<p>Exactly. There are so many students who ask friends or the tutoring center for help (with the university’s blessings), that it is quite possible for there to be a large disparity between the work produced in class and at home. In the cases where we are suspicious, the burden falls of proof falls on the professor to come up with the source from which the paper was plagiarized. We are not allowed to fail someone based on our instincts. In such situations, all we can do is hope that the poor quality of the in-class work drags down the grade sufficiently.</p>
<p>nelliiah… I beg to differ that Cornell, Penn, Columbia, MIT, Princeton, Harvard etc and the wonderful LACs are simply taking a multiple choice exam. Tell that to the kids who attend these schools who spend endless hours not only learning the information but applying it. I could only speak for my sons and their friends at the above schools and say that the guy who wrote this article is blowing his own horn in the hopes of making his sad little life seem more meaningful because he has disparaged those who have worked their butts off.</p>
<p>By the way, what type of jobs are you interviewing for that a recent grad from any of the above schools would not qualify? You could always go to podunk University if the quality of student is better.</p>
<p>This guy sounds like a bunch of sour grapes for a career that he could not even be proud to attach his name to. I learned early on to believe not a word from a person who needs to hide behind a phony name.</p>
<p>Maybe I am just naive, but if I were a professor, I would compare a student’s writing on the essay portion of an exam with the writing in an assigned paper…glaring dissimilarities would likely be exposed that would go beyond what could be explained by getting help from a friend or writing center.</p>
<p>If a school wants more rich kids for pull pay and more ESL students to fill up the class/full pay (did you hear that we now have more ESL students than before?), what else can you do? I’d say don’t compromise the quality of the US high education, even in this depression.</p>
<p>yes that may be funny but this guy is publishing something that people are expected to believe. We on a message board are neither getting paid to post or expect to gain anything by posting…that is the big difference.</p>
<p>I’ve often suspected the widespread use of these services when working with recent college graduates (sadly, some from top-tier schools) who simply can’t compose a paragraph worthy of an eighth grader.</p>
<p>I particularly loved the comment which included the following:
</p>
<p>I’m not seeing much difference between this and the services of the writer in question, apart from the fact that the parents are actually paying tuition rather that being paid for their services, LOL!</p>
<p>My guess is that this guy is not making this all up, and this is scary. I most certainly believe that he is writing undergrad and dissertation papers. And this is scary.</p>
<p>The Chronicle claims to have reviewed his correspondence and his work, and found his story credible. That’s why we have actual journalists, not just blogs.</p>
<p>Did he claim he was writing actual dissertations? I don’t quite remember that. That would be much, much harder to fake.</p>
<p>Anyway, I had a cousin who was very unsure of herself. All through high school, college, business school, she was constantly soliciting help on her papers – from her parents, cousins, siblings, and I assume her friends as well, although maybe she kept it hidden from them. I know my mother helped her a lot with her college essays, and later transfer application essays. (NB: my mother was a teacher, and would never have participated in anything she considered cheating. She did this as a tutoring project helping her niece learn to write better, not as a ghostwriter, although I suspect the output was pretty much the same.)</p>
<p>Anyway, you would wonder how someone who did that systematically through all levels of her education could survive in the real world? And the answer is: extremely well. She is now in her mid-40s and has had a very successful career as a banker. Her work product is consistently great, because she maintains a network of high-quality advisors who help her with everything she does. She is great at delegating, great at maintaining relationships, great at seeking out advice and following it when given – all of which, it turns out, are at least as important as being able to think for yourself and write your thoughts down clearly.</p>
<p>One part of me wants to believe that all these cheaters will get their comeuppance when they haven’t learned what they need to learn, and can’t produce the work product they need to produce. But another part of me knows that the skills you learn by cheating successfully are real-life skills, and the wicked don’t necessarily get punished.</p>
<p>Looks like she is good at teamwork and has the necessary drive and skills to get her job done well- even if it is others who are doing it for her.</p>
<p>The problem I have is not with people getting help but by misrepresenting someone else’s work as their own. Does your cousin try to keep the credit all to herself? Is she generous with praise for her coworkers and advisors? It would make a difference in my opinion of her. Not that it matters what opinion I have of her.</p>
<p>I don’t think it would be difficult for him at all; he’s probably been playing this game for longer than your daughter’s been alive. I’m sure he knows what professors typically want. The more experience he gains, the faster he can churn out an acceptable paper. </p>
<p>The whole thing is chilling. I wonder what percentage of kids do things like this. Maybe a symptom of the fact that college is now “expected” by a lot of parents instead of merely being an option?</p>
<p>At my HYP graduate school, architecture students were allowed to have “assistants” helping with drawing, drafting, typing, etc. with professors’ full knowledge, in professors’ presence in studio and at formal presentations of work. I personally witnessed many examples of this full-bodied assistance during my tenure there. Students were literally competing against certain de-facto teams (student + spouse/significant other, or student + other student not in studio) for class rank and kudos. In one instance, “helper” was even invited to actively participate in final design presentation discussion which determined class grade - and student received best grade of class. Many students had SOs who openly wrote/editted/typed their papers/theses. Philosophy seemed to be: “HYP’s are leaders; they can always hire the necessary labor.” When I saw Facebook movie “Social Network”, I laughed - the two blonde twins recruiting Zuckerberg to their programming work for them was an accurate example of the HYP way.</p>
<p>I assume your cousin gives fair credit to her support network – or else she won’t have a support network for long. On the other hand, as vicariousparent and another contributor earlier suggested, presenting other people’s work as one’s own is really a matter of fraud.</p>
<p>I also think there is a difference between being able to draw from a network of resources to improve one’s work, which seems to be the case with your cousin, and being dependent on that network to produce anything at all, which seems to be the case with Dante’s clients. In the former case, your cousin can presumably still produce work of reasonable quality to satisfy people who count on her in case her network is for some reason impaired or unable to help. In the latter case, people who counted on the work will be let down.</p>
<p>Note to self: I’m glad my kids are none of these: the English-as-second-language student, the hopelessly deficient student, or the lazy rich kid.</p>