else, they had then spread this around and everyone on the course except for a few mature students that were out of the loop had copied my stuff.
Now this was just one incident, as well as that there were other problems with groupthink which is not the same as cheating. I was behind on one project and submitted a simple diagram. Everyone else submitted reams of stuff, all returned with red pen on most of the pages. My assignment had just the one tick for perfect mark. Had I huddled with my colleagues in depressing group think panic sessions and done my own version of the 70 page assignment they were doing then I would not have got that perfect mark.
In my opinion plagiarism is just scraping the surface, beneath that there is a bigger problem of original thought and problem solving. Most people go along with what everyone else is doing.
When I was at university I happened to be 'fluent' in 68000 assembly language, so I was able to do that assignment within minutes of the task being set, no cheating needed. I actually understood what I was doing and wrote an assignment that was not cribbed from the work of others.
I thought this was going to be marked well, passing was expected. However, when the results came out a 'see me' was on the board. The lecturer was angry at me because I wouldn't say who I 'copied my work from'.
But then I remembered showing my code to a colleague in the minutes before handing in the assignment. Mine worked perfectly the first time but when I ran it again it failed. I realised I had cleared a 'byte' instead of a 'word' and changed my work accordingly before handing it in. Nobody else had this change, just my work. That one byte of real difference showed I knew 68K assembly when nobody else did.
So it turned out that my original 'done in ten minutes' code had been fished out the bin and typed in by someone else, they had then spread this around and everyone on the course except for a few mature students that were out of the loop had copied my stuff.
Now this was just one incident, as well as that there were other problems with groupthink which is not the same as cheating. I was behind on one project and submitted a simple diagram. Everyone else submitted reams of stuff, all returned with red pen on most of the pages. My assignment had just the one tick for perfect mark. Had I huddled with my colleagues in depressing group think panic sessions and done my own version of the 70 page assignment they were doing then I would not have got that perfect mark.
In my opinion plagiarism is just scraping the surface, beneath that there is a bigger problem of original thought and problem solving. Most people go along with what everyone else is doing.
>Then on appeal the President was fired and the Professor rehired with a raise.
That's hilarious. It's crazy that there was so much fallout from a case of cheating.
That's hilarious. It's crazy that there was so much fallout from a case of cheating.
>Shocked that YouTube or any stock traded company would allow these videos to stay up. Morally this is wrong since cheating hurts everyone in education.
Is it Youtube's job to enforce morals? Is it Youtube's job to prevent anything that might hurt education? If it was determined that memes hurt education (by distracting students from studying) should Youtube ban memes?
Is it Youtube's job to enforce morals? Is it Youtube's job to prevent anything that might hurt education? If it was determined that memes hurt education (by distracting students from studying) should Youtube ban memes?
It can be it's job. The upside of keeping them - you get more business from companies operating in grey/black. The downside, loss of a tiny bit of revenue, possible public backlash/outcry, and the loss of morality. It's hard for people to die on the hill of a service for cheating. If you really want to, go for it, but it'll be lonely.
Could that same thing be said for channels doing gun modifications? Many people got very mad when Youtube took down some of them.
> Is it Youtube’s job to enforce morals? ...
Wrong frame. YouTube’s ethical responsibility is dictated by their ethos and that of society.
It’s Youtube’s ethical responsibility to not have videos which promote academic cheating products.
Wrong frame. YouTube’s ethical responsibility is dictated by their ethos and that of society.
It’s Youtube’s ethical responsibility to not have videos which promote academic cheating products.
There are others who say it's Youtube's responsibility to be a bastion of free speech and not censor people. Different groups of people want different things from Youtube.
The crux of this debate is that private companies aren’t currently subject to the First Ammendment and the laws which surround it (which grant as well as restrict free speech).
However privately-owned online spaces have become the modern version of the “town squares” which are the intended venues of the First Ammendment.
Today we are repeating debates addressed by 1A and its surrounding laws, by virtue of the fact that private companies aren’t currently subject to 1A.
It’s a healthy debate to have, but we should be aware of the pitfalls - namely that the introduction of 1A upon the old “town squares” freed us from tyranny. Failure to do it again for the new town squares will invite tyranny, and would inevitably bring it back.
This includes the laws which restrict 1A (“shouting fire”, etc.) which cover the old town squares. For the new town squares these are the “content moderation” policy cases online venues struggle with.
The first thing which needs to be done is to bring 1A and the surrounding legislative framework to the new town squares. Then we have the task of crafting laws in that framework which address cases special to the information era: IP, impersonation, disinformation, incitement ...
Unfortunately, the law is behind the curve.
Today we are repeating debates addressed by 1A and its surrounding laws, by virtue of the fact that private companies aren’t currently subject to 1A.
It’s a healthy debate to have, but we should be aware of the pitfalls - namely that the introduction of 1A upon the old “town squares” freed us from tyranny. Failure to do it again for the new town squares will invite tyranny, and would inevitably bring it back.
This includes the laws which restrict 1A (“shouting fire”, etc.) which cover the old town squares. For the new town squares these are the “content moderation” policy cases online venues struggle with.
The first thing which needs to be done is to bring 1A and the surrounding legislative framework to the new town squares. Then we have the task of crafting laws in that framework which address cases special to the information era: IP, impersonation, disinformation, incitement ...
Unfortunately, the law is behind the curve.
youtube's leaves a lot to be desired once you venture outside of entertainment. besides this education issue the amount of government sponsored propaganda on the site is astounding. teleSUR maintains a channel with all sorts of suspect stories including showing the paradise the Venezuela supposedly is, https://youtu.be/BT5L4YU_Fl4
Now before people dismiss such out of hand there are far too many who believe what is presented here because like many they are guilty of believing stories that reinforce their beliefs.
Now before people dismiss such out of hand there are far too many who believe what is presented here because like many they are guilty of believing stories that reinforce their beliefs.
>cheating hurts everyone.
Not the paper writers and some of the students who can benefit from it.
Not the paper writers and some of the students who can benefit from it.
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.
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
- flexible time
- potential to earn lot of money
- sheer enjoyment of writing
- improve one writing skills
All of those points are also true of making a living by (e-)mail fraud, and the first two are true of almost any criminal enterprise.
The difference is essay writing service is not criminal.
Not everything legal is moral, and not everything moral is legal.
And not everyone morality is the same. Morality is relative.
This is either banal and irrelevant or meaningful and wrong. Obviously, not everybody has the same morality; criminals almost always think they're justified. But if you're saying that because of that morality is somehow meaningless or not worth pursuing, that's ridiculous. Nobody ever says that when they're on the receiving end of something shitty, just when they're doing it.
Just like plenty of ICO scams aren't criminal - but the people behind them lack basic integrity and should be condemned for their sleazy enterprises.
It easily could be. There are all sorts of things we criminalize because they correlate with other illegal or harmful things. Conspiracy to commit is an obvious one. Or receiving stolen goods: it's not illegal to buy and sell things, but if you know that you're enabling thieves, you could go to jail too.
It is not criminal yet, but it is wrong enough that it could be. Cheating is in violation of university academic integrity policies and those aiding and abetting that cheating share responsibility.
As more companies and individuals smell the money to be made off tempting students to use this form of "contract cheating", governments are considering legislative responses which could result in the creation of criminal penalties for essay mills. ( https://www.theguardian.com/education/2017/feb/21/plan-to-cr... )
Beyond any possible governmental responses, the essay mills create a large pool of risk just by collecting user data. What happens if criminals target the essay mills, looking for lists of people who may then be blackmailed? What if the essay mills themselves decide to cash in on the extortion potential? Cheating and cheating support are both dirty enough activities that people would probably not want that to be exposed. Google for "essay mills blackmail".
The more advanced a person becomes in their career, the higher their extortion value. How many future politicians, leaders, or other influential people are creating extortion/security risks for themselves? As an employer, how many frauds are in your company and what risk do they bring with them? What ethics do they bring with them or fail to bring with them? How many product failures, delays, firings, lawsuits, sexual harassment cases, violations of company policy and general anti-social behaviors are caused by the group of people who enjoy cheating for personal gain? Will the essay mill companies realize they have large lists of corrupt and corruptible people? Will other companies want to buy these lists so they can know more about who to hire or not hire and for what positions? Will credit companies start using this to adjust people's credit scores?
For all of the people with no regrets for using or participating in the contract cheating of essay ghostwriting and sales - would this turn into regret if the activity was exposed? For that matter, do government intelligence agencies already know who did what or at least have that data laying around?
The more I think about this, the more it seems like such a stupid risk. You can stay stupid by preventing your own learning, corrupt yourself, participate in the corruption of others, reduce literacy, reduce the value of institutional degrees, reduce trust in educational institutions, create an electronic trail of your cheating, and all for the low price of lifetime risk of exposure, extortion, and lower literacy.
What could go wrong?
As more companies and individuals smell the money to be made off tempting students to use this form of "contract cheating", governments are considering legislative responses which could result in the creation of criminal penalties for essay mills. ( https://www.theguardian.com/education/2017/feb/21/plan-to-cr... )
Beyond any possible governmental responses, the essay mills create a large pool of risk just by collecting user data. What happens if criminals target the essay mills, looking for lists of people who may then be blackmailed? What if the essay mills themselves decide to cash in on the extortion potential? Cheating and cheating support are both dirty enough activities that people would probably not want that to be exposed. Google for "essay mills blackmail".
The more advanced a person becomes in their career, the higher their extortion value. How many future politicians, leaders, or other influential people are creating extortion/security risks for themselves? As an employer, how many frauds are in your company and what risk do they bring with them? What ethics do they bring with them or fail to bring with them? How many product failures, delays, firings, lawsuits, sexual harassment cases, violations of company policy and general anti-social behaviors are caused by the group of people who enjoy cheating for personal gain? Will the essay mill companies realize they have large lists of corrupt and corruptible people? Will other companies want to buy these lists so they can know more about who to hire or not hire and for what positions? Will credit companies start using this to adjust people's credit scores?
For all of the people with no regrets for using or participating in the contract cheating of essay ghostwriting and sales - would this turn into regret if the activity was exposed? For that matter, do government intelligence agencies already know who did what or at least have that data laying around?
The more I think about this, the more it seems like such a stupid risk. You can stay stupid by preventing your own learning, corrupt yourself, participate in the corruption of others, reduce literacy, reduce the value of institutional degrees, reduce trust in educational institutions, create an electronic trail of your cheating, and all for the low price of lifetime risk of exposure, extortion, and lower literacy.
What could go wrong?
Exactly. Legality is a trailing indicator of morality. Criminals always find new ways to be parasites; when the problem gets big enough, we outlaw it.
Back in the pre-internet days, paid cheating support was hard to arrange. How would you find the person? How would you evaluate them, hire them, and get the goods in time for an assignment due Thursday? The things I knew of in school were all local, where the relevant people were under the same or related authorities. (E.g., students at the same school, or students at nearby schools.)
Now it's obviously much easier. Which makes a societal response much likelier.
Back in the pre-internet days, paid cheating support was hard to arrange. How would you find the person? How would you evaluate them, hire them, and get the goods in time for an assignment due Thursday? The things I knew of in school were all local, where the relevant people were under the same or related authorities. (E.g., students at the same school, or students at nearby schools.)
Now it's obviously much easier. Which makes a societal response much likelier.
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 :)
I went to school just to learn and I despised the cheaters. They were debasing something I valued, taking up time and attention that could have been given to somebody who gave a shit.
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 writers did all the writing, the replication crisis might not be as bad as it is and everyone wins.
If scientists could spend all their time performing experiments, statisticians did all the statistics, and technical writers did all the writing, the replication crisis might not be as bad as it is and everyone wins.
Technical writers should write scientific experimentation papers because the purpose of the papers is to explain the experiment to people.
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.
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.
