Field of Science

Professional writing for academic cheaters

Fuck!

Things will never be the same again, for me. If we are what we write, then forever there is no knowing who we are. Am I even who I claim to be, and are these words written by me at all, or by someone with no name who charges for helping the misplaced incompetents?
The request came in by e-mail around 2 in the afternoon. It was from a previous customer, and she had urgent business. I quote her message here verbatim (if I had to put up with it, so should you): "You did me business ethics propsal for me I need propsal got approved pls can you will write me paper?"

I've gotten pretty good at interpreting this kind of correspondence. The client had attached a document from her professor with details about the paper. She needed the first section in a week. Seventy-five pages.

I told her no problem.

It truly was no problem. In the past year, I've written roughly 5,000 pages of scholarly literature, most on very tight deadlines. But you won't find my name on a single paper.
Do read this essay. The details and anecdotes should shock you. If for no other reason than marveling at the incapability of American students (how difficult can it be to use a spell-checker? Answer: nigh impossible).

But if this person cashes in on the apparently rampant cheating in American academics, I find it less apparent to decide where the blame for this disastrous state of affairs lie. As he says:
I work hard for a living. I'm nice to people. But I understand that in simple terms, I'm the bad guy. I see where I'm vulnerable to ethical scrutiny.

But pointing the finger at me is too easy. Why does my business thrive? Why do so many students prefer to cheat rather than do their own work?
Rather than blaming anyone, I personally prefer to think ahead to when I will (hypothetically) be reading papers written by students myself. It really should not be much of a trouble to test whether the student is at all capable of writing, for instance by having them do it once while in class.

Given the nature of the essay, it of course becomes imperative to question its veracity in the first place. If the author can make up stories about any subject, and write them well, then why not his own story? Could this simply be some aspiring writer's term project? Or, how about a meme-based virus? Educational malware? Can we trust that his business is as booming as he contends, and that he writes papers on ethics for the ethically challenged on a regular basis?

Yet, contemplating human nature and the current (permanent?) state of financial affairs, I don't doubt that there is at least a market for this kind of cheating. Given the suspicion, I wonder if other businesses won't now crop up to root out these dens of academic deceit. Like removing access to guns from people who are naturally homicidal, so I find it does make sense to eliminate the access to professional sources of cheating.



I wonder what he charges for blog posts...

7 comments:

  1. I find this man puzzling, too. If he's a good enough writer to be able to make a (*very*) decent living ghost-writing other people's term papers and business proposals, that implies that he's a good writer to begin with. Anyone could undertake to write a few term papers for a couple of college classmates (probably how he started himself)--but to make an actual living at it means you have to be good enough to earn repeat business and word-of-mouth business. And if he's doing as much writing as he says he is, he can't be doing much of anything else--there simply wouldn't be enough hours in the day. So if he's telling the truth about his hours and earnings, he's a good enough writer to earn a living writing honestly--under his own name. It just seems really odd that he wouldn't prefer to have his writing recognized as his own and earn a living that way...

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  2. He could at least easily take a few scholarly degrees.

    On top of the hours he spends, consider that he mentions the company has about 50 employees.

    my company's staff of roughly 50 writers is not large enough to satisfy the demands of students who will pay for our work and claim it as their own.

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  3. Good grief! I didn't see that part--an entire company that cheats for people? ....

    Please excuse me--I'm dusting my jaw off. It fell on the floor. Is this for real?! Clearly it never occurred to me as a student to pay someone else to write my papers (or, for that matter, play hookey in high school). What do people who pay for that kind of "service" think they're going to do when they get an actual paying job? Spend half the money they earn paying someone else to do their writing for them? Wow. Just--wow.

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  4. Yeah, the big company thing actually makes the story a little suspect. But who knows?

    As for people who pay for the service, I think they're just desperate (dispret?), and will do whatever it takes to finish school. I can understand that, but it does so sorely disappoint.

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  5. It seems to me the guy is probably exaggerating somewhat about his own personal output, but I am not surprised about a company of 50 doing this kind of work.

    As far as why he doesn't get a different type of job if he is that talented, I dunno, I can sort of understand... I am able to turn out a whole lot of reasonably well-written text in a fairly short amount of time, but I am too lazy to do a lot of sourcing and whatnot. Let's say I had a staff to do all the sourcing and basic research -- which I wouldn't if I had any of the jobs you mention as other possibilities for this guy -- I am certain I could churn out a whole lot of passable bullshit.

    Remember that the professors grading these papers have the very same students who are such poor writers that they turn to this service. My point is, standards are low.

    I remember for an Economics class in college, the professor wanted us to write some sort of dialog on some topic. I thought it was a corny assignment, but I knew he also wouldn't grade it too harshly. So I grabbed some Guinness, got shit-faced, and churned out 15+ pages of corny bullshit. After grading our papers, he highlighted mine to the rest of the class as what he was intending that people do.

    Standards are low, and being prolific while reasonably coherent and moderately accurate with your grammar and spelling -- that's enough to get an A most of the time.

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  6. Assuming a 48-week work year, 5 days/wk, the guy would need to average 21 pages per day to meet his claimed 5,000 pages. If I had all the research and sourcing done for me ahead of time, plus a proofreader -- abso-fucking-lutely. And I'd love it.

    Man, maybe I should switch careers... how do you break into the ethics-destruction business anyway?

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  7. I will make roughly $66,000 this year

    Oh, nevermind. I assumed he was getting rich.

    Why would somebody that intelligent ethically compromise themselves for such a mediocre salary? He oughtta be a spammer at least...

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