Standard of cheating depressingly low in undergraduates - Page 2

On campus here there are PLENTY of opportunities for students to get the help they need. We have a center with tutors specifically for helping students with their writing. A student can reserve entire half-hour blocks of time with a tutor based on his or her subject, and sit down to work on issues the student may be having.

So forgive me if I roll my eyes a bit at the guerilla essay-writer who rails against colleges for failing their students. That's just a convenient generalization to justify HIS wrong-doing.

Quote:

Originally Posted by JadeEast 

Here is an amazing essay from someone who writes papers for money.

 

Very well written and entertaining. This is exactly how I got extra money in high school and college. In high school I would charge $50 for a 3 - 5 page essay. I would guarantee a grade of 85 or higher. In college I charged $50 per page. When I began to TA, I noticed how far some students, particularly the females, are willing to go for an A. I know I am not the best writer but I was amazed just how bad most college students write. It's truly sad how incompetent some of these students were, yet there they were, on the deans list, every semester.  Ever since then I lost a lot of respect for our educational system. It's true that college professors don't have the time nor the mental capacity to be ethical detectives but they should use their common sense more than their egos. They should value independent thinking more than how well we remember their own words or how well we memorize their books.

I was in my third year in college when I was called in by some newly hired Harvard professor. The topic of conversation...my academic integrity! "Holy Crap!....He knows!!" I thought. I had written a total of 7 different papers, not including mine, for his class. Where could I have gone wrong? Did I use the same phrase on more than one paper? Did the writing sound or read too similar to the other papers? Would my new acquired wealth be worth this? I was scared.

I walked in and this haughty prick threw my paper in front of me. On it, a huge, almost ridiculously large letter "F". He said he was failing my paper for plagiarism. He said I had "lifted" a quote from our text book and failed to give it proper credit. A single sentence which was extremely obvious from where it had come from (his own book), yet which I failed to properly note, got me an "F". As I sat down contemplating my "F" he proceeded to offer me the opportunity to re-write my paper, in 2 days, or settle for the F. He told me he was being generous and that he could elect to have me kicked out for academic dishonesty. He gave me fire and brimstone for a good part of 10 minutes. He went on to tell me how much of a failure I could be for not respecting other peoples work (never mind the fact that the other 7 papers I wrote got either A's or high B's) and that the re-write was a gracious opportunity. After stroking his ego for a few more minutes, he allowed me to leave. 

I got out, then walked down four doors, knocked on the department heads door who just happened to be a good friend for whom I had TA'd for 2 years now and proceeded to tell him about my dilemma. About 15 minutes later I was walking out of the department with a revised grade of "94%" the 6% being taken away for my mistake and a smile on my face. I passed the class with a high B which I felt should have been an A. My 7 "clients" all passed with A's and none of their papers were ever questioned. Many times, I wrote papers for classes I never even attended. During my entire time in high school and college, none of my other papers were ever questioned nor did they receive low marks. I still keep in touch with some of these people and none of them...none of them...can remember what certain classes were about. They do remember that they got a 9x% for the class though. Sad really....

Just another Criminal! 

Quote:

Originally Posted by LFF 

 

Quote:

Originally Posted by JadeEast 

Here is an amazing essay from someone who writes papers for money.

 

"thanx so much for uhelp ican going to graduate to now".

http://chronicle.com/article/The-Shadow-Scholar/125329/

 

Very well written and entertaining. This is exactly how I got extra money in high school and college. In high school I would charge $50 for a 3 - 5 page essay. I would guarantee a grade of 85 or higher. In college I charged $50 per page. When I began to TA, I noticed how far some students, particularly the females, are willing to go for an A. I know I am not the best writer but I was amazed just how bad most college students write. It's truly sad how incompetent some of these students were, yet there they were, on the deans list, every semester.  Ever since then I lost a lot of respect for our educational system. It's true that college professors don't have the time nor the mental capacity to be ethical detectives but they should use their common sense more than their egos. They should value independent thinking more than how well we remember their own words or how well we memorize their books.

