I got an e-mail from a guy looking to hire the services of Asshole Consulting. He runs a paper-writing company that in-no-beating-around-the-bush-sort-of-way does people's homework for money. It's completely immoral. It's completely unethical. But it's not illegal. And he capitalizes on this fact.
Now before you get all up in arms, understand he wouldn't be in the business if there wasn't a market for it. It's very much like drugs. Are you going to blame the drug dealers for creating something other people want? Or are you going to blame the drug-addicts? Are you going to blame the guy who sleeps with married women, or are you going to blame the married women looking for affairs? Don't blame the supplier, blame the demanders. And given my very libertarian, Machiavellian, misanthropic and cynical beliefs you all know where I come down on these types of arguments.
But morality and philosophy aside, we started to notice that given my readership demographic we might benefit from an advertising relationship. And so it is with without shame, cynical indifference, and a very misanthropic heart I introduce a new sponsor to the Cappysphere, Academic Composition.
Naturally some of my more moral readers are wincing. Some of you that are starting to see the country for the cesspool it's rapidly become are cheering, but before you dismiss this, let me make the argument why it's no longer "immoral" to pay for somebody to do your homework for you in today's United States educational system.
First, progressive credentialism.
I do not "dislike"
I do not " hate"
I LOATHE WITH ALL MY HEART what corporate America and all the other employers have done to the youth in this country. Not in terms of mortgaging the future with government (they've already done that), but how they've made it so difficult to get a job. Specifically, how they've increased the credentials needed to be deemed "qualified" for the simplest of jobs
In WWII you could take an 18 year old kid and turn him into a pilot, a tank commander, a mechanic, or a clerk in 6 months. You had majors at the age of 25 and colonels at the age of 30.
Now, today, nope. You need a bachelors, minimum. "Masters Preferred." Oh, and now you need some certifications and CPE. And then, and ONLY THEN, will we consider you for employment.
But the truly disgusting thing they're requiring you spend 4 unnecessary years and $150,000 in tuition isn't because you really need that level of training or education. The ONLY reason employers require all those credentials is so that they can (are you ready for it)....
more easily screen out resumes.
Think about that.
You are REQUIRED by today's employers to bust your ass off for 4-8 years, forking over $300 a credit, taking on $100,000 in debt JUST SO YOUR RESUME IS NOT TOSSED IN THE GARBAGE.
And thus, if you're "lucky" enough to get hired, you end up working some job you could have easily done at the age of 18 with 2-3 months training.
If the entire purpose of getting your college degree (advanced or not) is to merely jump through a hoop and NOT to increase your skills, then there is no merit in legitimately doing writing your own papers.
Second, speaking of a job that you could have done at the age of 18 without a masters, employers LIE ALL THE TIME on their job descriptions. NOT ONCE in the past 40 years has a job description in the history of job descriptions been accurate. Job descrptions are window-dressed to sound better than they actually are so that you more willingly take the job as well as lower pay. It's not until it's too late that you find out the "analytical work" you were supposed to do is "filing" and that the "challenging work environment" is not challenging for intellectual reasons, but because your boss is a psychopath. If they're going to lie on the job description, you owe them the courtesy of lying right back to them about all those "masters level courses you took."
Third, most degrees are worthless.
If you're going to become an accountant or a surgeon, then you should never hire this guys services. But if you are getting ANY degree in the liberal arts of humanities, then sorry, your degree is really worthless. You're not learning a skill. YOu're not learning a trade. You're learning theory, or just outright leftist brainwashing, that you will NEVER put into practice in the real world.
Since the degree is worthless and no measurable skill will be gained and therefore never be tested, you might as well pay somebody to write your masters or doctoral thesis. From a purely economic point of view it will result in the same outcome.
Speaking of worthless degrees, fourth, most of academia is a scam.
It is.
You're told by teachers from k-12 to go to college.
You're told by cousnelors to go to college.
You're parents really don't know any better and regurgitate the same thing.
But where they totally screw you over is when they say, "follow your heart and the money will follow."
This then sets you on the path of majoring in touchy, feely, easy subjects you find interesting instead of a trade or major that will result in employment. And there is no limit to the number of colleges, professors, deans, and TA's that are MORE THAN HAPPY to lie right to you face about the merit and validity of majoring in "African American History" or "Women's Studies" or "Communications" or "Child Psychology." Because the truth is
where else are those talentless people going to work?
The best thing to do is avoid these charlatans. But if you're "already committed" to getting your Lego-Diploma, you might as well pay somebody else to jump through the unnecessary hoops for you.
Fifth, even if you are majoring in a legitimate field, the academian scum are still going to insist you pay more by forcing you to take pre-requisite classes that have NOTHING to do with your intended study. Here you may be majoring in something legitimate (engineering, accounting, etc.), but are forced to take "CISgendered Hating Male" studies.
