<p>Of course he isn’t selling problem set solutions: he’s a writer, not a mathematician. Therefore he sells papers.</p>
<p>Someone else is probably selling the problem set solutions.</p>
<p>In both cases the students will have major problems when they face a written, proctored exam. Of course, it is more common for students in literature and social science classes to be required to do longer papers, rather than sit exams, since the intent of the professor is to enhance learning and expertise in the discipline, not develop a mechanism for catching cheaters.</p>
<p>I’ve been thinking about this problem a bit more and here’s my analogy:
Buying the papers and cheating your way through school is a bit like getting the stamp in your passport without actually having taken the journey. You miss out on the study groups, the reading, the exploration of related materials in the library, the conversations you get to have about the material and even the possibility of discovering your true calling in life through a paper you wrote that really piqued your interest. You miss the opportunity for growth that taking the journey provides. </p>
<p>I have this poem I always read my grad students (Itaka by Cavafy) right before I launch into my lecture about how getting grades is only PART of the journey in college or graduate school. All the other stuff is equally important – and that’s what students miss out on when all they want is the grade. (I also tell them that lots of people meet their spouses in the library or in a study group and who would want to take a pass on that? For the record, I met my husband in the library, dorky as that sounds.)</p>
<p>Thinking more about how undergrads make it through when they don’t write well: I think they’re the ones who game the system, doing things like making sure they take every course with the easy grader rather than one who challenges them (Rate my Professor could give you a pretty good idea of who to avoid, and who “never gives less than a B”); and yes, they tend to major in so-called “soft subjects”, tend to not attend schools with rigorous distribution requirements and lately I’ve become wary of undergrad majors with names like: general studies, interdisciplinary studies and even international studies. It seems that in some schools, there’s a bin of degrees that people get put in if they’re having trouble with the regular curriculum, so that it’s is a bit of “college lite” (i.e. majoring in French requires actually knowing French grammar, but in International Studies you can take French film in translation instead – things like that.)</p>
<p>Momsie, I don’t know what subject you teach, but I know more engineers and science majors that can’t write than those who major in the so called “soft” subjects. I too take offense to that term. My husband is a humanities professor and son a hopeless humanities geek. DH is one of the smartest people I know. I suspect it depends on the school. DS needs to write well constructed papers and write good in-class essays to even get a B. His science friends work hard as well, but they bring papers to him for editing. With a minimum of 3 papers per class (he takes 5 classes a semester) plus in-class essays and discussions, it’s difficult for me to imagine how he could graduate without not only being able to think and write coherently, but to be able to synthesize information and develop original and insightful analysis. Yes, the science students can do that as well, but not necessarily in a written format. Besides science, do you consider any other subjects not “soft”? What about rhetoric or anthropology? I don’t discount your experience or observations. From what you say, our undergraduate schools are failing.</p>
<p>To those who say this doesn’t happen at ‘elite’ schools, I’m sorry to tell you that it does. OK so it might be easy to suspect a paper, but how can you <em>prove</em> that it was faked? Remember that kids get kicked out of school for this sort of thing, so the standard of proof is high.</p>
<p>In my limited experience, the sorts of papers you need to write to get As in undergrad humanities classes in the US are extremely formulaic: once you actually do the reading, and remember to answer the question with a clear structure, you are already heading for a B+. It’s not hard to think that this is a skill that people like the writer can master and bring out again and again.</p>
<p>The obvious way to fix it is with more in class writing, but since the classes are big and handwriting is hard to read, this is often not practical. (The grad student who actually grades your kids work has 72 hours to grade 50 or more final exams, often handwritten, and calculate final grades).</p>
<p>"Because the problem exists and it stands to affect our society as a whole and every individual within it. "</p>
<p>-Everybody is in charge of their own future. I do not see how are cheatters affecting my child (as an example). They skrewing up their own future and when it become evident, then this specific cheatting arrangements will taper off. There is no point to worry about things that are out of our control, it is waste of resources that could be devoted to worrying about something that we can control.</p>
<p>^ there is no evidence that the people will get caught out, that’s just a comforting myth.</p>