 

I was in my third year in college when I was called in by some newly hired Harvard professor. The topic of conversation...my academic integrity! "Holy Crap!....He knows!!" I thought. I had written a total of 7 different papers, not including mine, for his class. Where could I have gone wrong? Did I use the same phrase on more than one paper? Did the writing sound or read too similar to the other papers? Would my new acquired wealth be worth this? I was scared.

 

I walked in and this haughty prick threw my paper in front of me. On it, a huge, almost ridiculously large letter "F". He said he was failing my paper for plagiarism. He said I had "lifted" a quote from our text book and failed to give it proper credit. A single sentence which was extremely obvious from where it had come from (his own book), yet which I failed to properly note, got me an "F". As I sat down contemplating my "F" he proceeded to offer me the opportunity to re-write my paper, in 2 days, or settle for the F. He told me he was being generous and that he could elect to have me kicked out for academic dishonesty. He gave me fire and brimstone for a good part of 10 minutes. He went on to tell me how much of a failure I could be for not respecting other peoples work (never mind the fact that the other 7 papers I wrote got either A's or high B's) and that the re-write was a gracious opportunity. After stroking his ego for a few more minutes, he allowed me to leave. 

 

I got out, then walked down four doors, knocked on the department heads door who just happened to be a good friend for whom I had TA'd for 2 years now and proceeded to tell him about my dilemma. About 15 minutes later I was walking out of the department with a revised grade of "94%" the 6% being taken away for my mistake and a smile on my face. I passed the class with a high B which I felt should have been an A. My 7 "clients" all passed with A's and none of their papers were ever questioned. Many times, I wrote papers for classes I never even attended. During my entire time in high school and college, none of my other papers were ever questioned nor did they receive low marks. I still keep in touch with some of these people and none of them...none of them...can remember what certain classes were about. They do remember that they got a 9x% for the class though. Sad really....

I kid! I kid! lol

Well I did what you did like 0.1 times, but I ALSO did HELP people write or understand subjects. 

PS- My first language is Portuguese.

The saddest part is that those from my university that cheated are enjoying success far beyond my own.  Though I look back with pleasure at college, knowing that I properly took advantage of a great opportunity to intellectually stimulate myself, society at large, for the most part, only takes into consideration GPA when it comes to providing further opportunities. 

What's worse, mine was a degree in accountancy!  Those who are now auditing Fortune 500 companies with the Big 4 audit firms passed their accounting classes through brute memorization of test banks.  Funny, people are shocked that E&Y, for instance, signed off on Lehman Brothers as a going concern...

It must be nice being a professor: you got into a profession in which true and honest academic pursuits are rewarded.  For the rest of us in the real world, success is sadly only measured in a lazy quantifiable manner - and cheating gets you there more consistently.  Worse yet, everyone seems to turn a blind eye :( 

Quote:

Originally Posted by El_Doug 

It must be nice being a professor: you got into a profession in which true and honest academic pursuits are rewarded.

That's a very good point indeed. Sadly, there are professors who cheat too: giving students answers on exams to boost their performance review, flubbing researching results to get their work published, etc.

Seems no matter where you turn, there's going to be some form of cheating sadly. In the academic world there's a lot of pressure to get published in certain fields. That was one big reason why I turned away from psychology and now teach philosophy. I hated the research climate involved in the social sciences.

Quote:

Originally Posted by MuppetFace 

 

Quote:

Originally Posted by El_Doug 

It must be nice being a professor: you got into a profession in which true and honest academic pursuits are rewarded.

That's a very good point indeed. Sadly, there are professors who cheat too: giving students answers on exams to boost their performance review, flubbing researching results to get their work published, etc.

 

Seems no matter where you turn, there's going to be some form of cheating sadly.

That is no crime. In the eyes of the public that is a good thing.

How do I say so? Because After the Climagate, I didn't see anyone taking it into consideration. The professors got their post back and the waters were calmed down as if nothing actually happened.

That Removed part of my faith in scientists and general public. It seems the masses are blind following trend even when the tren is suspicious.

I've always felt that the effort it takes to cheat (effectively at least) is greater than the effort it takes just to learn the material/do the work.    
 

I go to one of the best (public) High Schools in the Nation. I will not name the school for obvious reasons.

I'm 16, sophomore, and cheating is normal here. I predict that at least 70% of the student population cheats, at least once a week. 

