The Shadow Scholar
November 19th, 2010Via: The Chronicle of Higher Education:
I work at an online company that generates tens of thousands of dollars a month by creating original essays based on specific instructions provided by cheating students. I’ve worked there full time since 2004. On any day of the academic year, I am working on upward of 20 assignments.
In the midst of this great recession, business is booming. At busy times, during midterms and finals, my company’s staff of roughly 50 writers is not large enough to satisfy the demands of students who will pay for our work and claim it as their own.
You would be amazed by the incompetence of your students’ writing. I have seen the word “desperate” misspelled every way you can imagine. And these students truly are desperate. They couldn’t write a convincing grocery list, yet they are in graduate school. They really need help. They need help learning and, separately, they need help passing their courses. But they aren’t getting it.
For those of you who have ever mentored a student through the writing of a dissertation, served on a thesis-review committee, or guided a graduate student through a formal research process, I have a question: Do you ever wonder how a student who struggles to formulate complete sentences in conversation manages to produce marginally competent research? How does that student get by you?
I live well on the desperation, misery, and incompetence that your educational system has created. Granted, as a writer, I could earn more; certainly there are ways to earn less. But I never struggle to find work. And as my peers trudge through thankless office jobs that seem more intolerable with every passing month of our sustained recession, I am on pace for my best year yet. I will make roughly $66,000 this year. Not a king’s ransom, but higher than what many actual educators are paid.
Research Credit: ltcolonelnemo
That is not surprising at all that students cheat like that. It is pretty hard to party and get good grades at the same time. Writing essays might bite into their beer drinking time. It is no wonder the financial system is such a mess when universities are turning out unethical nit wits who only know how to cheat and con people. What is upsetting is this is unfair to those few students who are honest and do their own work and get a B+ for their efforts while some drunken lazy frat boy with more money than brains pays to have his essays written and gets an A on it. After graduation the lazy drunken frat boy is hired based on his phoney school marks by some prestigious business on Wall Street and pulls in the big bucks for being a no good lying cheating incompetent boob. The poor honest student struggles to find work with their honestly earned B average grades from some public university. There is no justice in the world when incompetent and lazy people are hired over honest and hard working people.
I read this post at work today and thought, can this be for rucking real? Woah. Not to be a cry baby or anything, but I went to graduate school on probation, and was about 20 years older than the rest of my class. I had a visible bruise mark on my third eye chakra from the effort.
I personally, would like to go and wring the neck of the author of this article. Til they die.
This is FRAUD. This is not FUNNY. This is not AMUSING. This is CRIMINAL ACTIVITY.
THIS IS BEHAVIOR NO ONE IN THEIR RIGHT MIND SHOULD SUPPORT.
This is SOMETHING AKIN TO SUPPORTING GEORGE BUSH jUNIOR AND HIS FRAT BOY ACTIVITY.
SOMEONE NEEDS TO PULL THE PLUG ON THIS CRAP.
This is the free market at work! I say don’t begrudge people for working the system. Trying to stop this is like trying to stop people from downloading music – impossible. You can wish it to be otherwise, but like they say, wish in one hand and crap in the other and see which one fills first.
It’s not difficult for professors to tell which students have bought essays. If a student can’t write worth beans in the short, in-class essays assigned regularly (and randomly) by a savvy prof to see who has read that day’s assigned texts, then that student can’t write. It’s a lazy professor who lets these cheaters succeed in his or her classroom.