The Shadow Scholar:
Professional Plagiarists and the Academy
By
A Big Fat Liar
Here
This is not only worth reading, it should be mandatory.
The author is a crook and a liar...though, other than that, he seems like he might be a nice enough guy. Like so many crooks and liars, his crookedness and lying got a push early on from some mistreatment...in his case, at the hands of academia.
Dude writes papers for students...or, that is: he makes a living by helping students plagiarize. Apparently education and nursing students are the worst. So maybe think about that next time you go to the hospital, or send your kids to school. He tries to foist the blame professors for his lying, cheating bullshit. And, though there's no getting around the fact that he's the assh*le here...or, rather, one of the assh*les...he's clearly got a point--and a point I've long pushed around these parts.
University educations are largely a joke. Grade inflation has pumped grades so far up that it is the commonest thing in the world for students to get 'A's and 'B's without studying...in fact, I'm told, without going to class. In fact, I'm also told, without even buying the book. I know of professors who almost never give any grade lower than an 'A-'. When I was at William and Mary, they used to publish grade distributions every semester, broken down by department. I remember that, in one semester, the Women's Studies department (for example) gave three grades that were non-'A's (among about a hundred grades given). I have a perfectly sensible, non-draconian grade distribution in my classes--said distribution is the source of endless complains and whining by students, who are used to (and I am not making this up) classes in which over 50% of students routinely get 'A's. Let me remind you that these are students who also routinely neither read the assignments nor attend class.
Not every corner of every university is a joke. But there is extensive rot at the very core of the average American university. Students are paying lots of money to basically be assigned a bunch of busy-work and get their rubber-stamp 'A'...or, at worst, a 'B'. (Around these parts, only 17% of students in general education classes get 'C's. Almost none get 'D's or 'F's.)
As someone points on in comments to "The Shadow Scholar": professors aren't mind-readers. When someone as greedy, clever and dedicated as Mr. SS bends all his energies to fooling us, it will probably work. We've got--literally--about 99 other students to attend to that semester. I put only a modest amount of effort into catching cheaters, and I often come across as some kind of draconian control freak. It's tough to catch cheaters without turning all Gestapo...not to mention: catching up innocent students in your dragnet.
Still, the whole system, over four years, ought to be able to filter out students like those who patronize Mr. SS...find them out either for their incompetence or their dishonesty. And the fact that it can't should worry all of you folks, too; these are people who you are likely to, at some point, trust with something important. But they are too stupid, ignorant, intellectually dead and rotten, and morally corrupt to be entrusted with anything. And yet they graduate. Why? Lots of reasons, but here are some:
1. Many university professors are not very intelligent. At all.
2. Many university professors don't really know very much.
3. Many university departments/disciplines are light-weight, intellectually bankrupt enterprises in which there is neither any method for nor any desire to separate bullshit from non-bullshit.
4. Many students have no intellectual goals or interests whatsoever. They can barely be bothered to go through the motions. Consequently, the whole enterprise has become degraded, and the bar has been lowered. Students and administrators both have come to regard the purpose of a university education as vocational. College, therefore, has become nothing more than a series of boxes to be checked off, a way-station to a higher salary. If you genuinely try to do your job as a professor, you are likely to be regarded as a freak.
5. The incentive structure rewards professors who spend all their time publishing, who entertain their students and give them high grades.
College is, so far as I can tell, largely a joke. To the extent that it is not a joke, this is largely, apparently, because it requires a fair amount of busy-work. Require actual thought, reward actual excellence, make the experience genuinely challenging, and the most obvious reward for your efforts will be that your job becomes a lot, lot harder.
So, though we really shouldn't allow Mr. SS to deflect the blame he so richly deserves, he does make a good point: if universities weren't such bullshit, it'd be a lot harder for him to get away with it.
Professional Plagiarists and the Academy
By
A Big Fat Liar
Here
This is not only worth reading, it should be mandatory.
The author is a crook and a liar...though, other than that, he seems like he might be a nice enough guy. Like so many crooks and liars, his crookedness and lying got a push early on from some mistreatment...in his case, at the hands of academia.
Dude writes papers for students...or, that is: he makes a living by helping students plagiarize. Apparently education and nursing students are the worst. So maybe think about that next time you go to the hospital, or send your kids to school. He tries to foist the blame professors for his lying, cheating bullshit. And, though there's no getting around the fact that he's the assh*le here...or, rather, one of the assh*les...he's clearly got a point--and a point I've long pushed around these parts.
University educations are largely a joke. Grade inflation has pumped grades so far up that it is the commonest thing in the world for students to get 'A's and 'B's without studying...in fact, I'm told, without going to class. In fact, I'm also told, without even buying the book. I know of professors who almost never give any grade lower than an 'A-'. When I was at William and Mary, they used to publish grade distributions every semester, broken down by department. I remember that, in one semester, the Women's Studies department (for example) gave three grades that were non-'A's (among about a hundred grades given). I have a perfectly sensible, non-draconian grade distribution in my classes--said distribution is the source of endless complains and whining by students, who are used to (and I am not making this up) classes in which over 50% of students routinely get 'A's. Let me remind you that these are students who also routinely neither read the assignments nor attend class.