Me and my friends will regularly (almost daily) exchange homework A for B. Or person A will do homework X night, while person B will do homework Y night.

I have a 3.999 GPA, so don't think I'm ignorant, and i have scored in the top 1%, in the nation, for standardized tests (No Child Left Behind Act), multiple times.

But cheating is a regular part of school now days. I do not know of what your generation thought of cheating, but my generation considers cheating completely normal, harmless, and exercises real life situations of "using/exploiting resources".

P.S. No child left behind is an utter failure, and i often find that teachers have to cram curriculum in order to accommodate tests. I wholeheartedly feel that the No Child Left Behind Act is actually lowering SAT/ACT scores. Teachers are forced to cram-teach state required curriculum, rather than in-depth lessons, necessary for full understanding. This artificially creates higher test scores for the standardized NCLB tests. On the other hand, not enough information is tought to fully reap the full benefits of the lessons; lowering ACT/SAT scores.

Furthermore, school lessons are completely irrelevant to life. Over the past X years, i have learned almost nothing that can be applied to future jobs/everyday life. I have retained virtually no information from previous years.

Our school system utterly fails. Teachers know it; students know it. So do not blame the students for taking shortcuts, as there is no reason to go through the overly stressed lifestyle of school, when there are little to very few lessons that we will use. I love being knowledgeable, i love learning about things i dont understand, but I am utterly disgusted by the idea of force-feeding irrelevant education. School should be used to teach lifelong lessons. Not information that will be memorized and quickly disposed of.

I remember feeling the same way in high school, wondering why we were not taught basic life tasks or given vocational training.  It seemed stupid to force us to learn about George Washington. 

I have come to treasure the great breadth of education I received.  I completed the International Baccalaureate program in high school, and am thrilled that I had the opportunity to study 3 years of chemistry, 3 years of biology, 2 years of modern world history, economics, psychology, and even epistemology.  Those years spent bring forced to analyze poetry, read modern literature... it all feels beyond worth it.  I find that though this knowledge doesnt apply directly to everyday life, the broad education does help me have a wider, deeper, and overall better view of the world.  Of course you do not remember everything, and no one expects you to - heck, most professors do not know much about their areas of study, except for the narrow segment they research on a daily basis.  The point is to help you learn how to think in multiple ways!  Makes life far more interesting, to be sure. 

The value of cheating seems to vary greatly by discipline. There was lots of effective cheating in my biology and liberal arts classes. Not nearly so much in chemistry and engineering where the cheaters would hit a fairly obvious wall shortly in their studies.

Quote:

Originally Posted by Xaborus 
 

Our school system utterly fails. Teachers know it; students know it. So do not blame the students for taking shortcuts, as there is no reason to go through the overly stressed lifestyle of school, when there are little to very few lessons that we will use. I love being knowledgeable, i love learning about things i dont understand, but I am utterly disgusted by the idea of force-feeding irrelevant education. School should be used to teach lifelong lessons. Not information that will be memorized and quickly disposed of.

What you have learned: The primary education system doesn't work for me; ergo, it must be irreparably broken. QED.

What you should have learned: The primary education system doesn't work for me, so it may have objectives that I are unable to divine.

Quote:

Originally Posted by El_Doug 
It must be nice being a professor: you got into a profession in which true and honest academic pursuits are rewarded.  For the rest of us in the real world, success is sadly only measured in a lazy quantifiable manner - and cheating gets you there more consistently.  Worse yet, everyone seems to turn a blind eye :( 

Haven't worked as a professor have you

A lot of the nonsense that is demanded of, and happens, to students is a reflection of the nonsense professors have to go through. MuppetFace has already talked about psychology so I'll just stick to the social sciences.  To get tenure, or simply to keep you job, there is a huge demand to publish papers, contribute to or write books, be an editor on a journal, etc.  The work you do is measured with a quantitative system which is mostly connected to the prestige of the journal you are publishing in, not always to the quality of the work you are doing or its actual contribution to the field.  

There are so many papers out there that are just garbage - and everybody knows it.  The people who write them are not interested in writing them, but it's much more prestigious (and easier to publish in a top journal) to write a rehashed paper on "The development of Latino identity in Secondary Education" than "Research Ethics in the Social Sciences."  Some organizations in the field (e.g. A.P.A.) are obsessed with trying to make the social sciences like the physical sciences, and so even the way you write social science papers can be devoid of what makes the social sciences so interesting - the human element.