If you're cheating in a 101 class, you have much bigger problems than worrying about being expelled for committing fraud in a 101 class. The thing is, that isn't where people are cheating(probably), and finishing a BS in computer science is relatively easy. I'm going to stand by the fact that the hiring process is flawed, the college system is flawed, and our public school system is flawed. There's nothing motivating anyone to learn but themselves.
All of my "101" courses in uni were notoriously hard weed-out courses due to their large volume of assignments and reading material.
My computer science courses were the easiest part of my degree. Meanwhile I was up late into the evening for my British lit, psychology, and other "soft" "101" courses. Those were the courses I'd have been most tempted to cheat in if it was possible.
So you're only speaking for your own uni experience.
My computer science courses were the easiest part of my degree. Meanwhile I was up late into the evening for my British lit, psychology, and other "soft" "101" courses. Those were the courses I'd have been most tempted to cheat in if it was possible.
So you're only speaking for your own uni experience.
"Specialization is for insects.”
~ Robert Anson Heinlein
Your viewpoint is basically that we should overspecialize. I believe that the more diverse skills a person has. The better they are. Would you ask a romance author to write a highly technical piece? You wouldn't.
Papers help with communication. Communication is a skill that a lot of people lack.
Your viewpoint is basically that we should overspecialize. I believe that the more diverse skills a person has. The better they are. Would you ask a romance author to write a highly technical piece? You wouldn't.
Papers help with communication. Communication is a skill that a lot of people lack.
Proper formatting and basic writing skills take virtually zero time once you know what you're doing.
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.
It's always intriguing to see how people justify grossly unethical behavior to themselves.
I don't think the issue is your disservice to higher education in general or grade systems as a whole, but to your customers, who never receive the education they were meant to, and that they paid for.
I don't think the issue is your disservice to higher education in general or grade systems as a whole, but to your customers, who never receive the education they were meant to, and that they paid for.
Ethics are in the eye of the beholder.
...Something nobody ever said when they were on the receiving end of someone else's poor ethics instead of the one partaking in it.
There's far less variability in the human brain than you imagine; we have a natural tendency to amplify it.
I don't believe that.
I do however agree ethics are system dependent.
The effects of unethical behavior on the system are objective however.
I do however agree ethics are system dependent.
The effects of unethical behavior on the system are objective however.
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 of my customers here. They knew what they were doing, and how it devalued their education experience.
Further, you're just completely discounting the agency of my customers here. They knew what they were doing, and how it devalued their education experience.
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.
Failure is arguably an important part of the process of learning.
Failure is the most important part in the process of learning. That statement says nothing about cheating. One could fail at cheating too, and either learn a better way of cheating or learn not to cheat. Both are fine. If you're good at cheating you might be a decent hacker because you might better see the flaws in any seemingly rigid and fixed system. People who break things often find a way to better recreate those things.
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.
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.
Sorry, but you can't claim that they both knew exactly what they were doing and that they were (forgive my paraphrasing) too stupid for it to matter.
>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.
grade inflation is real, but at least it effects everyone equally. cheating allows dishonest students to get ahead by paying $$$. moreover, you can adjust for grade inflation, but you can't adjust for cheating.
grade inflation is real, but at least it effects everyone equally. cheating allows dishonest students to get ahead by paying $$$. moreover, you can adjust for grade inflation, but you can't adjust for cheating.
Grade inflation at top US schools happens through $$$ as well. Having a parent that is a major donor matters. I've seen it firsthand.
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.
I worked with less than 100 clients over the course of two years. My impact was statistically insignificant.
No single raindrop believes that it's responsible for the flood.
Statistics don't enter into it. Whether something is morally wrong or right is intrinsic to the act itself, not based on what other people are doing. If everyone in the world starts stealing from stores, that doesn't mean it is OK for you to start stealing as well.
Okay, so you're into the deontological line of thinking. I'm not. The fact that you think your approach to morality is the default just suggests that you haven't actually had a meaningful engagement with current literature on moral reasoning.
My argument is "if everyone in the world is doing something immoral, it is still immoral for you to do it," which works equally well in consequentialism. The fact that your actions are statistically insignificant compared to the whole only means that the immorality/morality of your individual actions are small compared to the whole of humanity. That's a false comparison, I'm not aware of any ethical system that determines morality by comparing your impact against the totality of humanity. Maybe comparing your impact against the impact of the average person, but not the total. Under such a system only the Hitlers and Ghandis of the world would even register.
Morality isn't anymore intrinsic than the concept of good and evil. My mother thinks the Catholic faith is inherently evil, but Catholics will fight to the death for their belief that it is inherently good. Who's right? Probably neither of these people-- the question is irrelevant and not useful. Morality isn't determined by any absolute truth. Morality is only useful when the majority agree with it and the outcome of that belief helps the group in context. Over time, the group changes along with the majority opinion, and morality changes to suit the needs of the group in flux.
Stealing is usually harmful to any group, which is why we haven't seen any real change in how we look at stealing. Cheating, however, is undergoing change. What is a hacker if he is not a cheater? We have jobs for hackers now-- it's called penetration testing. An increasing number of people see many of our dominant systems as being flawed-- thus, an increasing number of people may begin to cheat the systems to get where they need to go. This is important because if those systems want to exist, they either need to change or they need to be more secure. You will see moral opinions change along with this entropic state until an equilibrium is reached which will continue for some period of time until another relevant variable changes.
Stealing is usually harmful to any group, which is why we haven't seen any real change in how we look at stealing. Cheating, however, is undergoing change. What is a hacker if he is not a cheater? We have jobs for hackers now-- it's called penetration testing. An increasing number of people see many of our dominant systems as being flawed-- thus, an increasing number of people may begin to cheat the systems to get where they need to go. This is important because if those systems want to exist, they either need to change or they need to be more secure. You will see moral opinions change along with this entropic state until an equilibrium is reached which will continue for some period of time until another relevant variable changes.
I just want to offer some terms from ethics that match your perspectives. You or anyone else can read up on them if you’d like.
> Morality is only useful when the majority agree with it...
This sounds a lot like a moral relativist stance. I hear it’s not a very popular stance among ethicists, so I don’t have any recommendations off the top of my head for philosophers to study. Basically moral relativism just means that morality is defined by the standards of a culture.
> Morality is only useful when ... the outcome of that belief helps the group in context.
This sounds similar to what a utilitarian would believe. They focus more on the result of an action and the sum total happiness it creates and they judge higher sum total happiness to be of higher morality. John Stuart Mill is probably the biggest proponent of utilitarianism.
> Morality is only useful when the majority agree with it...
This sounds a lot like a moral relativist stance. I hear it’s not a very popular stance among ethicists, so I don’t have any recommendations off the top of my head for philosophers to study. Basically moral relativism just means that morality is defined by the standards of a culture.
> Morality is only useful when ... the outcome of that belief helps the group in context.
This sounds similar to what a utilitarian would believe. They focus more on the result of an action and the sum total happiness it creates and they judge higher sum total happiness to be of higher morality. John Stuart Mill is probably the biggest proponent of utilitarianism.
Oh, really? By that logic, since you're eventually going to die, probably horribly, then you'll be ok with me coming by and taking out one of your kidneys. Or, as in The Big Lebowski, lopping off a toe. Those are as nothing to a death from a brain tumor, after all.
No, it's really quite different. You take my kidney? That's going to have a direct impact on my quality of life. It'll hurt for a while. I won't be able to drink as much and I'll have to be careful about my diet.
I write a paper for someone else to turn in as their own? In a situation where I know more or less nothing about the client? The outcomes are both unknowable and in most cases impossible to tie to my act directly.
I write a paper for someone else to turn in as their own? In a situation where I know more or less nothing about the client? The outcomes are both unknowable and in most cases impossible to tie to my act directly.
> The outcomes are both unknowable and in most cases impossible to tie to my act directly
You breached academic code and, if money was exchanged, potentially the law. Given you wrote the paper and received the money, the act is quite simple to tie to you.
You breached academic code and, if money was exchanged, potentially the law. Given you wrote the paper and received the money, the act is quite simple to tie to you.
I'm sorry, what academic code? What which binds students at schools that I didn't attend and have no contractual relationship with? Lol, okay.
>potentially the law
Yeah, show me the law that tells me it's illegal to write something for someone else. Thanks.
>potentially the law
Yeah, show me the law that tells me it's illegal to write something for someone else. Thanks.
> show me the law that tells me it's illegal to write something for someone else
Writing papers for someone else is not illegal. (The student presenting the paper as their own violates your copyright, and potentially other laws.) But if you market and sell your papers for the purpose of cheating, particularly with respect to students pursuing degrees they intend to use for licensing/certification (e.g. law or civil engineering), you're aiding and abetting fraud.
Writing papers for someone else is not illegal. (The student presenting the paper as their own violates your copyright, and potentially other laws.) But if you market and sell your papers for the purpose of cheating, particularly with respect to students pursuing degrees they intend to use for licensing/certification (e.g. law or civil engineering), you're aiding and abetting fraud.
Hmm. Seems like there could be an argument for tortious interference here, though establishing damages could be difficult.
Why would someone pay you to write an assignment for them if the outcome of you writing the paper is so unknowable?
> it doesn't bother me much, because higher education is already eating itself alive in the US.
The ship is sinking already, so it's OK if I set fire to it.
The ship is sinking already, so it's OK if I set fire to it.
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.
[deleted]
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.
In the "marketplace" of education, the paper was the token that the student expended the mental effort of doing the work, which would be graded on its merits as a sign of what he should have done. You faked that token knowingly. Your customer did no work, and the professor would never have accepted the monetary equivalent of what he paid you for that work. Not at any multiple, if he wanted to keep his job and the university its accreditation.
> Academic papers don't
Did you get paid for them? If yes, they had a market value. That's the most basic definition of a market--a buyer and seller negotiating and agreeing upon a price for a good or a service. "Market" doesn't mean commodity. Hopefully you weren't writing anyone's economics papers...
Did you get paid for them? If yes, they had a market value. That's the most basic definition of a market--a buyer and seller negotiating and agreeing upon a price for a good or a service. "Market" doesn't mean commodity. Hopefully you weren't writing anyone's economics papers...
sithadmin(1)
Counterfeit goods are not labeled counterfeit for their labor condition origins.
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.
> There were far worse ways that I could have kept myself afloat, income-wise
"Your honor, you should not judge me for stealing. For I could have also murdered."
"Your honor, you should not judge me for stealing. For I could have also murdered."
A) Cheating hurts everyone.
> is nothing compared to the massive grade inflation one sees at top universities in the US
B) Because student at top universities (For the most part) have higher GPA in high school and a higher SAT scores already. Unless your morals require a strict bell curve of 10% F, 10% A, 40% C and 40% B?
> is nothing compared to the massive grade inflation one sees at top universities in the US
B) Because student at top universities (For the most part) have higher GPA in high school and a higher SAT scores already. Unless your morals require a strict bell curve of 10% F, 10% A, 40% C and 40% B?
Do you want to be able to identify the best of the best? That's the fundamental question here - if that's a useful thing for society, to have credentials that distinguish beyond "did well in high school," then you don't want grade inflation.
And if you don't - you could make a solid case that the extreme ends of those skills may not be that useful in general outside of academia - than do Harvard et al need nearly as much money as we throw at them today?
And if you don't - you could make a solid case that the extreme ends of those skills may not be that useful in general outside of academia - than do Harvard et al need nearly as much money as we throw at them today?
Peer group matters. Being bottom 10% at Harvard is quite different than being bottom 10% at Boston University (no offense).
The people who seem to not believe this are the people pushing for grade inflation, no? Grade inflation is all about making everyone who isn't top 10% have a prettier resume.
Ah so the us veriosn of the "gentleman's" degree - a third from Oxbridge in the UK
Identifying the best of the best requires complex statistical methods to remove several different types of bias.
I'd rather give students PRoPS, which is to say "percentile ranking of passing students". But that would require some means to normalize different professors teaching from different curricula, with variations in the capabilities of their students across different classes.