Why do the work for something that is not pertinent to your intended career?
Return the favor to these frauds by being fraudulent yourself.
Sixth, the professors really don't care.
They don't. And neither do most deans. If the UNC scandal about African American studies doesn't do it for you, then my experiences at degree mills will.
The primary goal of most educational institutions is NOT to educate you, but get your money. This is why when I had 89% of my students plagiarize their college papers, the dean did not kick them out, but forced me to allow them to write another paper. This is why when a student showed up drunk and punched me, they expelled him, but then let him back in.
Your generation is sadly filled with so many losers that the "adult" generations are bending over backwards to give you every excuse, every advantage, and every ounce of forgiveness. Yes they "say" you will be expelled, but I'm having a hard time trying to find deans and professors that give a damn about enforcing it (just look at Martin Luther King!)
Finally, if you outsource all the bullshit classes to Academic Composition, it will allow you to increase your credit load and therefore potentially get out of college a full year earlier. Outsourcing your paper writing will also allow you to work instead, helping keep your debt load low.
In short, the entire "college education" racket is precisely that - a racket, a scam. And coupled with masochistic reasons employers insist on "progressive credentialism" you should have the least bit of self-respect and return to them a proverbial finger by being just as disingenuous and fraudulent as they are.
Now, the caveats and legal disclaimer.
You run the risk of getting expelled. YOu run the risk of ruining your future. Matter of fact, don't do it. Just don't do it. Don't hire his services. Matter of fact, I'm going to say you WILL get expelled. 100% guarantee. Just ignore everything I said above. Just ignore how you are being royally screwed over by a fraudulent system. Just ignore that and be a good little boy or girl and behave.
You hire Academic Composition at your own risk.
As a CS/STEM professor, I just don't get how it's "immoral" or "unethical." Sure, it cheats students out of valuable experience, but that's on them, not on me, and "hiring people to do a particular job" isn't something we teach, so that's experience right there. I also consult on the side, which means I solve other people's problems and write up the solutions - in words, in PowerPoint, in C, whatever. What they do with the solution is their business. What I do with what they pay me is continue to Enjoy The Decline!
ReplyDeleteI wold be very, very careful about "Don't blame the supplier, blame the demanders," thingy.
ReplyDeleteIt's exactly that mindset that Sweden, France, and from what I have been reading, Germany have busting guys for prostitution. All the laws are written in the form that while selling sex is legal, BUYING sex isn't.
While I agree that academic papers suck, (and for the most part for the soft fields of "women studies" and various useless degrees, they rehash things over and over again...turning their writers into parrots of the agenda,) "blaming the buyer, not the seller," is something that should be applied very carefully. And it might not be universally applied.
I suspect that is the mindset the feminists project to men in a modified form. "We are never guilty...MEN are always guilty!"
If I see a paper that I know isn't one of my students' work, they automatically fail my class.
ReplyDeleteThen again, I'm present for almost all of the steps of writing the paper (which they do in class), so I count it as failing them for being stupid and having a nasty entitlement mentality (I DESERVE that A, damn it! Even if I can't earn it by learning how to write a coherent argument!). I try very hard to keep my classes useful and relevant to everything else they need, though. Unlike most of my colleagues.
I couldn't care less if they want to turn something not theirs in to most of my colleagues. I can think of maybe two that would care.
There is no question there is a surplus of absolutely worthless very costly college out there.
ReplyDeleteBlack athletes are about as extreme example of the failing's of school in general as you can get.
Lets be honest, something liberal schools don't know much about. Black athletes are usually not very interested in things like quantum mechanics or organic chemistry. Nothing wrong with that.
But schools should offer some things like basic literacy and especially financial literacy. Not on how to be black, like they do not already know. How many black athletes wind up dead broke after making millions in sports? Most. Maybe schools should offer education on how not to get financially scammed. How not to get scammed by the divorce industry. How about offering practical stuff that actually applies to there lives? These guys would show a whole lot more interest in that kind of stuff.
The real reason for the requiring of these credentials is that universities are very good at weeding out free thinkers, non-politically correct persons, and so-called conspiracy theorists. Anyone attending a university is about one awkward question/statement away from driving a taxi for the rest of their lives (I know this first hand).
ReplyDeleteAnyone hiring today's graduates knows that they are getting the finest "sheeple" on the labour market.
Pete
I know that we put all papers through electronic anti palagiarism software. So each paper can only be used once: and most of the time you need to have heard the lectures to know how to pitch it.
ReplyDeleteBut then, I am not in the USA.
"All the laws are written in the form that while selling sex is legal, BUYING sex isn't."
ReplyDeleteOf course they are. Since women can do no wrong, we cannot bust them for for their conduct. We can bust men, that's ok.
