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Cheating, Inc.: How Writing Papers for American College Students Has Become a Lucrative Profession Overseas
By Farah Stockman and Carlos Mureithi
Cheating in college is nothing new, but the internet now makes it possible on a global, industrial scale. Sleek websites — with names like Ace-MyHomework and EssayShark — have sprung up that allow people in developing countries to bid on and complete American homework assignments...
Ms. Mbugua said she never felt right about the writing she did in the names of American students and others. “I’ve always had somehow a guilty conscience,” she said. “People say the education system in the U.S., U.K. and other countries is on a top notch,” she said. “I wouldn’t say those students are better than us,” she said, later adding, “We have studied. We have done the assignments.”
I admit to having mixed feelings about this but it is mostly funny. How much of American education is really nothing but idiotic busy work? I got straight A's in math in high school except junior year. The instructor played this game of assigning homework and then only randomly collecting it.
I admit it was somewhat smart for him because it reduced his workload. But if I did it and he did not collect I got no credit. So sometimes I did and sometimes I didn't. Since I always got A's on the tests I might get a B for the grading period because I guessed wrong too often.
English Lit homework was all just BS anyway. I did not try to get A's. B's were easy.
Honestly not sure where I fall on this one. On the one hand cheating is dishonest and impacts other students when grades are made on a competitive basis. On the other hand if someone outside the US is nevertheless able to write an A or B grade paper on some random topic, makes one wonder just what is being graded anyway. So much seemed to be based on who was the best BS artist in the room.
I admit to having mixed feelings about this but it is mostly funny. How much of American education is really nothing but idiotic busy work? I got straight A's in math in high school except junior year. The instructor played this game of assigning homework and then only randomly collecting it.
I admit it was somewhat smart for him because it reduced his workload. But if I did it and he did not collect I got no credit. So sometimes I did and sometimes I didn't. Since I always got A's on the tests I might get a B for the grading period because I guessed wrong too often.
English Lit homework was all just BS anyway. I did not try to get A's. B's were easy.
That's a fascinating ploy of your teacher only intermittently collecting homework! He gets the students to do all the work, but he limits his own work in not having to correct much of it! Clever!
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Quote:
Originally Posted by Clarallel
That's a fascinating ploy of your teacher only intermittently collecting homework! He gets the students to do all the work, but he limits his own work in not having to correct much of it! Clever!
I had this very discussion today with middle schoolers. The frustration they experienced was palpable. AT LEAST, the teacher should collect the homework and give a simple "check" if it was completed, which takes about 10 minutes of the teacher's time. Can be done quickly, and keeps students from feeling angry, and if they worked especially hard on the assignment, manipulated.
I wasn’t a cheater on test. It was surprising to me how much work and effort some students put into cheating. If they put the same effort in studies they wouldn’t need to cheat. But most were too lazy and or stupid to even put forth the effort and merely resorted to trying to copy answers from their neighbor’s test page and hope it gets them a passing grade.
I wasn’t a cheater on test. It was surprising to me how much work and effort some students put into cheating. If they put the same effort in studies they wouldn’t need to cheat. But most were too lazy and or stupid to even put forth the effort and merely resorted to trying to copy answers from their neighbor’s test page and hope it gets them a passing grade.
I don't understand it either. Several of my colleagues mention that they cheated their way through school. They say that they could have graduated without cheating, but that cheating made it less stressful, since they didn't have to worry about bad grades. I don't understand that mindset. Cheating would make things more stressful for me, since I'd be worried about getting caught. Especially in college, the penalty for getting caught cheating is far worse than getting a bad grade, so it makes no sense to me.
What really made no sense was one of my teachers told the entire class how he cheated on his physics Regents exam. He said that he wanted to get 100 on it, and he was 100% certain about every question except one, which asked what a certain arrow would look like in a mirror. Since he wanted 100 on the exam, he drew the arrow on his hand, asked to use the restroom, and then used the mirror in the restroom to see what it looked like. That made no sense to me. Whether you get a 90 or a 100, it goes in the book as an A either way, so there was no benefit to him getting 100. But if he was caught cheating, he would have been in serious trouble, and probably would have lost his college acceptances.
I admit to having mixed feelings about this but it is mostly funny. How much of American education is really nothing but idiotic busy work? I got straight A's in math in high school except junior year. The instructor played this game of assigning homework and then only randomly collecting it.
I admit it was somewhat smart for him because it reduced his workload. But if I did it and he did not collect I got no credit. So sometimes I did and sometimes I didn't. Since I always got A's on the tests I might get a B for the grading period because I guessed wrong too often.
English Lit homework was all just BS anyway. I did not try to get A's. B's were easy.
Quote:
Originally Posted by Clarallel
That's a fascinating ploy of your teacher only intermittently collecting homework! He gets the students to do all the work, but he limits his own work in not having to correct much of it! Clever!
I had a lot of teachers like that, and that is why I have such a hard time respecting teachers.
Quote:
Originally Posted by ClaraC
I had this very discussion today with middle schoolers. The frustration they experienced was palpable. AT LEAST, the teacher should collect the homework and give a simple "check" if it was completed, which takes about 10 minutes of the teacher's time. Can be done quickly, and keeps students from feeling angry, and if they worked especially hard on the assignment, manipulated.
Not clever, IMHO. At all.
In my AP US History, we would get a lot of busywork homework assignments that would take a long time to complete but would have very little learning value. It was frustrating wasting so much time, and I strongly suspected that he was not even looking at them. On one assignment, one of the questions was to list the 10 best presidents. I knew that he hated Nixon. So, I listed Nixon as one of the 10 best. He did not comment on it, so that proved that he was not even reading our assignments.
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