Automatically failing x% of your students every semester is as cruel and pointless as stack ranking. Clearly, if a student can demonstrate a minimum objective level of understanding, independent of the performance of their peers, they should not fail the course. Equally clearly, if a section is full of geniuses with perfect understanding, they should be graded more highly than a section full of normals that can barely get it after intensive study.
If you pile up enough testing data, year after year, it would be theoretically possible to construct a mathematical model to compare with some confidence the student achievement across disparate classes, professors, and institutions, as well as to say definitively who the good and bad professors are, and whether they write difficult or easy exams.
If you get a 100% on Dr. Aardvark's CHEM220 final at Example U., that may put you at PRoPS of 80 for "organic chemistry, milestone one", whereas if you get a 60% score on Dr. Zymurgy's CHEM235 final at Hypothetical Institute, that may actually have a PRoPS of 95 for "organic chemistry, milestone one". Dr. Z's exam was simply written to be impossible, and scored very harshly, while Dr. A's exam was built to be more forgiving, and maybe left out some elements that the Example U. chem faculty prefers to save for later courses.
This will, of course, never happen. Firstly, you would have to get academics to agree on the essential elements of a given subject at a particular checkpoint in a course of study. Secondly, institutions that rely on selective admissions and political connections for prestige would never participate, if there were even a shred of possibility that the objective evidence would show that they do not actually produce the quality of graduates that they would like to claim. Imagine if Ivy Limestone Woodpanels Law cranked out PRoPS for complete J.D. from 30 to 85, and Bigcity Urban Campus Law ranged from 50 to 99. The former is selective and does a lot of networking, but then passes anyone who still knows enough to not embarrass the school in a connected job, whereas the latter takes everyone, presents a huge challenge, and quickly flunks those who can't master the coursework and get hired through sheer merit. Those numbers would be a huge blow to the former's reputation.
Grade inflation is thus a natural by-product of institutions trying to be a "top tier school". It goes right along with publishing in the highest impact journals and wheedling more money out of your alumni. Schools that benefit from institutional prestige want to keep their reputations polished and shiny.
I'd rather give students PRoPS, which is to say "percentile ranking of passing students". But that would require some means to normalize different professors teaching from different curricula, with variations in the capabilities of their students across different classes.
Automatically failing x% of your students every semester is as cruel and pointless as stack ranking. Clearly, if a student can demonstrate a minimum objective level of understanding, independent of the performance of their peers, they should not fail the course. Equally clearly, if a section is full of geniuses with perfect understanding, they should be graded more highly than a section full of normals that can barely get it after intensive study.
If you pile up enough testing data, year after year, it would be theoretically possible to construct a mathematical model to compare with some confidence the student achievement across disparate classes, professors, and institutions, as well as to say definitively who the good and bad professors are, and whether they write difficult or easy exams.
If you get a 100% on Dr. Aardvark's CHEM220 final at Example U., that may put you at PRoPS of 80 for "organic chemistry, milestone one", whereas if you get a 60% score on Dr. Zymurgy's CHEM235 final at Hypothetical Institute, that may actually have a PRoPS of 95 for "organic chemistry, milestone one". Dr. Z's exam was simply written to be impossible, and scored very harshly, while Dr. A's exam was built to be more forgiving, and maybe left out some elements that the Example U. chem faculty prefers to save for later courses.
This will, of course, never happen. Firstly, you would have to get academics to agree on the essential elements of a given subject at a particular checkpoint in a course of study. Secondly, institutions that rely on selective admissions and political connections for prestige would never participate, if there were even a shred of possibility that the objective evidence would show that they do not actually produce the quality of graduates that they would like to claim. Imagine if Ivy Limestone Woodpanels Law cranked out PRoPS for complete J.D. from 30 to 85, and Bigcity Urban Campus Law ranged from 50 to 99. The former is selective and does a lot of networking, but then passes anyone who still knows enough to not embarrass the school in a connected job, whereas the latter takes everyone, presents a huge challenge, and quickly flunks those who can't master the coursework and get hired through sheer merit. Those numbers would be a huge blow to the former's reputation.
Grade inflation is thus a natural by-product of institutions trying to be a "top tier school". It goes right along with publishing in the highest impact journals and wheedling more money out of your alumni. Schools that benefit from institutional prestige want to keep their reputations polished and shiny.
Cheating is a constant that must be controlled for. It doesn't stop when you graduate.
Further, grade inflation at top-tier US schools has nothing to do with the stats on incoming students. I don't even understand why you think that would be relevant.
Further, grade inflation at top-tier US schools has nothing to do with the stats on incoming students. I don't even understand why you think that would be relevant.
Doing their assignments (well) contributes to grade inflation
I get the outrage over cheating, and it really bothered me in classes that graded on a curve that the cheaters would really adversely impact the people who didn't.
But there is a meta question here, why does a youtube "star" even succumb to the idea of advertising/promoting a cheating product, when doing so might put all of their Youtube revenue at risk? Maybe it is because they get crap Youtube revenue and 'several hundred dollars' is enough to push past their moral compass.
People put a lot of heart and sweat into their Youtube channels. Perhaps it is that Google is increasingly sucking more and more of the money that used to go to the channel in order to prop up their service which can't get advertising revenues to support it.
I wonder when the Screen Actors Guild is going to figure out they have another battlefront to engage on.
But there is a meta question here, why does a youtube "star" even succumb to the idea of advertising/promoting a cheating product, when doing so might put all of their Youtube revenue at risk? Maybe it is because they get crap Youtube revenue and 'several hundred dollars' is enough to push past their moral compass.
People put a lot of heart and sweat into their Youtube channels. Perhaps it is that Google is increasingly sucking more and more of the money that used to go to the channel in order to prop up their service which can't get advertising revenues to support it.
I wonder when the Screen Actors Guild is going to figure out they have another battlefront to engage on.
When Hollywood stops seeing the Internet as the enemy.
"Several hundred dollars" heh.
These deals are worth at least 5 digits, sometimes 6.
These deals are worth at least 5 digits, sometimes 6.
From the article: *"Channels with tens of thousands of subscribers can be offered hundreds of dollars for each advert."
Where do you get the 10's of thousands of dollars figure from?
Where do you get the 10's of thousands of dollars figure from?
Tens of thousands of subscribers isn't very many.
"According to The Economist, influencers with at least 100,000 subscribers on YouTube can get an average of $12,500 for a sponsored post, with payments going up rapidly if you have one million subscribers or more. But those figures refer to endorsements by people who are celebrities in their own right. Someone who's only well known on YouTube might not command that kind of pay."
https://www.inc.com/minda-zetlin/even-youtube-stars-with-14-...
Suggests you can get low five figures for an endorsement with 100,000 viewers.
https://www.inc.com/minda-zetlin/even-youtube-stars-with-14-...
Suggests you can get low five figures for an endorsement with 100,000 viewers.
Looks like if you scale it up from those numbers to the several million subs category you'll easily get 6 figures, possibly 7.
I don't doubt it, but people with several million subscribers are in the 97 - 98th percentile. They are even less likely to risk their revenue stream by pushing something that is clearly cheating. (Not that the guys who offer a cheating service wouldn't love to have their endorsement of course).
I am thinking about people on the bubble who have enough subscribers to be considered 'famous' but not so many as to be making bank like the top 3% do. The economist article suggests that revenue as a 'youtuber' drops really hard from the high end, into the not so high end personalities.
I am thinking about people on the bubble who have enough subscribers to be considered 'famous' but not so many as to be making bank like the top 3% do. The economist article suggests that revenue as a 'youtuber' drops really hard from the high end, into the not so high end personalities.
The article mentions multiple people with millions of subs that's taking money from cheating sites. I'm also thinking of one of my favorite channels: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nFkbsvbJl7w Definitely raking in the money these guys.
In the attached video to the page one of the promoters himself says he gets around £250 for each episode. So not 5 or 6 digits.
Discussions about cheating aside, I find it hilarious watching these YouTube influencers dropping these ads right in the middle of their videos without even a hint of remorse. I mean, I get it, they want to make money, but still.
It reminds me of the days when some YouTubers would promote/endorse products without specifically saying they were paid to do so. Or worse, promoting products for gambling sites that they had business interests in.
It's interesting to see all this play out, it almost feels like it's the wild west on YT right now. Every time the regulators try to come in and enforce some policy, people still find the loopholes to create a quick buck.
It reminds me of the days when some YouTubers would promote/endorse products without specifically saying they were paid to do so. Or worse, promoting products for gambling sites that they had business interests in.
It's interesting to see all this play out, it almost feels like it's the wild west on YT right now. Every time the regulators try to come in and enforce some policy, people still find the loopholes to create a quick buck.
As someone who worked as a grad student in a large Midwestern university, these "paper writing" services have been around since the dawn of time.
As a grad student, it was hilariously easy to spot these for several reasons. One, the writing style is usually inconsistent. You'll have a student writing at about a high school level suddenly start using huge $5 words? Highly unlikely. Or a student who writes almost exclusively on one topic (our school had a ton of ag engineers so anything farm related was a favorite) and then suddenly is interested in the micro-economics of island based economies? Yeah, that's a big rad flag too.
As a University, our golden rule to clamp down on these was to require all local sources, no internet sources, and have the ability to go back and look at other papers the student has turned in for comparison. We'd normally bust students, then give them two or three days to turn in a paper they actually wrote with no penalties.
Most of these situations were just due to being lazy and not caring (I was in the Sociology department) so it wasn't so much about cheating as it was just getting the students to think critically and write better.
As a grad student, it was hilariously easy to spot these for several reasons. One, the writing style is usually inconsistent. You'll have a student writing at about a high school level suddenly start using huge $5 words? Highly unlikely. Or a student who writes almost exclusively on one topic (our school had a ton of ag engineers so anything farm related was a favorite) and then suddenly is interested in the micro-economics of island based economies? Yeah, that's a big rad flag too.
As a University, our golden rule to clamp down on these was to require all local sources, no internet sources, and have the ability to go back and look at other papers the student has turned in for comparison. We'd normally bust students, then give them two or three days to turn in a paper they actually wrote with no penalties.
Most of these situations were just due to being lazy and not caring (I was in the Sociology department) so it wasn't so much about cheating as it was just getting the students to think critically and write better.
Have never been this hated by my husband who nearly killed me just because i wanted to lay my hand on his Samsung phone and i was treated like i was a small kid i endured for too long but i could not take it any longer then i was informed of a hacker who saves relations by hacking into cell phones without physical access to there phones and after contacting him mehn i got results of what my husband has been hiding on his phone i got to read all his whats-app messages, text messages and most especially his deleted text messages then i knew what had been going on with him lately i found out my husband is a BIG CHEAT but am happy that i found a helper please you all should feel free to contact this hacker ([email protected]) he was the hacker that helped me hack into my spouse phone and i must confess this hacker is fast and easy going you all would love his hacking skills.
Renate Welgemoed
I paid my rent and living expenses when pursuing my Masters degree by writing papers for services that helped undergrads cheat on class/term papers.
I don't regret it at all. It helped me become a faster, more efficient author, and in my experience, the sort of student that would pay someone else to buy a paper will end up failing out one way or another regardless. I knew people that paid for papers in undergrand, and most either flunked out, or barely graduated and ended up worse off than our other classmates in terms of job/grad school prospects.
I don't regret it at all. It helped me become a faster, more efficient author, and in my experience, the sort of student that would pay someone else to buy a paper will end up failing out one way or another regardless. I knew people that paid for papers in undergrand, and most either flunked out, or barely graduated and ended up worse off than our other classmates in terms of job/grad school prospects.
>or barely graduated and ended up worse off than our other classmates in terms of job/grad school prospects.
And also devalues the degree their peers actually worked for, even if only a little. I've been in a lot of interviews where I'm wondering, "How the hell did this person graduate from ${school}?" and the obvious answer is "a non-zero amount of cheating".
I don't think you should beat yourself up over it but I also think but it's also important not to rationalize it away either.
