I haven’t been to a library once since I started doing this job. Amazon is quite generous about free samples. If I can find a single page from a particular text, I can cobble that into a report, deducing what I don’t know from customer reviews and publisher blurbs. Google Scholar is a great source for material, providing the abstract of nearly any journal article. And of course, there’s Wikipedia, which is often my first stop when dealing with unfamiliar subjects. Naturally one must verify such material elsewhere, but I’ve taken hundreds of crash courses this way.
After I’ve gathered my sources, I pull out usable quotes, cite them, and distribute them among the sections of the assignment. Over the years, I’ve refined ways of stretching papers. I can write a four-word sentence in 40 words. Just give me one phrase of quotable text, and I’ll produce two pages of ponderous explanation. I can say in 10 pages what most normal people could say in a paragraph.
I’ve also got a mental library of stock academic phrases: “A close consideration of the events which occurred in ____ during the ____ demonstrate that ____ had entered into a phase of widespread cultural, social, and economic change that would define ____ for decades to come.” Fill in the blanks using words provided by the professor in the assignment’s instructions.
How good is the product created by this process? That depends””on the day, my mood, how many other assignments I am working on.
I read this article last week. I think the solution to this problem is quite simple actually. America needs to go to the Oxford-Cambridge model of having tutors in the essay writing process. Thus, to pass the class, you are forced write and re-write the essay and then also orally defend it to pass the class. You can buy all the essays in the world, but if you can’t orally defend it (and that’s part of the grade), then buying the essay isn’t going to get you very far.
Yes, #1, quite simple. But expensive–hugely so. And besides, what really matters in Oxbridge education are the exams, not papers.
I could not agree more with #1 above. The paper a college student hands in these days may not reflect much research, analysis, original thought by the student, owing to the increasing abundance of resources available online. To be sure student have learned something, make them talk about it in depth.
#1 I have argued this approach for years. I tried to sell this to Dartmouth as the logical course for restructuring curricula, but, because I am a nobody (by Dartmouth’s standards at the very least), I got nowhere. It is expensive, but expensive is better than the institutionalizing of plagiarism. Nevertheless, it it still the right approach. The tests are vital, but the oral exam should be mandatory.
Larry
The only qualm I have with the oral defense idea is that some people are eloquent on paper but freeze up when they have to speak in front of others.
The other idea I had is that you require each student to write, by hand, in-class and under the eyes of proctors, a short essay on an assigned topic. You keep this essay as a reference against which to compare their papers. Allowance has to be made for the polishing that extra time allows — but if a student hands in eloquent, grammatical papers and their in-class essay was on the level of, “You did me business ethics propsal for me I need propsal got approved pls can you will write me paper?” then I think you can be pretty confident that they’re cheating.
The other thing that struck me about this article is that, assuming this guy is telling the truth, he’s perverting some genuine talents. He describes swotting up enough information about advanced fields in just a few days to be able to write plausibly — and granted, he admits to padding his papers out with verbosity and bluff, but even being able to bluff convincingly about a topic requires some basic knowledge of it. If he actually did real research, he would have the makings of an impressive polymath.
Instead, the does the homework of wealthy illiterates. Both shameful and sad.
I think the reason that colleges of higher education will never really tackle this sort of dishonesty on a meaningful level is because it is a classic case of “those who live in glass towers.” I mean, professors use and abuse Ph.D. candidate students to be their little minions to teach their classes and do some if not all of the research for their own academic research. Ethically, is that really any different? If you have other people doing your work that you take the credit for? If the Ph.D.s do it, why not the undergraduates. At least the undergraduates pay good money to these “shadow scholars,” whereas Professors basically use slave labor.
“I mean, professors use and abuse Ph.D. candidate students to be their little minions to teach their classes and do some if not all of the research for their own academic research.”
Students (parents, too) should consider small liberal-arts colleges, where professors get to know their students and their students’ work and definitely do not rely on TAs or graduate assistants. We don’t have any TAs or graduate assistants. And we faculty members certainly do not have any to help us write our books or scholarly articles. But many of us in small liberal-arts colleges produce as much scholarship as faculty in large, prestigious universities do. We just don’t get the status or the salaries that go with those appointments.
Regarding students: I assign short papers on specific topics. It is very hard to cheat on them; it would take more time to cheat than to write the paper yourself; and, because we’ve gotten to know the student, it is much easier to spot cheating.
More important, a small liberal-arts college gives its students and professors time and space to get to know one another in small classes. Students do a lot of writing–across the curriculum–and we tailor the curriculum to our students to accomplish these ends. And we’re constantly working on it to improve it. This past summer fifteen of us met–voluntarily; no stipend–to talk about adding one or two more writing courses to what is already required in our core curriculum. Of course we complain about students’ writing all the time; but we’re also working very hard and conscientiously to address those weaknesses–by hooking up with where students are and pulling them higher. Well, we’re not the only ones pulling; they have to do the reaching and most of the pulling under our guidance.
