Neil Smith

6 years ago · 1 min. reading time · ~10 ·

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Cheating and Gullibility.

Cheating and Gullibility.

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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

Neil Smith

2 years ago #9

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

#6
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

#5
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

I agree with your thoughts here as they apply to honor and integrity. We see deception as a mainstream part of life today. Google has allowed the collaboration that the internet was to provide us but it has had its unintended consequences. I believe we have a larger issue though. Education and its beliefs haven't changed much since the little school house and the big bell ringing. The internet has brought with it information at our fingertips. The school system while declaring certifications and licensure on one hand is posting its work on line for sale for all to read. Large institutions of learning are growing online that offer a different style of learning. Academia is in the need of a huge revamp as we move forward within the internet bubble of knowledge. Students now can answer questions they have very quickly and with just enough information for that moment of need. A sort of just in time information system. This would appear to be a blessing, if school would comprehend that information is now ubiquitous and the needs have shifted to assimilation. Helping students find their gifts and focusing them on these is a greater need than just information delivery. A for instance is spelling. If you are going to be a writer it is better for you to learn different ways of communicating a single point, most are adept to the red squiggly line microsoft offers for correction. Yet we still have spelling words and tests and spelling bees. I do not wish to degrade the need for accurate spelling but will say that we left the stone tablets behind and have moved into a digital world Shouldn't we be teaching students the "need" for accurate spelling? Say in writing a convincing email to get your friends over for the birthday party? Being engaged with the education system at K-12 i see these neanderthal performance mantras while the students can answer most questions they have with a few clicks.

Pascal Derrien

6 years ago #4

#3
fair point on the continuous exam dynamic :-)

Neil Smith

6 years ago #3

#2
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

That's the right call out Neil Smith now I suppose the exams will find out the cheaters ?

Neil Smith

6 years ago #1

Thanks for sharing this Juan Madue\u00f1o Criado.

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