And also devalues the degree their peers actually worked for, even if only a little. I've been in a lot of interviews where I'm wondering, "How the hell did this person graduate from ${school}?" and the obvious answer is "a non-zero amount of cheating".
I don't think you should beat yourself up over it but I also think but it's also important not to rationalize it away either.
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.
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.
Rationalization? No. There's no rationalization going on in my head. I just don't care.
But if people are going to argue about it? Sure, I'll raise a counterpoint.
But if people are going to argue about it? Sure, I'll raise a counterpoint.
You should care. It is your responsibility to care from the point on when you've decided to take a part in these events. You shouldn't have initiated with them if you wanted to be so careless.
There's no nice way to say this, but you might be a sociopath.
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?
The difference is that diplomas are not fungible but most products bought from a store are.
I don't understand how that changes the reasoning. If something is immoral, I argue that it is still immoral even if everyone is doing it. Why would that change if that something immoral involved a non-fungible good?
My second sentence was not a justification to the first one, just one of the intended consequences on society of what he did.
How did his action compares to stealing ?
How did his action compares to stealing ?
I thought your second sentence was meant to be a justification of the first. So what is your justification for why what he did is morally right?
The students lied to their professor, he just sold them the text so I don't see any wrong doing on his part.
Can you justify why it would be bad to ghostwrite ?
Can you justify why it would be bad to ghostwrite ?
Cheating is immoral. Helping someone do something immoral is also immoral. Therefore, what he is doing is wrong.
Do you disagree with the first sentence or the second?
Do you disagree with the first sentence or the second?
There can be shades of everything of course. If a cheater uses a legitimate ghostwriting service, maybe doesn't rise to the level of 'immoral'.
But that might not be the case here?
But that might not be the case here?
I'm not sure what cheating means here, it is about lying to professors.
Helping someone do something immoral is also immoral.
Cheating means to use dishonesty to receive something you do not deserve. Like stealing the answer key to a test and just copying the answers blindly instead of learning the material. Having someone else write as essay you were assigned is a clear example of cheating. It is also an example of lying to professors, but cheating is a more clear term. This isn't like telling a professor you like their shirt when you think it is ugly, this is fraud. If you are caught cheating in college the penalty is at least failing the class and can often lead to being expelled from the school. People caught cheating in law school can be rejected from the Bar (meaning they can't practice law) even if they pass their exams. This is a very serious thing, and I don't want to conflate it with a simple lie.
Can you explain under what circumstances you don't think my reasoning that "Helping someone do something immoral is also immoral" would not hold? And how those circumstances apply to this case?
Can you explain under what circumstances you don't think my reasoning that "Helping someone do something immoral is also immoral" would not hold? And how those circumstances apply to this case?
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 together he said if you can't solve it thats what I should have done. So break the rules he set to do better? It just made no sense.
That and people splitting assignments up and then bringing together each persons contribution and copying it. It was done far more often than not, and in the open right down the hall from a teachers office hours. I decided it really wasn't an environment I wanted to be in and just moved on.
That and people splitting assignments up and then bringing together each persons contribution and copying it. It was done far more often than not, and in the open right down the hall from a teachers office hours. I decided it really wasn't an environment I wanted to be in and just moved on.
Sounds par for the course to me.
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.
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.
I think that lying is wrong (immoral), even if your assessment of the externalities of it aren't that bad. Here you're not the one lying, you're selling the mechanism of another's dishonesty. It's interesting to think about where that fits, but I can't see it in a favourable light.
When you're profiting from it, it makes it hard to fairly assess those externalities. The rationalizing in your post is pretty apparent.
I think there are a lot of legitimate concerns about the idea of class grading and hiring metrics etc., but "I might as well profit from others' dishonesty" is maybe not the right way to respond to that.
When you're profiting from it, it makes it hard to fairly assess those externalities. The rationalizing in your post is pretty apparent.
I think there are a lot of legitimate concerns about the idea of class grading and hiring metrics etc., but "I might as well profit from others' dishonesty" is maybe not the right way to respond to that.
On the other hand, even a little bit off attention of the professors or assistants would expose every last cheater. Cheaters don't even read the assignments they hand in (I've seen people expelled for handing in a paper where the name of the author on the 2nd page onward was different, seen different people hand in the same paper, ...)
A few questions would trivially expose them.
Clearly universities simply don't check. And frankly, we all know that this isn't an individual oversight, but a policy.
A few questions would trivially expose them.
Clearly universities simply don't check. And frankly, we all know that this isn't an individual oversight, but a policy.
But see, I don't think that's "the other hand". It seems unrelated, at best, to the moral question of whether you should profit from helping other people to cheat.
Maybe the schools should put more effort into catching and punishing cheaters. But they shouldn't have to -- if the students were being honest.
The easier and cheaper it is to cheat, the more tempted the students will be. You can lubricate that market by providing the cheating-materials, maybe even by marketing them. Cheating numbers will go up, thus increasing the cost to detect and catch and appropriately deal with cheaters. The last bit is probably the expensive part.
And the more the schools crack down on easily-detectible cheating, the more sophisticated it will get. Sure that means increasing the cost of cheating, but that's an arms race that can only be won by a culture that values honesty. You reinforce that culture by not selling cheating-materials.
Maybe the schools should put more effort into catching and punishing cheaters. But they shouldn't have to -- if the students were being honest.
The easier and cheaper it is to cheat, the more tempted the students will be. You can lubricate that market by providing the cheating-materials, maybe even by marketing them. Cheating numbers will go up, thus increasing the cost to detect and catch and appropriately deal with cheaters. The last bit is probably the expensive part.
And the more the schools crack down on easily-detectible cheating, the more sophisticated it will get. Sure that means increasing the cost of cheating, but that's an arms race that can only be won by a culture that values honesty. You reinforce that culture by not selling cheating-materials.
This is just the university demanding others do their work for them. Catching cheaters is a part of the service universities provide, and they want to push that cost onto others.
You talk as if cheaters haven't existed before. As if this is new. You cannot prevent this market from existing, the university simply needs to check.
You talk as if cheaters haven't existed before. As if this is new. You cannot prevent this market from existing, the university simply needs to check.
"ended up worse off than our other classmates in terms of job/grad school prospects"
you sure about that?
Just because the jobs they wound up in didn't impress you, doesn't mean that they didn't beat out other honest competitors on the margin for those jobs
you sure about that?
Just because the jobs they wound up in didn't impress you, doesn't mean that they didn't beat out other honest competitors on the margin for those jobs
You're not wrong. I can only speak for their outcomes relative to my peers at the university I attended.
Rather than abstaining from or attempting to reform an institution you find flawed, you exploit it for personal gain. If you ever come to find that exploits in your code are used for someone else's personal gain I hope you can be equally equanimous.
That makes sense.
It is probably in the interests of someone with a Master degree to devalue all Bachelor degrees.
But it is also perfectly understandable that those with Bachelor degrees who actually earned them would be super pissed at you for helping a bunch of useless idiots achieve exactly the same institutional recognition, but without the same level of actual mastery, thereby ensuring that they would all have to pass a stupid bozo filter in every job interview for the rest of their lives.
Please try to regret what you have done, just a little bit.
It is probably in the interests of someone with a Master degree to devalue all Bachelor degrees.
But it is also perfectly understandable that those with Bachelor degrees who actually earned them would be super pissed at you for helping a bunch of useless idiots achieve exactly the same institutional recognition, but without the same level of actual mastery, thereby ensuring that they would all have to pass a stupid bozo filter in every job interview for the rest of their lives.
Please try to regret what you have done, just a little bit.
> I don't regret it at all.
I don't believe you. I think you do regret it and that's why you're spending so much time here today talking to people about it.
I don't believe you. I think you do regret it and that's why you're spending so much time here today talking to people about it.
That shifts the "cost" to employers... and you profited from it. Does that make it theft? :-)
I don't really feel sympathy for employers that don't adequately screen candidates.
And who knows: maybe the cheaters are completely capable of meeting the requirements of whatever job they end up in.
And who knows: maybe the cheaters are completely capable of meeting the requirements of whatever job they end up in.
inb4 the next HN article decrying hilarious overwrought interviewing practices...
This is a cost they should be bearing.
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...
This one is clearly just a stock photo: https://edubirdie.com/writer/public/750289 http://www.humanresourcestoday.com/diversity/?open-article-i...
I tried going through their onboarding process up to the point where you get bids and messages from the "professors".
They send you messages in broken English like this:
"hello esteemed customer. kindly assign me the order. i have read the instructions and understood them clearly as the assignment falls under my field of study.Thus i can guarantee high quality work, free from plagiarism and grammatical errors. Timely delivery is also my priority."
This seems like an essay mill out of India, which isn't surprising.
[1] https://i.imgur.com/MlTdNDq.png
[2] https://i.imgur.com/DqLO4Pj.png
They send you messages in broken English like this:
"hello esteemed customer. kindly assign me the order. i have read the instructions and understood them clearly as the assignment falls under my field of study.Thus i can guarantee high quality work, free from plagiarism and grammatical errors. Timely delivery is also my priority."
This seems like an essay mill out of India, which isn't surprising.
[1] https://i.imgur.com/MlTdNDq.png
[2] https://i.imgur.com/DqLO4Pj.png
Academic Outsourcing or Cheating?
Isn’t learning how to arbitrage time / money / skills a critical understanding for the Gig economy?
Also, don’t we praise ignoring rules that don’t serve you and force your resources into lower yield activities? (Uber, AirBnb, etc)
Where else in the real world do you get penalized for paying someone else to develop IP for you? You can have books ghost written, copy for articles, pretty much anything.
Have there been any studies that show people who outsource papers fair worse later in life?
Aren’t Universites largely a scam to extract money for credentialing leaving students with gross amounts of unbankruptable debt?
- Devils Advocate
Isn’t learning how to arbitrage time / money / skills a critical understanding for the Gig economy?
Also, don’t we praise ignoring rules that don’t serve you and force your resources into lower yield activities? (Uber, AirBnb, etc)
Where else in the real world do you get penalized for paying someone else to develop IP for you? You can have books ghost written, copy for articles, pretty much anything.
Have there been any studies that show people who outsource papers fair worse later in life?
Aren’t Universites largely a scam to extract money for credentialing leaving students with gross amounts of unbankruptable debt?
- Devils Advocate
Sorry, but can you please argue against your own devil's advocate, because I'm having a hard time coming up with counterpoints, and as a student currently in university, it's left me pretty depressed about my future. Cheating really does seem to pay off both in university and in the real world, regardless of how immoral it is.
Sure. The biggest argument is that integrity trumps being clever.
If you don’t like school, just quit. Trust yourself and endure the pain of going against the mainstream.
Following your bliss and intuition will be the hardest and most rewarding experience of your life.
Find mentors, ignore people who are still contracted in their own trauma / nightmare who will try to hold you back.
If you like, come join us on Majagual.org, I will gift you a journey with us.
If you don’t like school, just quit. Trust yourself and endure the pain of going against the mainstream.
Following your bliss and intuition will be the hardest and most rewarding experience of your life.
Find mentors, ignore people who are still contracted in their own trauma / nightmare who will try to hold you back.
If you like, come join us on Majagual.org, I will gift you a journey with us.
On a related theme - does anyone know how many people cheat on the initial round hiring tests? Seems pretty easy to outsource, but I'm not sure how common it is. I've always assumed our applicants did the work themselves but maybe I'm naieve.
TBH if I was applying myself I'd be pretty tempted as usually its just a time suck.
TBH if I was applying myself I'd be pretty tempted as usually its just a time suck.
The downside would be that you'd be more likely to work at a place that either isn't sharp enough to detect cheaters or can't get it together to care.
Personally, if I suspect somebody is a liar or a cheater, I won't hire them. I build teams that are low on micromanagement and high on independence and trust. Somebody inclined toward fraud can be a big problem in a context like that, both because of the direct damage they do and because they lower ambient level of trust.
