By Professor Doom
I’m no longer
shocked with the cheating by students in higher education. There are many
reasons for this, but foremost is how much higher education has changed. In
times past, it was well known that higher education was about preparing a human
being for more. It was literally written into the old rules of accreditation:
Today’s
accreditation rules have been altered to
the point that there is nothing to do with education, and so we have entire
institutions that focus not on education, but on sucking students in, swirling
them around for years on useless coursework that prepares them for nothing,
then spitting them back out once the loan money is gone.
It’s not all like this, of course, but
many institutions, whether state, profit, or non-profit, use the previous
paragraph as a business model.
When I teach a
course in, say, differential equations, the students can only succeed if
they’ve learned the material in previous courses. They must have mastered
algebra and at least two semesters of calculus. But that’s for “real” degree
programs in engineering or math. If you cheat your way through one of those
preparation courses, then you’ll never make it through the next course without
cheating also…and the next course is also preparation.
Many degree
programs, especially at community colleges, don’t work that way. You take a
course in Psychology, but it has nothing to do with the course on Sociology you
take, nor does it have anything to do with the course on Women’s Studies you
take…it’s a simple matter to go through the course catalogue and see endless
pages of courses that have no prerequisites, and that lead to nothing. It’s
particularly funny when you look at graduate level administration courses,
where even the most advanced courses require no knowledge coming in, so that
anyone can just walk in and know everything our Poo Bahs know in a few weeks, as I’ve
demonstrated.
Since the
course is irrelevant, just a needless expense, why not just cheat through it? I
completely understand why a student would do this, and the marketplace agrees
with me. There are many places now that allow you to hire professional cheaters
to take your course and do your homework for you.
“…looking
to make a little extra cash, she signed up last September with Studypool “an online
marketplace that connects students with questions with tutors who can answer
them.” An Uber for tutors, if you will…”
A
not-so-recent article talks about how cheating is becoming ever more
efficient. Certainly, there was cheating in times past, but back then to get to
the level of “have someone else take your course for you” required very special
circumstances to find that ringer. Now it’s trivial.
The list of
variations for on-demand tutelage is long and diverse: Tutor.com, WyzAnt, StudyRoom, TutorPanda, Tutorpace. Tutree arranges
in-person meetings between tutors and students. Chegg Tutors offers live help via video chat.
(I held off on
discussing the recent innovations in cheating for quite some time, to see if
any basic measures would be done to combat it. No; every link to every cheating
site in that article is still quite functional, still, quite obviously, doing
profitable business…curiously, I’ve noted people who want to hire me as a tutor
“in the real world” have dropped off sharply in the last year or so as well.)
“He gave me the login for his online math
class,” Nicole says. “At first I was like, OK, I have to go see what the
problems are, and this is the easiest way to go see them. So I asked, ‘Where do
you want to start?’ And he said, ‘Oh, I just need you to do the assignment for
me.’
I’m always
amazed at how administration at every school is in a huge rush to put ever more
courses online. They have no trouble citing studies showing that, particularly
for introductory material, “success” rates in online courses are superior, and
so use that to force faculty into administering (I’m reluctant to use the word
“teach”) online courses. It’s completely
obvious what’s going on in these courses, and has been for years. Every
attempt I’ve made to get a school to adopt even basic countermeasures against
cheating has been shut down, and I, like many faculty, have been punished for
daring to show even a little integrity.
That said, I appreciate
the balance here. The huge student loan scam pays for the student to take the
course, and provides money for the student to hire a cheater as well (most
loans cover more than just tuition). Once the money is laundered through the
school, the loan money is then used to pay the administrator to make sure
nothing is done to stop the cheating.
It’s beautiful, in a demented way.
Browsing
through the bids posted on Studypool is revealing — it’s not uncommon to see
students expecting to have their assignments fully completed in exchange for
money. Everything from high school math quizzes to college-level essays.
Negative reviews for tutors indicate that the work they did for the student got
a bad grade or was flagged as suspicious. “Failed my paper because 56 percent
was plagiarized,” reads one. Well-reviewed tutors are those whose work passes
undetected and gets the student a good grade.
Anyway, you no
longer hire tutors at these sites like in days of yore, where you pick a name
and pay the person to help you. You just tell them what assignment you want
done, and then the “tutors,” many with graduate degrees I’m sure, then “bid” on
doing the assignment for you. You take the lowest bidder.
I’d love to know
just how many teachers in higher education, paid so little that they qualify
for welfare, are supplementing their income by working for these sites. The
workers for these sites know what they’re doing:
“It is
largely a place for students to cheat. I think it is a sad commentary on the U.S.
education system that this practice is ‘needed’ and has a large following
Now, one can use
these sites legitimately, but the sites themselves know what they’re really
about.
In the case of Studypool, accountability
is limited also by the encryption of students’ and tutors’ identities and
interactions. (Its user privacy page states, “Private questions cannot be found by Search
engines… or by applications/software looking for duplicate content and
plagiarism.”)
When there’s this
kind of effort put into secrecy, it’s a safe bet they know what they’re doing
is wrong, and don’t want others to know about it.
Still, a school
interested in stopping cheating could just track IP addresses, noting when a
student seems to be logging in from the same address as other students in other
courses. Tests could be given at physical proctoring centers, so that a
cheating student would have to demonstrate skill at some point. It doesn’t take
much imagination at all to come up with ways to tell if a student is really
doing the work.
But, when the
course is on Game of
Thrones or some other topic of no relevance, of no preparation for
more, does it even matter if the student cheats through it? I suppose not.
The fact still
remains: our schools, to qualify for student loan money, promise in writing to
act with integrity. Even with years to take some action to prevent cheating,
our schools instead take actions to encourage ever more of it.
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