Much of what we do takes place in small seminars. When students have not done the reading, we know it; in fact, it’s painfully clear. I am constantly questioning students on the reading. Many have written short papers; many have not. All are held accountable. (I don’t call on only those students who have raised their hands.)
#7. This is also sound. The giant U is a breeding ground for Careless and Irresponsible. Larry
This part of the piece was especially disturbing:
I completely agree with No. 7. If it can be afforded, small liberal arts colleges are the way to go. I went to a small liberal arts college, and I loved it. All the professors taught all the classes (I never once had a T.A. teach a class), and the professors (even the dean of students) all knew me by name.
I agree, #11. I attended a very small liberal arts college where all classes (math, science, music theory – everything) were taught via Socratic discussion and led by professors. Twice each year each student had a private oral exam (with two profs) based on an essay the student submitted, but the profs could take the discussion anywhere within the curriculum. To graduate, we wrote a very major essay and were examined on it in a public room for an hour by three professors. In the graduation ceremony, we were all pronounced “tried and true.â€
“For the last, colleges are a perfect launching ground—they are built to reward the rich and to forgive them their laziness. Let’s be honest: The successful among us are not always the best and the brightest, and certainly not the most ethical. My favorite customers are those with an unlimited supply of money and no shortage of instructions on how they would like to see their work executed. While the deficient student will generally not know how to ask for what he wants until he doesn’t get it, the lazy rich student will know exactly what he wants. He is poised for a life of paying others and telling them what to do. Indeed, he is acquiring all the skills he needs to stay on top.”
He seems to imply that rich people are somehow lazy, or that successful people aren’t always ethical. However, it takes work to ask people to do work, and for some, losing itself demonstrates a lack of virtue. It intrinsically demonstrates weakness.
Ross makes an excellent point and an excellent suggestion in #5. Some people readily express themselves on paper but not verbally. Having a short hand-written essay from the first class as a benchmark would be a good way to get some idea of writing style and capability. The very large university classes may not allow for this, but I suppose most of those grades are going to be based on multiple-choice exams until the upper division classes are reached.
I’m surprised this writer says he can make this kind of money doing this, but not surprised at the demand. My daughter worked at writing clinics at two universities. In both, students came at the last minute to ask her to write or substantially re-write papers for them. She only made suggestions and marked things in drafts that could be improved; many students were outraged that she wouldn’t just do the work for them. The general level of written work was poor; many of these students would not have gotten through high school in an earlier era.
Well, I think a well rounded education makes one able to express oneself in written form as well as verbally. I’m a good case in point. I had a dreadful stammer and was mortified at the idea of having to take a public speech class at my liberal arts college which required such a class as part of the core curriculum. I’m glad I had to take that class. I worked through my issues with the help of some of the staff at my college. I went on to actually do quite a bit of radio stuff in college as well. I now am a priest who preaches on a regular basis and looks forward to it.
I think forcing college students to be able to verbalize their thoughts and logically defend them is even more important now than when I was in college. With texting and kids being online all the time, verbal and communication skills are as bad if not worse than their writing skills. If you can’t communicate, you aren’t going to get very far in the real world unless you get a grunt labor job or are in some laboratory somewhere running rats through mazes.
I do have to throw in a comment following up on some people endorsing liberal arts colleges for undergraduate education. I have no experience with such institutions, and do not mean to impugn them in any way. However, one comment I am concerned about is people talking about having had professors as instructors, rather than teaching assistants. My son is now looking at colleges, and I see that a lot of smaller colleges trumpet this idea as a selling point. I received my undergraduate education at a major Big Ten research university, and received instruction from a large number of graduate/teaching assistants, especially in the 100 level survey courses. My experience was that some of my best instructors were graduate students who were enthusiastic about their subjects, and delighted to be passing their knowledge along. Some of my worst instructors were burned-out professors who had been teaching too long, and lost their “first love” for their subject.
To be totally fair, some of the burned-out full professors were people who enjoyed scholarship more than teaching, and saw teaching as the price they had to pay for the opportunity to do research in their field. Perhaps some of these, and some assistant/associate professor types, felt burdened due to the ruthless publication requirements of schools such as my alma mater. If true, that would be a point in favor of the smaller colleges, to the extent that publication pressures on the faculty are less.
In any event, my law class at the same university consisted of about 1/3 alums of liberal arts colleges and 2/3 graduates of major “factory” schools, and I don’t recall either group seeming to have a particular advantage in our studies. On the other hand, legal education “sharpens the mind by narrowing it”, so that perception, even if true, may not prove anything.