I recently had somebody apply for an internship claiming extensive iOS experience with a nice iOS project on GitHub. But the commit history was shallow, so I did some digging. Turns out it was a group project, and one of the other people did almost all the work.
That person was instantly dead to me. They surely got a job somewhere, but I feel sorry for their coworkers, who at best had to pick up a lot of slack, and at worst had to put up with a bunch of new rules and micromanagement because one employee couldn't be trusted.
Personally, if I suspect somebody is a liar or a cheater, I won't hire them. I build teams that are low on micromanagement and high on independence and trust. Somebody inclined toward fraud can be a big problem in a context like that, both because of the direct damage they do and because they lower ambient level of trust.
I recently had somebody apply for an internship claiming extensive iOS experience with a nice iOS project on GitHub. But the commit history was shallow, so I did some digging. Turns out it was a group project, and one of the other people did almost all the work.
That person was instantly dead to me. They surely got a job somewhere, but I feel sorry for their coworkers, who at best had to pick up a lot of slack, and at worst had to put up with a bunch of new rules and micromanagement because one employee couldn't be trusted.
Maybe it was pair programming on the partner’s computer, with most of the work being done by the candidate? I feed bad that they got immediately rejected for something that could have easily been fact checked by a few interview questions.
We had an applicant interview for an Oracle position. He did really well in the phone interviews and video interviews. Hired him, and wouldntyouknow, he looked very different in person. After a week of on boarding, it was pretty obvious that he had paid someone to do his interviews...
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I suspect that if training and social sorting weren't conflated in academia the way that they are today, the training would be much more effective.
I would love to see universities set a precedent and just catalog these YoutTbers by name, and then let them know that they are permanently barred from ever being admitted to their schools.
That would send a very strong message about how dishonorable academic cheating is. Anyone promoting it is unfit for higher education, for obvious reasons.
That would send a very strong message about how dishonorable academic cheating is. Anyone promoting it is unfit for higher education, for obvious reasons.
Disagree. I argue that a poorly educated person would be more likely to cheat. In a sense, that punishment would be refusing education for the crime of lacking education.
A poorly educated person is the most likely to benefit from an education. Cheating just means they intend to get credit for an education without actually becoming more educated.
Cheaters have no place in academia.
Cheaters have no place in academia.
I think the solution to this is...classes have homework assignments throughout the semesters, but your final paper is one that you write in class. And it's like 50% of your grade. The purpose of the homework assignments throughout the semester is to prepare for the final. If you ace the final, even having paid for essays - then congrats you were able to learn.
Cheating is too easy now. There's a website where you can get solutions manual for free. I've even seen websites that give solutions to Kumon homeowork. For those who don't know Kumon - it's an after school curriculum to help kids develop academically, to get to grade level if they are behind, of to accelerate ahead even further if they are already ahead. What's the point of cheating on those...
When I was in high school in the late 90's, babelfish had come out and kids were cheating on their Spanish homework because it would spit out poor Spanish. Now with the gig economy I'm sure you can scan your homework, upload it and a native Spanish speaker would give you the perfect translation. I remember reading that adjunct professors writing essays to supplement their dirt poor income.
As far as YouTube Stars getting paid to advertise...meh.
Cheating is too easy now. There's a website where you can get solutions manual for free. I've even seen websites that give solutions to Kumon homeowork. For those who don't know Kumon - it's an after school curriculum to help kids develop academically, to get to grade level if they are behind, of to accelerate ahead even further if they are already ahead. What's the point of cheating on those...
When I was in high school in the late 90's, babelfish had come out and kids were cheating on their Spanish homework because it would spit out poor Spanish. Now with the gig economy I'm sure you can scan your homework, upload it and a native Spanish speaker would give you the perfect translation. I remember reading that adjunct professors writing essays to supplement their dirt poor income.
As far as YouTube Stars getting paid to advertise...meh.
> I think the solution to this is...classes have homework assignments throughout the semesters, but your final paper is one that you write in class. And it's like 50% of your grade. The purpose of the homework assignments throughout the semester is to prepare for the final. If you ace the final, even having paid for essays - then congrats you were able to learn.
Isn't this a blue book exam?
Isn't this a blue book exam?
Yes but those have fallen out of fashion because students don't like high-stakes objective hard-to-cheat tests. (And there is some argument against a brief timed written test as an assessment for a whole semester. A friendly but rigorous oral exam would be better.
Also, you can cheat a blue book test by hiring a stand-in. There's a story about Ted Kennedy being caught at a pub by his TA, at a time when he was supposedly taking a final exam at Harvard.
Also, you can cheat a blue book test by hiring a stand-in. There's a story about Ted Kennedy being caught at a pub by his TA, at a time when he was supposedly taking a final exam at Harvard.
> I've even seen websites that give solutions to Kumon homeowork. For those who don't know Kumon - it's an after school curriculum to help kids develop academically, to get to grade level if they are behind, of to accelerate ahead even further if they are already ahead. What's the point of cheating on those...
Smh. Cheating at Kumon is pointless. It's the process that matters, the end result is meaningless.
Smh. Cheating at Kumon is pointless. It's the process that matters, the end result is meaningless.
If your parents force you to do Kumon, you might cheat to complete worksheets
Anecdote: I remember in a scientific writing class in college, the professor told us that we should always give credit when citing someone. I asked her if that was just a good practice and courtesy, or an actual moral obligation. She just repeated herself "you should always give credit" and didn't seem to understand my question.
It seems like she meant to say that it is wrong not to give that credit, i.e. it is not just a good practice, not only a moral obligation that you become only immoral for not complying, but a requirement, a must that if you do not do it, then you are in the wrong.
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I don't understand how this works. Surely you lecturers are going to know your unique voice, your skill level and your opinions and a random essay by someone else is not going to be passable as your own. Plus don't you have to discuss in seminars essays that you submit? Won't it become apparent that it's not your work when you can't defend it? Plus where do they find people skilled in the particular curriculums of every school?
The lecturers don't know your voice if you've been paying a surrogate the whole time! As for the seminars, there are very few classes that involve actually defending your papers. Perhaps you'd find one at a very small school, or at a very senior level in a major with a heavy emphasis on writing. Even then, the cheater might just end up known as someone who can't speak very well but writes passable papers. (Don't just focus entirely on someone paying to fake a position as the brightest student around, that might not even be possible due to the rarity of people like that in any pool including the pool of paper-writers. You've also got to consider that someone who is not remotely qualified might pay to appear barely-competent.)
Many classes have a student/teacher ratio that makes such individual attention impractical.
Furthermore, if someone is ghostwriting for you all semester, the ghostwriter's voice is the voice that the teacher knows.
Furthermore, if someone is ghostwriting for you all semester, the ghostwriter's voice is the voice that the teacher knows.
>if someone is ghostwriting for you all semester, the ghostwriter's voice is the voice that the teacher knows.
This is also true. My agencies took care to assign repeat clients back to the same writers.
This is also true. My agencies took care to assign repeat clients back to the same writers.
I'm guessing the target of this kind of service are large classes where the professor can't practically get to examine each person's essays and internalize that unique voice. Classes like that also tend to not require a lot of in-class participation, again because it isn't practical to do with a large number of students. As for finding people "skilled in the particular cirriculums," I'm guessing this is meant for some of the lower level/introductory classes where the cirriculum is going to be more or less the same everywhere.
> I'm guessing the target of this kind of service are large classes where the professor can't practically get to examine each person's essays and internalize that unique voice.
They say they can write your PhD thesis for you. How on earth can that work? You'll have years of intense one-on-one tuition with an expert in the field and they're not going to notice someone wrote the thesis? How are you going to withstand several hours of viva for something you didn't write? How can the EduBird author make an original contribution to the field on demand?
They say they can write your PhD thesis for you. How on earth can that work? You'll have years of intense one-on-one tuition with an expert in the field and they're not going to notice someone wrote the thesis? How are you going to withstand several hours of viva for something you didn't write? How can the EduBird author make an original contribution to the field on demand?
Maybe they’re lying? I mean, they’re a cheating service, so bullshitting their customers seems par for course. What are they going to do, try and get their money back? Bring a suit in Ukraine? Leave bad feedback? I’m sure the review system is gamed by the company, since they are professiomsl cheaters.
Getting a shitty paper from them is going to be like buying powdered sugar from a coke dealer.
Getting a shitty paper from them is going to be like buying powdered sugar from a coke dealer.
Yep. I'm a teacher. In my experience nearly 100% of students caught cheating turned in essays that were terrible to begin with. They would most likely not pass the course even if they didn't get turned in for academic dishonesty.
Once they've got your money I doubt they care how your thesis defense went. I'm sure they'll write anything you pay them to.
They can? I didn't see anything about that in the article. I've got no clue how you would pull that off
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.
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.
"Besides, they are aware of the expectations of the high school professors and know what can impress them."
They claim they can write a PhD thesis, but they can't check their own prose.
They claim they can write a PhD thesis, but they can't check their own prose.
They can probably write the PhD thesis required for a degree mill.
It isn't sufficient to know that the student is cheating. You have to be able to prove it. Students, particularly the amoral, entitled students who are inclined to cheat, will cause an enormous amount of trouble for the professor/TA who accuses them of cheating without incontrovertible proof. The professor may dock the student's grade in some way, but you can't really fail them if it's clear the essay was written by someone much smarter or more fluent than they are.
>Surely you lecturers are going to know your unique voice, your skill level and your opinions and a random essay by someone else is not going to be passable as your own.
In the US, the bulk of cheaters buying academic papers are in huge class sections where a majority of grading is divvied up between graduate assistants. Even if the professor strongly suspects that a student turns in a paper that isn't their own work, it's rarely worth the effort of escalating unless the paper is an obvious and provable case of plagiarism. Plagiarism is a very hard claim to prove when the paper one submits is bespoke.
In the US, the bulk of cheaters buying academic papers are in huge class sections where a majority of grading is divvied up between graduate assistants. Even if the professor strongly suspects that a student turns in a paper that isn't their own work, it's rarely worth the effort of escalating unless the paper is an obvious and provable case of plagiarism. Plagiarism is a very hard claim to prove when the paper one submits is bespoke.
Indeed, on occasion TAs are deliberately rotated, which has benefits, but does mean it will take them a long time to learn your "voice".
"What do you have to lose? Stop being a bitch. Be a boss"
- im sold
- im sold
I know two people who are currently doing a CS MS who barely do any of their own assignments. They have friends help them, either by doing most of it or all of it. They can pass programming classes because tests are leniently graded, and at least half of the score comes from multiple choice questions that can be answered without actually understanding the material.
All the people in this thread that think most people get a degree for knowledge, instead of the truth that a degree is just a piece of paper that tells employers "I am a normal member of the middle class and I can do basic stuff so please hire me".
I honestly don't care if people cheat.
I honestly don't care if people cheat.
As a person who just started university, I have to ask: how else do I get employers to not entirely ignore my application on account of "insufficient qualifications"?
How is the quality of writing for this? I know essays are extremely important for college admissions so I'm wondering if this site's work is actually contributing to changing people's future.
Why do students have to write essays at home? Get them all in a classroom or big hall for 4-6 hours and let them write something on an imposed topic, the same for everyone.
Cheating would be much harder this way.
Cheating would be much harder this way.
This is what I did to get my BA only 2 years ago. We had exam essays and prepared essays. It very quickly weeds out the people who don't know what they're talking about.
Interesting. Maybe it’s cause teachers will rely less on homeworkers and more on in-class work?
Here is an interesting read
http://www.culturewars.com/2008/BrooklynExistentialism.html
http://www.culturewars.com/2008/BrooklynExistentialism.html
Ha... people find another way to do the same thing. Fundamentally the education industry is failing to inspire students to study.
Agreed with this. There's a disproportionate number of students that are doing the work because they feel forced to. If the education system isn't willing to somehow alter itself to engage its students rather than force pointless crap on them that they'll try hard to forget after finals, then the education system can continue to expect a large number of people attempting to game the system.