Credentials are also a replacement for judgment. Since that is forbidden, it possibly being *gasp* discrimination to use one's judgment, one must use other means to vet candidates.
ReplyDeleteI think that in many cases now the moral questions of using such services can be put to bed, and it's because of the people in charge of many U.S. "educational" institutions these days.
ReplyDeleteMy most recent (and last) teaching experience at a local community college at one point involved ejecting two 30-something students from my class for turning in papers they copied off of the web.
The VP of Instruction (or whatever the hell her title was) requested a meeting with me afterwards. It was basically her telling me that I did what was in accordance with the rules, that I followed procedure and could not be faulted for that. But, she assured me that everything had been done to make sure that the two women involved would keep every penny of financial assistance they had been receiving, that they could retake the class later, replace the failing grade, have the ejection removed from their transcripts, and that I should be concerned that word might get around campus that I'm an "asshole" (her exact words). All they had to do to satisfy the people in charge was claim that they "didn't know what plagiarism was." The fact that they're not kids straight out of high school and that at least one of them had attended other junior colleges previously? Doesn't matter, that was all of the "evidence" required to clear them of intentional wrong-doing. Basically, the message to me was "those are the rules, but don't enforce the rules."
Asses in seats mean tuition checks coming in. That's all modern academia truly cares about. There are six figure salaries to be paid out, after all! Cheating? Well, that's just something that happens if someone gets caught. When someone gets caught, it should be a "teachable moment" where they are given the chance to "learn from the experience." In other words, learn to be better at not getting caught.
So screw it. Give them what they want. Buy papers off the web and hand them in. It makes it easier for them to give you a fake grade and justify moving you along to the next quarter/semester, which means more tuition checks.
Chris,
ReplyDeleteAll of the papers that I sell through Academic Composition are 100% original. That is, I always write them from scratch and never sell the assignment twice. Most papers do not require a reference to the material covered in class, normally you just need to cite the assigned readings. That is why most professors in the U.S do not urge students to attend every single class and most students can do quite well even if they missed half of their classes.
In the five years I've been in business, I only required a few of my clients to take close notes in class and email them to me. In 99% of the cases, all they need to do is send me the professor's official document of instructions, scan their assigned readings or email me the links to scholarly journals that must be referenced in their papers.
Heroditus,
ReplyDeleteMost professors are not as conscientious as you are. Aaron put it well "Sixth, the professors really don't care".
Your average student at a four year school is just one occupant of an overpopulated classroom with well over 50 peers. If you have only 20-30 classmates, you should consider yourself very fortunate. Even class sizes of over 200 are far more common at a four year institution than most people realize.
On top of that, online courses are becoming increasingly more common and the standards there are even more relaxed. In an "academic setting" such as that, it is virtually impossible for a professor to know that a student did not write his own paper when he submits a paper that passes a plagiarism scan. None of my clients have issues with that because I never plagiarize.
However, I've encountered a few professors with a mindset similar to yours. They've questioned several of my clients and none of them were able to give them zeroes for one simple reason: there was no admissible evidence of plagiarism. I've coached my clients to insist that they have written their own papers and ironically, the Code of Academic Honesty is on their side.
Most Universities have a process by which a student can be found guilty of academic misconduct and instructors typically don't have the liberty to flunk students on a suspicion that they've cheated.
Most of my students who were questioned by their professors struggled with English and it was obvious that they did not do their own work. Nonetheless, the absence of evidence of plagiarism deprived the universities from penalizing students for academic fraud.
Although I admire your commitment to academic integrity as that is a rare thing these days, most academic community do not share your idealistic sentiment. First and foremost, they aspire to process the maximal number of students through their system with the most lucrative possible results. Most professors and especially University Administrators have no interest in catching cheaters. That's why Academic ghost-writing is an enormous industry and not one of my clients has been expelled for plagiarism.
Don't take my word for it, even a cursory Google search on customized essay writing will reveal that hundreds of other writers and companies are in the exact same business as I am. Just a few years ago, Dave Tomar published an article in the Chronicle of Higher Education covering many of the same ideas I've discussed in this post.
http://chronicle.com/article/The-Shadow-Scholar/125329/
Alex,
ReplyDeleteI am well aware of the damage my colleagues do. I have a student this semester that had one of those damaging colleagues, and I have advised most of my students, at one point or another, on which of my colleagues to take classes with, and which to avoid at all costs as toxic.
I am also well aware that I cannot fail those for whom I cannot find proof. For those, I don't try--I explain to them exactly how I can't prove they did it, but that we both know they did, and that what they're doing is making sure they don't learn any lessons I could be teaching them. And then I give up on that student.
I do care about my students learning to write a coherent piece of work, whether it's something expository or something persuasive, mostly because it helps in literally everything they do beyond my classes. I have had students come to me with stories of overall improvement in their GPA, and have had coaches come to me with stories of improved engagement and attitude in their players.