Not every corner of every university is a joke. But there is extensive rot at the very core of the average American university. Students are paying lots of money to basically be assigned a bunch of busy-work and get their rubber-stamp 'A'...or, at worst, a 'B'. (Around these parts, only 17% of students in general education classes get 'C's. Almost none get 'D's or 'F's.)
As someone points on in comments to "The Shadow Scholar": professors aren't mind-readers. When someone as greedy, clever and dedicated as Mr. SS bends all his energies to fooling us, it will probably work. We've got--literally--about 99 other students to attend to that semester. I put only a modest amount of effort into catching cheaters, and I often come across as some kind of draconian control freak. It's tough to catch cheaters without turning all Gestapo...not to mention: catching up innocent students in your dragnet.
Still, the whole system, over four years, ought to be able to filter out students like those who patronize Mr. SS...find them out either for their incompetence or their dishonesty. And the fact that it can't should worry all of you folks, too; these are people who you are likely to, at some point, trust with something important. But they are too stupid, ignorant, intellectually dead and rotten, and morally corrupt to be entrusted with anything. And yet they graduate. Why? Lots of reasons, but here are some:
1. Many university professors are not very intelligent. At all.
2. Many university professors don't really know very much.
3. Many university departments/disciplines are light-weight, intellectually bankrupt enterprises in which there is neither any method for nor any desire to separate bullshit from non-bullshit.
4. Many students have no intellectual goals or interests whatsoever. They can barely be bothered to go through the motions. Consequently, the whole enterprise has become degraded, and the bar has been lowered. Students and administrators both have come to regard the purpose of a university education as vocational. College, therefore, has become nothing more than a series of boxes to be checked off, a way-station to a higher salary. If you genuinely try to do your job as a professor, you are likely to be regarded as a freak.
5. The incentive structure rewards professors who spend all their time publishing, who entertain their students and give them high grades.
College is, so far as I can tell, largely a joke. To the extent that it is not a joke, this is largely, apparently, because it requires a fair amount of busy-work. Require actual thought, reward actual excellence, make the experience genuinely challenging, and the most obvious reward for your efforts will be that your job becomes a lot, lot harder.
So, though we really shouldn't allow Mr. SS to deflect the blame he so richly deserves, he does make a good point: if universities weren't such bullshit, it'd be a lot harder for him to get away with it.
posted by Winston Smith at
12:39 PM
6 Comments:
Apparently education and nursing students are the worst. So maybe think about that next time you go to the hospital, or send your kids to school.
I'll think "This nurse / teacher is probably deeply in debt, because she's had to pay for a useless graduate degree, although she can do her job fine without it, and neither the teachers who gave it to her nor the people who employ her can tell whether she learned anything in the process, so I'll cut her some slack".
Well, just to be clear: though, of course, it's the fault of the individual students who cheat, I'm certainly not indicting all education or nursing students. Rather, I'm just noting Mr. SS's claim. I also think that teachers and nurses make a good example to think about in case anyone thinks this is not a serious problem...
SS's story about why he turned to a life of crime (or at least plagiarism) rings a familiar note in the high school world, as well.
A rise in the demand for quantifiable standards has led to an overemphasis on English (mostly grammatical rules) and math. Not that grammar or mathematics are bad - on the contrary, I think both are important. However, it certainly leads to a deemphasis on less quantifiable or less "important" courses as schools scramble to get their scores up for NCLB.
The upshot of this, from my perspective, seems to be the transformation of education from a process that has something to do with opening up the person through the intellect into a production factory for good businessfolk. Creative/innovative/lateral thinking is, in the standards-heavy model, not emphasized all that much.
I don't want to fall into a simplistic "Your-educational-paradigm-turns-people-to-the-dark-side!" argument here. But it's hard not to see that paradigm's effects in the story SS tells about himself.
@Winston --
Are you differentiating between 100 level courses and 200+ level courses in your jeremiad against lax grading?
Frankly, my dear, I don't give a damn... about grading in 100-level courses. College grading only matters when (a) you are primarily being graded on your discipline of thought, and/or (b) you get to the meat of your discipline. Term papers in off-topic courses are mostly for practice. The important point is whether you can ace your upper level final exams and your senior project.
When I graduated, I had a single professor in my upper-level courses who gave straight-A's. Appropriately, his specialty was abstract geometry. He was infamous for giving straight-A's, even after criticism from the provost for not grading on a curve.
His memorable response: "A straight line is a curve." This is not to say I didn't learn anything in his class: on the contrary, I learned quite a bit about both differntial geometry and life in Holland during WWII.*
* Ernst Snapper, RIP.
Addendum:
Please note that an adequate GPA is enough to get you into a job interview. For sane employers, it does not mean you can get--or keep--the job.
I have no idea what the most important qualification for nurses are.
For teachers, it's quite clear that employment is based on qualifications; and this was true even before the era of excessive GPA inflation.
If you want to write about incompetent teachers, that would be great! But it's a very different article from GPA inflation.
-mac
Some crotchety ex academic on a hipster scum message board I read pointed out that this paper writing 'industry' has at least some parallels to the university trend of slashing full time faculty jobs in favor of adjuncts. Universities outsource their teaching work to adjuncts; students outsource their writing work to this dude. Something something corporatization of the university?
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