Should it be condoned? Obviously not, but the point is this cheating thing is only a symptom of a much bigger issue
Should it be condoned? Obviously not, but the point is this cheating thing is only a symptom of a much bigger issue
Too bad they do not possess the moral standing to do better with the audience they have. But hey, Capitalism is great right as long as you have zero character and are vapid enough to believe that any of this fake crap matters. I say it is fine because they are the crabs at the bottom of the bucket...
It's more than a little ironic that drug companies typically pay respected medical-school professors to publish articles by ghostwriters.
And yes, I know, whataboutism. But aren't faculty supposed to set examples for students?
And yes, I know, whataboutism. But aren't faculty supposed to set examples for students?
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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."
"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."
I may not have grasped the intended point to be made from your quote, but I don't see how changed variables names or functions or whatever results in the understanding of the logic.
They mean that if you can change it enough to not be detected as plagiarism, you must be rewriting it in your own ideas, aka learning.
I'm really disappointed by the downvotes that sithadmin, misterbowfinger, and I have been receiving in this thread.
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.
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.
How is cheating only an issue in academia? It shows a lack of ethics and a lack of knowledge on the part of the student, and these are things that are quite important to being able to do a good job in the real world.
You say "the current system is stupid", "academia is an artificial world", and "past projects and word of mouth" are what matters. Past projects and word of mouth are both systems that are ripe for manipulation by having the right social / marketing skills. Coincidentally, you can also appropriate other people's work and pass it off as your own, perhaps without getting caught. I think I'm beginning to understand why you value these highly.
You say "the current system is stupid", "academia is an artificial world", and "past projects and word of mouth" are what matters. Past projects and word of mouth are both systems that are ripe for manipulation by having the right social / marketing skills. Coincidentally, you can also appropriate other people's work and pass it off as your own, perhaps without getting caught. I think I'm beginning to understand why you value these highly.
I agree about the lack of ethics, but that's something to be screened by future employers or school admissions.
I don't disagree with schools having penalties for cheating. But on the moral severity scale, it's really an infraction rather than a felony. Would you call jaywalkers bad people?
If you want to see why I have such a disdain for academia, here's my story: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16726402
I don't disagree with schools having penalties for cheating. But on the moral severity scale, it's really an infraction rather than a felony. Would you call jaywalkers bad people?
If you want to see why I have such a disdain for academia, here's my story: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16726402
I wouldn't hire you. Attitudes matter. Trust matters. No way would I hire you, given the views you express.
Nice name. I probably wouldn't want to work for you anyway.
You cheating to acquire a degree that says you have learned x information devalues that degree for everyone else that has it. That is nothing like crossing the street where you aren't supposed too.
> "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."
Perhaps GP's point was that since degrees don't actually correlate with 'you have learned x information', degrees don't inherently have value in the first place?
Perhaps GP's point was that since degrees don't actually correlate with 'you have learned x information', degrees don't inherently have value in the first place?
Nonsense. Degrees show that you ran the gauntlet. I don't think confer anything more. Cheating cheapens that.
I think they are projecting their own disillusionment after they themself realized the degree doesn't represent knowledge or whatever personal meaning they had attached to it.
I think they are projecting their own disillusionment after they themself realized the degree doesn't represent knowledge or whatever personal meaning they had attached to it.
> that's something to be screened by future employers or school admissions
Like, by flagging cheaters and those who facilitate them. You're complaining about the disease as well as the cure.
Like, by flagging cheaters and those who facilitate them. You're complaining about the disease as well as the cure.
> Cheating is only an issue in the artificial world of academia, where it goes against how the system is supposed to work.
What about other artificial systems with defined rules, like sports? Is doping or other cheating permissible? If so, at all levels, or only professional levels?
> * 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.*
In large part, the current forms of evaluation (closed book, silent, proctored exams) are a result of people cheating in honour-based systems. As cheating continues to be a problem, pressure is increased on institutions and staff to prevent it, which ultimately leads to a worse learning environment for everyone.
Edit: I should point out this isn't a theoretical concern. I personally resent the people who have attempted to 'beat the system' with simple dishonesty and caused me to have to endure uncomfortable and tedious attempts to minimise cheating during my education.
In a similar vein, I feel it was a lot better for just about everyone back when you could take more than a thimbleful of liquid onto an aeroplane.
> Employers should be using other methods to screen prospective employees -- looking at past projects [...]
So having cheated my way through schooling, I should probably drop a few more bucks into getting some jobs-board contractors to knock out a couple of 'passion projects' to throw onto github?
What about other artificial systems with defined rules, like sports? Is doping or other cheating permissible? If so, at all levels, or only professional levels?
> * 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.*
In large part, the current forms of evaluation (closed book, silent, proctored exams) are a result of people cheating in honour-based systems. As cheating continues to be a problem, pressure is increased on institutions and staff to prevent it, which ultimately leads to a worse learning environment for everyone.
Edit: I should point out this isn't a theoretical concern. I personally resent the people who have attempted to 'beat the system' with simple dishonesty and caused me to have to endure uncomfortable and tedious attempts to minimise cheating during my education.
In a similar vein, I feel it was a lot better for just about everyone back when you could take more than a thimbleful of liquid onto an aeroplane.
> Employers should be using other methods to screen prospective employees -- looking at past projects [...]
So having cheated my way through schooling, I should probably drop a few more bucks into getting some jobs-board contractors to knock out a couple of 'passion projects' to throw onto github?
> What about other artificial systems with defined rules, like sports? Is doping or other cheating permissible? If so, at all levels, or only professional levels?
Actually you raise a good point. The sports system is like that too, it's just an artificial system. I don't watch sports so I don't care what goes on inside that system.
> Edit: I should point out this isn't a theoretical concern. I personally resent the people who have attempted to 'beat the system' with simple dishonesty and caused me to have to endure uncomfortable and tedious attempts to minimise cheating during my education.
I resent the fact that I had to spend so much time in world renowned educational centers learning so much theory that I never use in the real world.
I resent the fact that we put the college-as-job-credential system on a pedestal instead of coming up with something more efficient and doesn't let professors hang the fucking sword of Damocles over your head.
> So having cheated my way through schooling, I should probably drop a few more bucks into getting some jobs-board contractors to knock out a couple of 'passion projects' to throw onto github?
Nice straw man bro.
Actually you raise a good point. The sports system is like that too, it's just an artificial system. I don't watch sports so I don't care what goes on inside that system.
> Edit: I should point out this isn't a theoretical concern. I personally resent the people who have attempted to 'beat the system' with simple dishonesty and caused me to have to endure uncomfortable and tedious attempts to minimise cheating during my education.
I resent the fact that I had to spend so much time in world renowned educational centers learning so much theory that I never use in the real world.
I resent the fact that we put the college-as-job-credential system on a pedestal instead of coming up with something more efficient and doesn't let professors hang the fucking sword of Damocles over your head.
> So having cheated my way through schooling, I should probably drop a few more bucks into getting some jobs-board contractors to knock out a couple of 'passion projects' to throw onto github?
Nice straw man bro.
Isn't the legal system 'artificial' by that sort of definition? Should people feel obliged to follow those artificial rules?[1]
Also, dismissing a system with a simple "Well, I don't watch it / it doesn't affect me" is a pretty weak argument compared actually addressing how dishonesty & cheating affects those who do participate. (And whether you personally engage or not, I'm sure sport, like education, does somehow impact your life in some way.)
> I resent the fact that I had to spend so much time [...] learning so much theory that I never use in the real world.
Like what? Are you certain you have never and will never use it? Is it equally worthless to everyone, or is there some benefit to some of the people that happen to not be you?
Was it completely unavoidable? Did you investigate your curricula before enrolling, and choose only things directly related to your present career?
I agree that the current qualifications system is broken, IMO having a lot to do with (especially in the UK) pitching university as an essential part of education, and destroying/replacing the whole technical college system in its favour.
I can't accept that the best way to fix it is to make everything worse for everyone until it finally collapses though.
> Nice straw man bro
If we accept that I'm a dishonest person attempting to bypass the 'has good university credentials' check, why wouldn't you expect me to also cheat at building a portfolio, and maybe practising my interview-bullshit techniques in order to best land a job?
I can't imagine any system that has to assume maximum dishonesty could ever be more efficient than one where you can actually trust the information given to you.
Granted, it's a spectrum, but you're seemingly arguing in favour of some sort of 'distrust, then verify, then verify some more' approach, which seems weird.
[1] There are plenty of good arguments for and against, this isn't just a trick question.
Also, dismissing a system with a simple "Well, I don't watch it / it doesn't affect me" is a pretty weak argument compared actually addressing how dishonesty & cheating affects those who do participate. (And whether you personally engage or not, I'm sure sport, like education, does somehow impact your life in some way.)
> I resent the fact that I had to spend so much time [...] learning so much theory that I never use in the real world.
Like what? Are you certain you have never and will never use it? Is it equally worthless to everyone, or is there some benefit to some of the people that happen to not be you?
Was it completely unavoidable? Did you investigate your curricula before enrolling, and choose only things directly related to your present career?
I agree that the current qualifications system is broken, IMO having a lot to do with (especially in the UK) pitching university as an essential part of education, and destroying/replacing the whole technical college system in its favour.
I can't accept that the best way to fix it is to make everything worse for everyone until it finally collapses though.
> Nice straw man bro
If we accept that I'm a dishonest person attempting to bypass the 'has good university credentials' check, why wouldn't you expect me to also cheat at building a portfolio, and maybe practising my interview-bullshit techniques in order to best land a job?
I can't imagine any system that has to assume maximum dishonesty could ever be more efficient than one where you can actually trust the information given to you.
Granted, it's a spectrum, but you're seemingly arguing in favour of some sort of 'distrust, then verify, then verify some more' approach, which seems weird.
[1] There are plenty of good arguments for and against, this isn't just a trick question.
> I resent the fact that I had to spend so much time in world renowned educational centers learning so much theory that I never use in the real world.
Having worked on everything from OS components to embedded systems, I use that theory constantly and wish I'd had the opportunity to learn more.
Where you took your career rests solely on you; don't blame those who educated you for it.
Having worked on everything from OS components to embedded systems, I use that theory constantly and wish I'd had the opportunity to learn more.
Where you took your career rests solely on you; don't blame those who educated you for it.
> 1. Cheating is only an issue in the artificial world of academia, where it goes against how the system is supposed to work.
People who cheat their way to a degree, are lying to future employees about possessing a level of knowledge that they do not have.
An academic degree is bestowed upon a graduate as a sort of symbol of authenticity, backed by the college/university's reputation, that the graduate has a certain level of mastery in a given set of topics.
This mastery includes both a broad base, the ability to make well reasoned arguments, perform basic research, write papers, an understanding of world history, and other undergraduate degree pre-reqs.
Cheating is a way for a student to acquire such certification without having done the work, and without having learned the skills that work imparts.
> 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.
The cheating services being offered here are about writing essay papers, which are the most basic case of being able to produce an end product after having applied research and critical thinking to a problem space.
Being able to communicate, and think, in a clear and coherent manner is one of the very foundations of a classic liberal education. It is also one of the most important skills for almost any professional job.
Lying about possessing that ability is a form of deceit, and by common consensus, morally objectionable.
People who cheat their way to a degree, are lying to future employees about possessing a level of knowledge that they do not have.
An academic degree is bestowed upon a graduate as a sort of symbol of authenticity, backed by the college/university's reputation, that the graduate has a certain level of mastery in a given set of topics.
This mastery includes both a broad base, the ability to make well reasoned arguments, perform basic research, write papers, an understanding of world history, and other undergraduate degree pre-reqs.
Cheating is a way for a student to acquire such certification without having done the work, and without having learned the skills that work imparts.
> 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.
The cheating services being offered here are about writing essay papers, which are the most basic case of being able to produce an end product after having applied research and critical thinking to a problem space.
Being able to communicate, and think, in a clear and coherent manner is one of the very foundations of a classic liberal education. It is also one of the most important skills for almost any professional job.