That said, I will also admit that there are a few students from whom I'd be thankful to receive a paper written by someone else, by the end of the semester, because they demonstrate throughout the semester's work that they are not teachable. These students have been sold a lie: that they are capable of the mental work necessary, and that college is necessary for all.
In an effort of intellectual honesty, we should not be slamming the one, two, perhaps even THREE legitimate teachers out there who actually do give a damn about education.
ReplyDeleteStill, the whole system is corrupt and worth deceiving.
Credentials are also used for plausible deniability with discrimination. You will also get caught in a witchhunt if not earlier.
ReplyDeleteAs much as I agree that credentialism is getting insane (and is generally bad), I wouldn't exclusively blame corporations. I think it's just a symptom of increased competition on the labor market: in 1950, there were 150 million people in the US, and an economic boom. Now there are more than double that, and there's a recession. There are way more candidates than positions at some companies (the cushier the job is, the higher the competition is), so companies just use insane criteria to sort them out (you can also see this in academia, where each tenured opening draws in 200-500 applications every time).
ReplyDeleteShouldn't student who outsource their homework should be commended. Much like all our super-awesome corporations who outsourced all their work that these students are supposed to dance for?
ReplyDeleteI feel this is a huge unnecessary double standard. This is seriously sadistic. We want to ensure our students are ethical so we know they will reap the full dose of pain from our unethical treatment in our school and later the unethical treatment in their jobs. Is this system designed by Prozac?
I commend any person that cheats the cheaters.
The current college education system is a total joke. Even the degrees that the Capt. talks about the programs are so diluted from a real education that the kids coming out with engineering degrees rarely know anything worthwhile in engineering. Pure and simple the corrupt college professors are more interested in propaganda and brainwashing than anything of actual job training.
For example: Computer science now, besides the standard political crap every degree program has to endure, there is this unhealthy standard of memorizing and focusing on terms and CS philosophies. When you deal with these kids fresh out of college the first thing you learn about them is they just want to sit and talk about programming and not actually do programming. When they actually go to write code it becomes more than obvious they don't have a freak'n clue what they are doing. As a lead developer you end up training them (which ends up tacking on more time than your normal 40 hours a week. WHICH for most companies is something you just eat in your salary as a lead.) This can go on for MONTHS depending on how convinced and indoctrinated they are that they are gifts from heaven to the programming world.
In contrast the guy that got his education by just doing and avoiding academia usually can just jump right in and is a total boon to the group.
To all the CS degree kids out there in academia land... CHEAT YOUR FREAK'N LITTLE HEARTS OUT!!! Pay Chris to do as much as you can. Spend that extra time working on either open source projects or your own business projects writing code. This is what I look for personally from a potential employee. The degree thing is more of a discredit than a credit. Well if that's all you got is a degree it's a complete discredit. I'd rather hire the guy with no degree than the no experience with the degree.
@BadOPCode...
ReplyDeleteOr you could hire MY CS students, who by the time I'm through with them can indeed look at a problem, ask the right questions, design a solution, and implement it in good solid code. Some of us CS professors are pretty damn serious about giving these kids actual skills. And if they find code elsewhere that does the job, all I demand is that they document the source. If they don't, I fail them. If they do, I congratulate them.
This is the first time I've commented on this blog so take it for what it's worth, but I really wish you'd reconsider.
ReplyDeleteI'm a professor at a large public university that does flunk out people when we catch them cheat. Unfortunately, it's incredibly hard to do because you do need proof. People like Alex are very good at coaching students how to cheat and then how to lie about the cheating.
I teach in a business school and when we talk to the people who hire our students, the one thing we repeatedly hear is that they wish our students were better writers. The comments on this post keep making the point that a college education is not useful, but learning to write is an incredibly valuable skill!
The best way to learn about writing is to write. Ideally it would be done in small classes and on serious topics, but even writing about silly topics teaches how to write. This business hurts the good part of universities not the bad.
By all means, enjoy the decline, but don't join the people causing it.
Read the Bell Curve: according to research with tens of thousands, id not millions, he best predictor of job performance is an IQ TEST.
ReplyDeleteThe US Supreme Court outlawed IQ tests for employment, because the discriminate against Blacks who are less intelligent, and perform, on average, less well in almost all jobs. Except if they pass the same IQ test as the other candidates.
So if someone has a degree from Stanford, they prove to have an IQ in the 120+(?) range
If IQ tests were allowed, then they could have saved the trouble of going to Stanford for 4 years.
I got that explanatrion from vdare or isteve blogs.
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The old German system, of separating students according to IQ and performance into high school and college track vs. blue collar apprentice track was the best possible.
Instead of forcing low intelligence people to finish dumbed down High School and do a Mickey Mouse college degree, they could learn manual skills like plumber, carpenter, etc.