<p>Why does anyone care? Well, in the case of admissions essays or getting into grad school, the person who cheated might have higher grades then someone who honestly worked through the work. More importantly, it also means we are graduating kids who basically can’t do basic work.</p>
<p>The other thing to keep in mind is that what this guy is writing about is a lot more relevant to majors in ‘soft subjects’ where a lot of writing is required, as opposed to let’s say computer science that is based in computer theory (though want to talk about cheating, but that is another story).</p>
<p>And yes, it goes on at all levels and it is nothing new. A cousin of mine went to Dartmouth eons ago, and made some pretty good money writing terms papers for the rich and lazy/dumb types and it continues on. </p>
<p>Add to that now the flood of kids from overseas, many of whom have a hard time with the language, and it doesn’t surprise me. Plus, to be honest, given the nature of the education systems in many places overseas, I suspect the kind of cheating we are talking about is not isolated to US colleges, given the incredible competition to get into good schools all along the road, and then into a top notch college (where in some countries where you go to school sets your future, which is not true (yet) in the US) it wouldn’t surprise me, and from what the more then a few acquaintances I have who grew up in those places, cheating like this is pretty common. When everything comes down to grades, when everything is achieving not at a good level, but hyperlevel, cheating happens, and in that what this article is talking about rings true.</p>
<p>That said, I think it is also unfair to a lot of students out there to argue this is so widespread all kids are involved. Not saying students are angels, the 61% who admit cheating may have done so, but how often? Do they do it routinely, or for example did they as a cs student used someone’s else program to use for an assignment they needed to get in? While I suspect that a lot of kids have cheated one time or the other, at all levels of schools, I think that it is a relatively small percentage who cheat a lot or all the time.</p>
<p>It also raises an interesting question, and that is if someone is writing a thesis on let’s say psychology and they have done the research and written a paper, and had someone fix the language, is that really cheating? If they are expressing their own ideas, their own research, and simply had someone make it more readable, should that be considered cheating? After all, is this a class in creative writing, or a major topic area? While I am all in favor of someone being able to write clear prose, and obviously it will be important going down the road for most people, is having someone else help with the writing itself really cheating in this context? (I am asking that hypothetically, not answering it). </p>
<p>As far as kids getting into ivies and top LAC’s “not needing to cheat” because they are all ‘so bright’ is making an assumption that people who cheat are stupid or unable to do the work, and that isn’t the case. When you are in one of those schools, most of the kids there deserve to be there, they have earned their way in, and can do the work. But for example,someone whose native language is not English, or someone who has a hard time writing decent prose, faced with the pressure and competition of such places, may feel like the only way to keep their GPA up is to cheat in terms of things requiring writing.</p>
<p>Given the incredible hype out there about how if you don’t go to the right schools, etc your life is finished, it wouldn’t surprise me if cheating has gotten worse. That kind of perception, real or not, can lead to the kind of desperation where someone will cheat, and this is true now in the US as it has been in other places for years. When you look at the world we have created for our kids, the hyper load on high school students, kids obsessing about GPA in middle school, the whole culture of gloom and doom that if you don’t graduate with a 4.0 and a 2400 SAT you are doomed to work at Walmart, it shouldn’t surprise us that cheating is out there; when kids are being told that mistakes are deadly, that trying something and finding out they aren’t good at it, are going to doom themselves, what do we expect? Struggle in a writing course, and the answer is to do anything to get a good grade <em>shrug</em>.</p>