There are other factors as well.  "Cheating" is also rampant in terms of how ideas as discovered or stolen.  I worked with somebody, a brilliant person with a brilliant future, who actually left the tier 1 research university system because she didn't want to work in an environment where professors don't talk to each other in fear their ideas will be stolen.

All of this trickles down to the work students are asked to do, especially with papers where the number of citations you have is more important than quality or originality of your work.  It doesn't surprise me at all that cheating is rampant from undergraduate to PhD.

my wife's boss is like that, she doesn't  discuss partof the job even with her associates.

I couldn't write about part of my lab work in my thesis so no one would advance that matter but the lab where I was.
 

Quote:

Originally Posted by odigg 

Quote:

Originally Posted by El_Doug 
It must be nice being a professor: you got into a profession in which true and honest academic pursuits are rewarded.  For the rest of us in the real world, success is sadly only measured in a lazy quantifiable manner - and cheating gets you there more consistently.  Worse yet, everyone seems to turn a blind eye :( 

Haven't worked as a professor have you

 

A lot of the nonsense that is demanded of, and happens, to students is a reflection of the nonsense professors have to go through. MuppetFace has already talked about psychology so I'll just stick to the social sciences.  To get tenure, or simply to keep you job, there is a huge demand to publish papers, contribute to or write books, be an editor on a journal, etc.  The work you do is measured with a quantitative system which is mostly connected to the prestige of the journal you are publishing in, not always to the quality of the work you are doing or its actual contribution to the field.  

 

There are so many papers out there that are just garbage - and everybody knows it.  The people who write them are not interested in writing them, but it's much more prestigious (and easier to publish in a top journal) to write a rehashed paper on "The development of Latino identity in Secondary Education" than "Research Ethics in the Social Sciences."  Some organizations in the field (e.g. A.P.A.) are obsessed with trying to make the social sciences like the physical sciences, and so even the way you write social science papers can be devoid of what makes the social sciences so interesting - the human element.

 

There are other factors as well.  "Cheating" is also rampant in terms of how ideas as discovered or stolen.  I worked with somebody, a brilliant person with a brilliant future, who actually left the tier 1 research university system because she didn't want to work in an environment where professors don't talk to each other in fear their ideas will be stolen.

 

All of this trickles down to the work students are asked to do, especially with papers where the number of citations you have is more important than quality or originality of your work.  It doesn't surprise me at all that cheating is rampant from undergraduate to PhD.

I recently sat a Theory and Hazard Perception Test as I am working towards getting a motorbike licence. Now I understand why, on arriving at the test centre I was made to put my jacket in a locker along with my mobile and watch, had my ID checked 4 times by two different people and was recorded on CCTV from above and to the side as well as watched over by an examiner. There must be a lot of attempts to cheat.

I am proud to say I have never cheated in any exam or assignment and I scored 96 and 84% in the two tests using only a quarter of the allocated time. Beat that cheats!

I have come to hate people who can talk a good talk but cannot do a good job. They must be the cheats.

Quote:

Originally Posted by LFF 

 

Quote:

Originally Posted by JadeEast 

Here is an amazing essay from someone who writes papers for money.

 

"thanx so much for uhelp ican going to graduate to now".

http://chronicle.com/article/The-Shadow-Scholar/125329/

 

Very well written and entertaining. This is exactly how I got extra money in high school and college. In high school I would charge $50 for a 3 - 5 page essay. I would guarantee a grade of 85 or higher. In college I charged $50 per page. When I began to TA, I noticed how far some students, particularly the females, are willing to go for an A. I know I am not the best writer but I was amazed just how bad most college students write. It's truly sad how incompetent some of these students were, yet there they were, on the deans list, every semester.  Ever since then I lost a lot of respect for our educational system. It's true that college professors don't have the time nor the mental capacity to be ethical detectives but they should use their common sense more than their egos. They should value independent thinking more than how well we remember their own words or how well we memorize their books.

 

i dont know why you are judging who you wrote for,you are just as them.you should be really ashamed.....