Lying about possessing that ability is a form of deceit, and by common consensus, morally objectionable.
> People who cheat their way to a degree, are lying to future employees about possessing a level of knowledge that they do not have.
Not if they don't apply to jobs.
> Being able to communicate, and think, in a clear and coherent manner is one of the very foundations of a classic liberal education. It is also one of the most important skills for almost any professional job.
You can't assess that by talking to someone during an interview?
> Lying about possessing that ability is a form of deceit, and by common consensus, morally objectionable.
Agreed. That's a matter for when the person is applying to jobs.
If he just gets the degree and becomes a trust fund kid for the rest of his life, who is being harmed?
Not if they don't apply to jobs.
> Being able to communicate, and think, in a clear and coherent manner is one of the very foundations of a classic liberal education. It is also one of the most important skills for almost any professional job.
You can't assess that by talking to someone during an interview?
> Lying about possessing that ability is a form of deceit, and by common consensus, morally objectionable.
Agreed. That's a matter for when the person is applying to jobs.
If he just gets the degree and becomes a trust fund kid for the rest of his life, who is being harmed?
> Not if they don't apply to jobs
This does not apply to the majority of students going to college. Why should a tiny fraction of students be able to drag down the reputation of a college because they do not want to do the work that they signed up to do, paid tuition to be taught how to do, and signed a contract saying that they would honestly complete to the best of their abilities?
> You can't assess that by talking to someone during an interview?
It is not possible to assess someone's ability to do a long form research report doing a 1 hour in person interview. I have actually seen some companies that do have candidate screening processes that involve independent research work, but that is aside the point[1]. The real point here is that there is a centralized system that is designed to teach, and validate, academic credentials. They are called colleges!
> Agreed. That's a matter for when the person is applying to jobs.
It is a matter for colleges to worry about because they are in the business of bestowing credentials backed up by the colleges reputation for doing a good job educating their students. If too many students have a degree from a college but they do not actually know anything, then degrees in general from that college become devalued and it cheats the students who put in all the work legitimately!
> If he just gets the degree and becomes a trust fund kid for the rest of his life, who is being harmed?
Reputable colleges and universities are not day cares for trust fund kids. There are plenty of less reputable colleges that serve that purpose.
[1] Such longer interview processes put more burden, which can be measured economically, on both the applicant and the hiring company. The applicant has already paid a fee to go through a skill assessment process, their college tuition. It is possible to model cheaters as an economic drain on both employers and job applicants. Cheating is not free, it has a real cost to it as companies have to implement additional testing and applicants have to spend their time (which always has a monetary trade off) going through screening that is redundant to the credentials they already have.
This does not apply to the majority of students going to college. Why should a tiny fraction of students be able to drag down the reputation of a college because they do not want to do the work that they signed up to do, paid tuition to be taught how to do, and signed a contract saying that they would honestly complete to the best of their abilities?
> You can't assess that by talking to someone during an interview?
It is not possible to assess someone's ability to do a long form research report doing a 1 hour in person interview. I have actually seen some companies that do have candidate screening processes that involve independent research work, but that is aside the point[1]. The real point here is that there is a centralized system that is designed to teach, and validate, academic credentials. They are called colleges!
> Agreed. That's a matter for when the person is applying to jobs.
It is a matter for colleges to worry about because they are in the business of bestowing credentials backed up by the colleges reputation for doing a good job educating their students. If too many students have a degree from a college but they do not actually know anything, then degrees in general from that college become devalued and it cheats the students who put in all the work legitimately!
> If he just gets the degree and becomes a trust fund kid for the rest of his life, who is being harmed?
Reputable colleges and universities are not day cares for trust fund kids. There are plenty of less reputable colleges that serve that purpose.
[1] Such longer interview processes put more burden, which can be measured economically, on both the applicant and the hiring company. The applicant has already paid a fee to go through a skill assessment process, their college tuition. It is possible to model cheaters as an economic drain on both employers and job applicants. Cheating is not free, it has a real cost to it as companies have to implement additional testing and applicants have to spend their time (which always has a monetary trade off) going through screening that is redundant to the credentials they already have.
> This does not apply to the majority of students going to college. Why should a tiny fraction of students be able to drag down the reputation of a college because they do not want to do the work that they signed up to do, paid tuition to be taught how to do, and signed a contract saying that they would honestly complete to the best of their abilities?
Why should colleges penalize against possible future job interview fraud? Pre-crime, anyone?
> It is a matter for colleges to worry about because they are in the business of bestowing credentials backed up by the colleges reputation for doing a good job educating their students. If too many students have a degree from a college but they do not actually know anything, then degrees in general from that college become devalued and it cheats the students who put in all the work legitimately!
Good, the sooner we bury the whole rotten, overpriced system, the sooner we can come up with a better alternative.
> Cheating is not free, it has a real cost to it as companies have to implement additional testing and applicants have to spend their time (which always has a monetary trade off) going through screening that is redundant to the credentials they already have.
Neither is spending $200k on tuition!
Why should colleges penalize against possible future job interview fraud? Pre-crime, anyone?
> It is a matter for colleges to worry about because they are in the business of bestowing credentials backed up by the colleges reputation for doing a good job educating their students. If too many students have a degree from a college but they do not actually know anything, then degrees in general from that college become devalued and it cheats the students who put in all the work legitimately!
Good, the sooner we bury the whole rotten, overpriced system, the sooner we can come up with a better alternative.
> Cheating is not free, it has a real cost to it as companies have to implement additional testing and applicants have to spend their time (which always has a monetary trade off) going through screening that is redundant to the credentials they already have.
Neither is spending $200k on tuition!
In my view, cheating extends beyond academia when you claim to have an education that you didn't receive.
It does devalue the degree, and it does impose costs on those who don't cheat, by making it harder for them to establish their own credentials.
I don't know a clear distinction between "accomplish and explain" and "write answers" for academic study.
Employers are using other methods, such as personality tests, coding interviews, work-for-free exercises, requiring "experience" for entry level jobs, and so forth.
Employers could abolish that system overnight by simply eliminating the degree requirement. They could reduce their labor costs, because a person with no college debt might be willing to start out at a lower salary and be more loyal to their initial employer.
It does devalue the degree, and it does impose costs on those who don't cheat, by making it harder for them to establish their own credentials.
I don't know a clear distinction between "accomplish and explain" and "write answers" for academic study.
Employers are using other methods, such as personality tests, coding interviews, work-for-free exercises, requiring "experience" for entry level jobs, and so forth.
Employers could abolish that system overnight by simply eliminating the degree requirement. They could reduce their labor costs, because a person with no college debt might be willing to start out at a lower salary and be more loyal to their initial employer.
> I don't know a clear distinction between "accomplish and explain" and "write answers" for academic study.
In my undergraduate education, the most valuable class I had was a set of embedded systems classes. No tests, no homework, just have to build a project incrementally over the course of the quarter, and then provide schematics and documention at the end.
> Employers are using other methods, such as personality tests, coding interviews, work-for-free exercises, requiring "experience" for entry level jobs, and so forth.
> Employers could abolish that system overnight by simply eliminating the degree requirement. They could reduce their labor costs, because a person with no college debt might be willing to start out at a lower salary and be more loyal to their initial employer.
Exactly! Thank you for pointing this out, especially in a world of skyrocketing tuition costs.
In my undergraduate education, the most valuable class I had was a set of embedded systems classes. No tests, no homework, just have to build a project incrementally over the course of the quarter, and then provide schematics and documention at the end.
> Employers are using other methods, such as personality tests, coding interviews, work-for-free exercises, requiring "experience" for entry level jobs, and so forth.
> Employers could abolish that system overnight by simply eliminating the degree requirement. They could reduce their labor costs, because a person with no college debt might be willing to start out at a lower salary and be more loyal to their initial employer.
Exactly! Thank you for pointing this out, especially in a world of skyrocketing tuition costs.
I disagree. Homework and exams have two purposes:
1. Help the student learn (by applying theory in homework and encouraging internalization for exams), and
2. Verifying that students have learned the material
Cheating destroys both of those. A student can copy a solution to a general relativity problem, but that doesn't mean they understand it, and likewise they can obtain the exam before they take it and memorize the solutions, but then the exam only measures whether they've memorized the solution.
That is, cheating completely eliminates the purpose of obtaining an education.
1. Help the student learn (by applying theory in homework and encouraging internalization for exams), and
2. Verifying that students have learned the material
Cheating destroys both of those. A student can copy a solution to a general relativity problem, but that doesn't mean they understand it, and likewise they can obtain the exam before they take it and memorize the solutions, but then the exam only measures whether they've memorized the solution.
That is, cheating completely eliminates the purpose of obtaining an education.
And why do we care in a real-world sense whether this student has cheated in general relativity? If that person goes to a physics lab, he would be found out eventually.
In a real-world sense, cheating hurts nobody except the person doing it, if even that.
In a real-world sense, cheating hurts nobody except the person doing it, if even that.
That's not true at all. One example (there are more): Say a student cheats at Foo University and then gets a job at a physics lab. They clearly don't know the material that they purportedly got good grades studying.
Now say, for the sake of the argument, that this happens a few more times. As a hiring manager at the lab I'm going to be less likely to seriously consider candidates from Foo University (because all of the 4.0 graduates I've hired from there don't know anything). Others will live need to work harder to overcome this bias because of the action of the cheaters.
It's very myopic (and a very difficult position to seriously hold unless you're rationalizing past behavior) to assume that cheating doesn't hurt anyone.
Now say, for the sake of the argument, that this happens a few more times. As a hiring manager at the lab I'm going to be less likely to seriously consider candidates from Foo University (because all of the 4.0 graduates I've hired from there don't know anything). Others will live need to work harder to overcome this bias because of the action of the cheaters.
It's very myopic (and a very difficult position to seriously hold unless you're rationalizing past behavior) to assume that cheating doesn't hurt anyone.
Sure, they might be found out when they fail their oral quals, but it would be much easier for everyone if there were a much faster way to find them out, such as a low grade from a school that strictly enforces anti-cheating policies.
Would you want to be that surgeon's first patient?
No this is a problem in the real world as well. If you are asked to do something but instead you pay someone else to do it, that is bad and you will get in trouble for doing it http://www.bbc.com/news/technology-21043693
From what I can see, the real problem was that he leaked confidential information to the outside world. Unless we can prove some harm to the consumer or the shareholder, I don't see why anyone outside of the company should care.
I still see this as a contractual matter. If his employment contract strictly forbade him from doing this (and it might very well do so), then that's grounds for termination. Just like how copying homework could be grounds for suspension from school. But still a different effect on society than stealing.
Another thing to consider: he's making the company management look bad. The smart thing to do would be to promote him for his smart thinking.
I still see this as a contractual matter. If his employment contract strictly forbade him from doing this (and it might very well do so), then that's grounds for termination. Just like how copying homework could be grounds for suspension from school. But still a different effect on society than stealing.
Another thing to consider: he's making the company management look bad. The smart thing to do would be to promote him for his smart thinking.
He could have taken on outsourcing as a side-project, outsourced a major portion of his job successfully, demonstrated it to higher ups transparently, and landed a better role as an outsourcing specialist.
Instead, he secretly outsourced his entire job and pretended to actually do the work himself so he could get paid to do nothing.
The company fired him because he didn't operate in a way that was good for the company, only in a way that benefited him personally.
People like him don't belong in management, they belong in jobs that don't require any trust, because they aren't trustworthy people.
Instead, he secretly outsourced his entire job and pretended to actually do the work himself so he could get paid to do nothing.
The company fired him because he didn't operate in a way that was good for the company, only in a way that benefited him personally.
People like him don't belong in management, they belong in jobs that don't require any trust, because they aren't trustworthy people.
You're right, actually. He hasn't proved trustworthy, but that's because he leaked confidential company materials.
I don't get why this is being brought up as a matter of cheating rather than leaking, which is the big elephant in the room.
