Cheating and Gullibility.
Recently I have seen a growing number of articles cross my feed offering ghost writing services for students. The deal is that in exchange for your cold, hard cash the service provides an essay "Guaranteed" to reach a specific grade. You want an "A" grade no problem. If "A" seems a bit unlikely then play it safe and order a "B" and keep your head down.
Of late some companies are dressing up the cheating service they offer as a process of giving help and advice rather than as a blatant way for lazy or incompetent students to avoid having to do the work and actually learn something about the subject they chose to study for four years. This is no more than bullcrap however. If any student, of any subject wants an idea of what a good essay looks like the university libraries and bookstores are full of volumes of past papers and essays. The cost is minimal or non-existent. What is on offer is no more than a way for the well heeled and lazy or the desperate and incompetent to game the system and buy their way to a degree.
The example linked below refers to biology but other articles offering essays have name checked Medicine, English, Business and Law.
I can't be the only person who finds this repugnant. If I had to be in court I would want my lawyer to have studied enough to have a genuine grasp of his or her trade and when I see my doctor I really want her to have qualified as a result of her own knowledge and study rather than as a result of a hefty credit card bill. How much use is a fake doctor?
Imagine if this was accepted in the skilled trades. The fake plumber would leave your house awash and the fake builder would leave it tottering. Why is it so common in academia?
Apart from anything else how much faith could you possibly have in an essay cheating service that can't even get it's own headline right?
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Comments
Preston 🐝 Vander Ven
2 years ago #10
Agreed, and my professor knew how to take advantage of it.
Neil Smith
2 years ago #9
Fear of embarrassment is always a bit of a motivator.
Preston 🐝 Vander Ven
2 years ago #8
This is one reason a professor of mine would have the class hand in our papers and then ask us what we wrote about. We were so worried about speaking in front of the class, we had no choice but to do the assignment ourselves.
Harvey Lloyd
6 years ago #7
I think you said it more gracefully and with less words. I tend to get on a stump when i discuss education. I see many children who money is spent in all the wrong places. I work in special education. Thanks for your thoughts and comment. The honor and integrity aspect though is central to many more issues than just education. Its almost like Dodge City out there.
Neil Smith
6 years ago #6
I think you might win the prize for a comment with more depth than the original post Harvey Lloyd. You are quite correct that much of mainline education is stuck in the fifties but, little by little this is changing. The problem here is that dishonesty is viewed as just the means to an end. The Honour is missing. I believe that what is being sold here is knowledge and that knowledge is presented as the top prize. If schools and universities have value then it is in showing that without Wisdom and Judgement, Knowledge alone is insufficient. Thanks for taking the time to comment.
Harvey Lloyd
6 years ago #5
Pascal Derrien
6 years ago #4
fair point on the continuous exam dynamic :-)
Neil Smith
6 years ago #3
When continuous and essay assessment became a normal part of the academic landscape I was all for it as I can sometimes be a nervous bunny at exam time but it just seems to have opened the doors to these crooks and it helps nobody in the long run. So do we just go back to majority exam assessment? Is that the only reliable measure left to us?
Pascal Derrien
6 years ago #2
Neil Smith
6 years ago #1