Shadow Scholar Details Student Cheating

vortex2.71 writes "A 'shadow writer,' who lives on the East Coast, details how he makes a living writing papers for a custom-essay company and describes the extent of student cheating he has observed. In the course of editing his article, The Chronicle Of Higher Education reviewed correspondence he had with clients and some of the papers he had been paid to write. 'I've written toward a master's degree in cognitive psychology, a Ph.D. in sociology, and a handful of postgraduate credits in international diplomacy. I've worked on bachelor's degrees in hospitality, business administration, and accounting. I've written for courses in history, cinema, labor relations, pharmacology, theology, sports management, maritime security, airline services, sustainability, municipal budgeting, marketing, philosophy, ethics, Eastern religion, postmodern architecture, anthropology, literature, and public administration. I've attended three dozen online universities. I've completed 12 graduate theses of 50 pages or more. All for someone else.'"

Comments

I work hard for a living

[Anonymous Coward]

I've read enough academic material to know that I'm not the only bullshit artist out there. I think about how Dickens got paid per word and how, as a result, Bleak House is ... well, let's be diplomatic and say exhaustive. Dickens is a role model for me. I will write anything.

It's not implausible to write a 75-page paper in two days. It's just miserable. I don't need much sleep, and when I get cranking, I can churn out four or five pages an hour. First I lay out the sections of an assignment—introduction, problem statement, methodology, literature review, findings, conclusion—whatever the instructions call for. Amazon is quite generous about free samples. If I can find a single page from a particular text, I can cobble that into a report, deducing what I don't know from customer reviews and publisher blurbs. The subject matter, the grade level, the college, the course—these things are irrelevant to me.

The 75-page paper on business ethics ultimately expanded into a 160-page graduate thesis. It was a passionate condemnation of America's moral decay as exemplified by abortion, gay marriage, or the teaching of evolution.

I say yes when I am asked if I have a Ph.D. in sociology. I'll admit, I didn't fully understand that one. And these students truly are desperate. A few hours after I had agreed to write the paper, I received the following e-mail: "I like semin". Our lives are in capable hands.

Re:The source of the problem

[bluefoxlucid]

The "source" of the problem, in my opinion, is the shifting of education from being something of value in and of itself, to it becoming something of value largely based on the future financial gain to the student. This corrupts the purpose of education, making it a selfish pursuit instead of a noble search for truth. When education becomes a selfish pursuit, it subconsciously licences the student to use whatever means are necessary to receive the credential. Do you think Einstein sought his theory for money? Newton? Galileo? Aristotle? Plato? Socrates? Most of the posts I read here circle around the real philosophical issues without directly addressing them.

This is something I am actually addressing in a book I'm writing that, amusingly enough, is about "being a warrior." Eastern philosophies had warrior-philosophers ... monks and bushido samurai, you know? The people that came home, sat down, and watched cherry blossoms bloom and fall from the trees, contemplated the value of life, said that fighting was the struggle for life and giving up was death (because you fight to protect the lives of yourself and those you protect; if you refuse to defend yourself, you are slaughtered). They pursued philosophy and mathematics as a form of self-enrichment to understand the world; the game of Go is largely a manifestation of that, hence why I play.

This is something so profoundly important to me that I had to explore it and understand it, and even write about it. Everyone around me seems in pursuit of an end goal... they want to be rich, famous, have a family, get a job, get a degree... they don't want to live. They want to end life. Morihei Ueshiba O-Sensei said, "Life is growth. If we stop growing, technically and spiritually, we are as good as dead." My parents reached age 20... 22ish? They stopped, bought a house, dad has the same job he has back then... their lives stagnated. They simply want to keep their safe, stable life... retirement is the next thing.

Everyone seems to have this ideal... it's harder to get to now; these days you don't get a factory job at 18, marry a wife at 19, have kids at 20, and build cars or refine steel until you're 65 and then retire. But still, everyone wants the degree, they want to leave school and go to college-- it's what people do now, college. College is a degree. A degree gets you a job. People don't have a path... they have a job they want. Some want to be managers, they get an MBA degree. Some want to be programmers. Some want to be artists (...), teachers... they get a degree in whatever it is. They don't have a plan, they just want to get there as soon as possible and stop. Then marriage, kids, 30-40 years of coasting, and retirement with a million and a half in your 401(k).

They are all dead. They're still talking and breathing, but they're dead.

You're quite right. That's all education is to people. It's valueless, like everything else.