Still shows a lack of ethics though.
I don't get why this is being brought up as a matter of cheating rather than leaking, which is the big elephant in the room.
Still shows a lack of ethics though.
People don’t like it when you’re dishonest. You get in trouble for that. Whether you steal money, pay someone for a university exam or wrongfully outsource your job, there will be consequences.
I disagree with #1. An example of non-academic cheating which I think is an issue is the VW emissions scandal. They were essentially supplying the 'answers' to the 'test' and then performing otherwise. This was adversely affecting the environment (which harms us all) by letting the cars drive around producing more emissions than determined allowable.
do you really not understand that railing against the system is not the same thing as advocating cheating, as you seem to be doing?
and really? cheating is only an issue in artificial constructs like academia? so if i design a building and crib the stress analysis from another building, it's ok because that's not an artifical situation?
it seems academia really did fail you, as your argument just falls apart prima facie. the learned person would reflect on the wealth of the feedback that you're getting here rather than assuming that you've unsheathed some gloden nugget of truth that the rest of us silly fools can't glean.
aversion to cheating is embedded in the social systems of all sorts of living creatures. might you want to read up on that and update your arguments, or is that too academic and artificial (as compared to typing into an emphemeral textbox)?
and really? cheating is only an issue in artificial constructs like academia? so if i design a building and crib the stress analysis from another building, it's ok because that's not an artifical situation?
it seems academia really did fail you, as your argument just falls apart prima facie. the learned person would reflect on the wealth of the feedback that you're getting here rather than assuming that you've unsheathed some gloden nugget of truth that the rest of us silly fools can't glean.
aversion to cheating is embedded in the social systems of all sorts of living creatures. might you want to read up on that and update your arguments, or is that too academic and artificial (as compared to typing into an emphemeral textbox)?
My point is that cheating is at worst a violation of rules/contracts. I'm saying there's a different way of thinking to understand why somethings are wrong -- not just that they are wrong, but the underlying reasons as well.
Every example that has been provided could be counted as wrong by some other existing real world standard. In the case of copying the stress analysis, that is called FRAUD in the real world.
I sound like I'm being pedantic here, but I hope some people out there can understand.
As far as social systems go, the object of aversion is deception and the associated harm. That's bad. I think we mentally conflate that with academic cheating (plagiarism), when it is something different.
Every example that has been provided could be counted as wrong by some other existing real world standard. In the case of copying the stress analysis, that is called FRAUD in the real world.
I sound like I'm being pedantic here, but I hope some people out there can understand.
As far as social systems go, the object of aversion is deception and the associated harm. That's bad. I think we mentally conflate that with academic cheating (plagiarism), when it is something different.
You keep failing to explain the difference between academic fraud and commercial fraud.
Commercial fraud:
> The theory of contract espoused here demonstrates that fraud is properly viewed as a type of theft. Suppose Karen buys a bucket of apples from Ethan for $20. Ethan represents the things in the bucket as being apples, in fact, as apples of a certain nature, that is, as being fit for their normal purpose of being eaten. Karen conditions the transfer of title to her $20 on Ethan's not knowingly engaging in 'fraudulent' activities, like pawning off rotten apples. If the apples are indeed rotten and Ethan knows this, then he knows that he does not receive ownership of or permission to use the $20, because the condition 'no fraud' is not satisfied. He is knowingly in possession of Karen's $20 without her consent, and is, therefore, a thief.
source: https://mises.org/wire/problem-fraud-fraud-threat-and-contra...
There is no equivalent of harm done to property or person with plagiarism in an academic setting.
> Finally, it is curious that the first thing that occurs to people on first hearing the anti-IP case is plagiarism: “You mean it would be okay for someone to take an author’s work, put his own name on it, and sell it?”
> Two issues are conflated here. One can plagiarize without violating a copyright, and one can violate a copyright without plagiarizing. Under copyright law you may use brief verbatim excerpts of another’s written work without permission as long as you use quotation marks and attribute the text to the author. It’s called “fair use.” (Question for copyright fans: Isn’t even fair use a violation of an author’s rights?) If you were to use an excerpt that otherwise would qualify under the fair-use principle but without attribution, you would be guilty of plagiarism but not copyright violation. The same would be true if you quote Shakespeare without attribution. (Shakespeare wrote without benefit of copyright.)
> On the other hand, if you publish Atlas Shrugged with Ayn Rand’s name on it, you would be guilty of copyright violation but not plagiarism.
> For the sake of clear thinking, let’s keep these issues separate.
> Well, is plagiarism okay? No, it’s not! Obviously it is dishonest and dishonorable to represent someone else’s work as one’s own. But note, according to LegalZoom, “plagiarism is not a criminal or civil offense.” Nor should it be. It’s a breach of good conduct, and there is a plentitude of nonviolent, non-State ways to deal with it, especially in the Internet age.
Source: https://mises.org/wire/slave-labor-and-intellectual-property...
Look, I get it's a bad in a practical sense if someone cheats or plagiarizes, especially to the cheater. It could even be a breach of contract between the student and the school. But it's not a crime against another person. It's a "victimless crime" essentially.
If someone falsifies licensing or safety requirements, like with an airplane or a building, that's a legal matter. Call that "professional fraud" -- it's illegal. But there is no law against cheating in school.
source: https://mises.org/wire/problem-fraud-fraud-threat-and-contra...
There is no equivalent of harm done to property or person with plagiarism in an academic setting.
> Finally, it is curious that the first thing that occurs to people on first hearing the anti-IP case is plagiarism: “You mean it would be okay for someone to take an author’s work, put his own name on it, and sell it?”
> Two issues are conflated here. One can plagiarize without violating a copyright, and one can violate a copyright without plagiarizing. Under copyright law you may use brief verbatim excerpts of another’s written work without permission as long as you use quotation marks and attribute the text to the author. It’s called “fair use.” (Question for copyright fans: Isn’t even fair use a violation of an author’s rights?) If you were to use an excerpt that otherwise would qualify under the fair-use principle but without attribution, you would be guilty of plagiarism but not copyright violation. The same would be true if you quote Shakespeare without attribution. (Shakespeare wrote without benefit of copyright.)
> On the other hand, if you publish Atlas Shrugged with Ayn Rand’s name on it, you would be guilty of copyright violation but not plagiarism.
> For the sake of clear thinking, let’s keep these issues separate.
> Well, is plagiarism okay? No, it’s not! Obviously it is dishonest and dishonorable to represent someone else’s work as one’s own. But note, according to LegalZoom, “plagiarism is not a criminal or civil offense.” Nor should it be. It’s a breach of good conduct, and there is a plentitude of nonviolent, non-State ways to deal with it, especially in the Internet age.
Source: https://mises.org/wire/slave-labor-and-intellectual-property...
Look, I get it's a bad in a practical sense if someone cheats or plagiarizes, especially to the cheater. It could even be a breach of contract between the student and the school. But it's not a crime against another person. It's a "victimless crime" essentially.
If someone falsifies licensing or safety requirements, like with an airplane or a building, that's a legal matter. Call that "professional fraud" -- it's illegal. But there is no law against cheating in school.
> It's a "victimless crime" essentially.
It's not a victimless crime.
1. Every CS class I took had some form of curve. People cheating directly lowered the grade of people who didn't.
2. Cheating devalues the credentials that other students paid for. You can argue about the benefits of the credentialing system, but that doesn't change that fact that students cheating directly financially harms students who don't cheat.
3. It harms job seekers who now have to spend time going through additional screening steps because their credentials are no longer trusted.
It really seems like your trying very hard to justify some past behavior here.
It's not a victimless crime.
1. Every CS class I took had some form of curve. People cheating directly lowered the grade of people who didn't.
2. Cheating devalues the credentials that other students paid for. You can argue about the benefits of the credentialing system, but that doesn't change that fact that students cheating directly financially harms students who don't cheat.
3. It harms job seekers who now have to spend time going through additional screening steps because their credentials are no longer trusted.
It really seems like your trying very hard to justify some past behavior here.
Dude I've been out of school for almost a decade. I didn't major in CS. And the only stuff I learned that was useful for my future career was through a project class where it was impossible to cheat or otherwise bullshit your way to an A. Most of my programming skills were learned from coding games in my spare time.
What does any of that have to do with what I said?
> it seems academia really did fail you, as your argument just falls apart prima facie. the learned person would reflect on the wealth of the feedback that you're getting here rather than assuming that you've unsheathed some gloden nugget of truth that the rest of us silly fools can't glean.
Damn right it did. I remember in a scientific writing class in college, the professor told us that we should always give credit when citing someone. I asked her if that was just a good practice and courtesy, or a moral obligation. The dumb prof just repeated herself "you should always give credit" and didn't seem to understand my question.
Damn right it did. I remember in a scientific writing class in college, the professor told us that we should always give credit when citing someone. I asked her if that was just a good practice and courtesy, or a moral obligation. The dumb prof just repeated herself "you should always give credit" and didn't seem to understand my question.
Cheating is a form of dishonesty and selfishness, and breaks the social contract we rely on for a well functioning society. Some people can get away with it, and honest people bear the burden of the cost of damage. If dishonesty becomes an acceptable strategy for navigating society, it becomes the only effective strategy.
>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
That doesn't even make sense. Besides, what's to stop them from cheating on that too?
That doesn't even make sense. Besides, what's to stop them from cheating on that too?
>We only think it is a moral issue because it's been drilled into us since we were kids
Dishonesty has long been considered a moral issue, e.g., Kant.
Dishonesty has long been considered a moral issue, e.g., Kant.
> 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.
Is it your belief that if we fail to punish academic cheating, people will learn to not cheat in other aspects of life?
Is it your belief that if we fail to punish academic cheating, people will learn to not cheat in other aspects of life?
It is my belief that we should have checks and balances against that in other aspects of life where they matter. Where people's money or lives are on the line. Academia is not one of those situations.
Okay, thanks for the clarification.
I disagree with your opinion that Academia doesn't matter.
Ignoring Allen Iverson; not taking practice seriously will have consequences during an actual game. At the very least, Academia is practice for adulthood.
I disagree with your opinion that Academia doesn't matter.
Ignoring Allen Iverson; not taking practice seriously will have consequences during an actual game. At the very least, Academia is practice for adulthood.
Regarding that employee who outsourced his work:
It's not that he didn't do anything wrong. It's that "cheating" is an artificial construct that should be done away with in our way of thinking, and instead we should learn to apply other ethical standards to these things. For example, he's still guilty of breach of security and leaking of confidential information.
You might be wondering, what's the big difference? In the end, we still have this action being judged as unethical.
The point I'd like you to take away is that you should critically analyze things, especially those taught to you at a early age and for a long time. Hopefully we can see how artificial the system is, and find ways to build a better system. I am not anywhere close to having kids, but I do intend to absorb as much real-world experience as I can over the next few years, so that I can be a better teacher to them than the school system can be.
It's not that he didn't do anything wrong. It's that "cheating" is an artificial construct that should be done away with in our way of thinking, and instead we should learn to apply other ethical standards to these things. For example, he's still guilty of breach of security and leaking of confidential information.
You might be wondering, what's the big difference? In the end, we still have this action being judged as unethical.
The point I'd like you to take away is that you should critically analyze things, especially those taught to you at a early age and for a long time. Hopefully we can see how artificial the system is, and find ways to build a better system. I am not anywhere close to having kids, but I do intend to absorb as much real-world experience as I can over the next few years, so that I can be a better teacher to them than the school system can be.
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 20 year old for a habit they learned when they were 8 and never got called on, vs letting them get away with continuing to cheat.
Making it easy to cheat and lie when the stakes are low helps create situations like "we can't trust anyone who says they know how to program so we have to waste a lot of interview time on tedious crap."
The first solution that occurs to me seems to be smaller class sizes and differently structured assignments with more of a "tell me about why you wrote this" type interactive stuff. The same way you'd do when looking at someone's github, to see how deep their understanding of the code there goes.