<p>It does affect everyone because people (grad schools, employers) take grades to be a relatively fair and objective method of measuring intelligence and effort. It affects everyone if this is substantially not true.</p>
<p>“Someone cheating to get somewhere is very liable to mean someone honest losing that opportunity.”</p>
<p>-They will not. At the end everybody will be at their best possible place. Very evident from our huge educational and job searching experiences. I tell this to my D. all the time. “Do not worry about things that you cannot possibly control. Take care of everything that you could, be open to opportunities, do not try to break thru closed dooors, there are plenty that are wide open for you, they wants you” D. said that this philosophy has brought her to where she is now and where she was planning to be at this stage of her life (she is graduating from college in May). Philosophy is very simple: work hard and be open to opportunites. Everything else, whatever others are doing to achieve their goals is completely irrelevant.</p>
<p>“the sorts of papers you need to write to get As in undergrad humanities classes in the US are extremely formulaic: once you actually do the reading, and remember to answer the question with a clear structure, you are already heading for a B+”</p>
<p>I’m not sure how you know this. But, S goes to a state flagship and D goes to an elite LAC and what you say is not the case for either one. I’ve seen what I consider very good paper’s from both and they got lower than B+. Maybe they don’t know how to “game” the system. Maybe they should pay for their work. But, with a minimum of 10 papers a semester, they would be sure to go broke.</p>
<p>“I’m not sure how you know this. But, S goes to a state flagship and D goes to an elite LAC and what you say is not the case for either one. I’ve seen what I consider very good paper’s from both and they got lower than B+. Maybe they don’t know how to “game” the system. Maybe they should pay for their work. But, with a minimum of 10 papers a semester, they would be sure to go broke.”</p>
<p>I know it from personal experience. If you are talking about UNC Chapel Hill, an ‘A’ is the most common grade now, I believe.</p>
<p>EDIT: and 10 papers a semester isn’t a lot. That’s about 1 every week and a half. At Cambridge it is more like 2 8 page papers every week.</p>
Of course, the problem is there’s no single problem. Students don’t exist in a vacuum. Schools, too, are competing for “grades,” as are the departments and instructors within them. At every level, you find “gaming.” ;)</p>
<p>I believe the best route to lessening the “gaming” is to begin and stick with a simple “evaluation” system of “competent/ not yet competent” (i.e., credit/ no credit), as opposed to a “student rating” system aimed at measuring “degree of competence.”</p>
<p>Competition works in some contexts, but quickly becomes counter-productive in others. I believe it’s counter-productive within the context of learning.</p>
<p>Another issue is that a huge proportion of grading is done by people who are at the mercy of student evaluations (untenured profs, lecturers, grad students). They can’t risk getting bad evaluations for being a ‘tough grader’.</p>
Me, too! My kids have attended Tier 1 USNews schools (2 at a well-respected public, 1 at a top 20 private). Despite having learned to write fairly well (in a formulaic but clear way) in AP Lit (all received 5s), the writing standard was far higher once they actualy got to college. A comment they had more than once was that the writing wasn’t “high-thinking” enough. The profs were looking for a synthesis of ideas, not merely a clear answer.</p>
<p>This is bound to vary considerably from college to college. I think that, where there is a heavy emphasis on undergrad education, profs are more likely to hold writing to a tougher standard.</p>
<p>If the guy cited in the article is so adept at writing papers, there must be a more honest way for him to earn a living.</p>
<p>“I know it from personal experience. If you are talking about UNC Chapel Hill, an ‘A’ is the most common grade now, I believe.”</p>
<p>I’m not sure that is true, but it’s beside the point and may point to the fact that S and his friends are not that bright. My kids are being held to a higher standard than the formulaic prose you describe. I’m not saying a hired writer cannot write a B+ paper for some of S’s classes, but it would not be the majority. I’m not saying 10 papers is a lot. I’m just saying he would be broke if he hired a writer. I’m sure what you say is true, I’m just not sure you can make a sweeping generalization. But, if what you say is generally true, out education system has failed.</p>
<p>“That must be comforting but is false. Would you say the same who was running in a 100m sprint if the other competitors were cheating?”</p>
<p>-Many YES, YES, YES. You forgot what happened to the cheatters? They got DQ’d and stripped of their medals sometime few years down the road and the one who won with all honesty received even more honors and celebrity because of others cheatting. Your example is just so perfect, I should have used it as my supporting argument. I have been saying it all along, at the end all plays out correctly, cheatters get what they deserve, the others also get what they truly deserve with bonus because knowing that you have achieved everything with your own hands brings on unsurpassed confidence that all by itself is openning more doors.</p>
