Month: March 2009

College Students and Essay Mills

The Chronicle of Higher Education’s March edition includes an expose into  how Essay Mills work and their impact on college life.  For those who do not know, essay mills are companies that write original essays on demand for students.  They are different from companies that sell stock essays because essays from essay mills cannot be detected by plagiarism software.

The article traces the business of EssayWriters.net, one of the biggest essay mills in the world.  Essay Writers allows anyone, mostly American and British college students, to upload paper topics, specifications and due dates into an online form.  From there, Essay Writers puts these “writing requests” into a database that its freelance writers can browse and bid on.

Freelance writers can come from anywhere.  According to the article, there are many writers from Asia, Nigeria and some from the United States.  Once a writer bids on the project, the student gets a quote, usually between $19.99 and $42.99 per page, depending on due date, degree of difficulty and other specifications.

The article claims that students from all backgrounds are using essay mills:

Some customers of Essay Writers are college freshmen who, if their typo-laden, grammatically challenged order forms are any indication, struggle with even the most basic writing tasks. But along with the usual suspects, there is no shortage of seniors paying for theses and graduate students buying dissertations.

One customer, for example, identifies himself as a Ph.D. student in aerospace engineering at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. He or she (there is no name on the order) is interested in purchasing a 200-page dissertation. The student writes that the dissertation must be “well-researched” and includes format requirements and a general outline. Attached to the order is a one-page description of Ph.D. requirements taken directly from MIT’s Web site. The student also suggests areas of emphasis like “static and dynamic stability of aircraft controls.” 

The explosive growth, as well as acceptance by college students, of these essay mills is a troubling, not to mention scary, phenomenon.  Students from all levels of college are buying papers and not learning how to actually write or do proper research.  They treat a college degree as a credential, a piece of paper that is needed to get to the next step.

 The students come from all disciplines and all parts of the country. They go to community colleges and Ivy League universities. Some want a 10-page paper; others request an entire dissertation.

As these student graduate and enter the workforce with their credentials from American universities, are they going to be able to actually do any work? When they get an assignment at the office that they do not like, think is boring or believe is beneath them, what will they do? Will the mechanical engineer be able to actually design anything and will the freshmen ever learn how to write?

I am worried that many in my generation of workers are lazy and are not prepared to compete in the global economy.  I think that we are heading toward an economy that rewards those with skills, but does not offer as many opportunities to people without.  Students who are too lazy or uninterested in doing any actual learning are going to lose out in the global economy.  The Nigerians, Chinese and Filipinos writing American college students’ papers are going to be the ones who succeed in the global economy.  In essence, they are getting a college degree for free.  Others in developing countries are taking advantage of opportunities like these, whereas many Americans are not.  These workers are willing to work hard and go the extra mile in order to succeed, something that is seemingly lacking in many American college students.

So what is the solution?  I am a realist; plagiarism has been around forever and I would guess that many, if not most, college and high school students have engaged in some form of it during their academic careers.  There is a continuium between writing one’s own work on one end, to buying a paper from an essay mill on the other, with paraphrasing wikipedia somewhere in between.

Just like with drugs, sex and alcohol, simply telling students its wrong will not come close to making a dent in the problem.  I think educators, starting in middle school, should begin to show students why its necessary to get a good education.  Plagiarizing is simply robbing oneself of part of the opportunity to succeed in a future job.  I would start by telling students about globalization.  I would teach them about outsourcing and how the entire world is interconnected.  Let them know that there is probably a kid in China, Korea, India, Brazil or Nigeria working as hard as possible to succeed in life.  I would keep teaching these lessons through their academic careers so that they can see real life examples of the people they are competing against in the job market.  Simply telling students that plagiarism is wrong will not work.  People need concrete examples of why it will hurt them in both the short and long run.  I am not optimistic that any of this will ever happen, but it would be a good experiment to see if cheating could be reduced using some sort of curriculum like this.

HT: Freakonomics

Unintentional Comedy from the Treasury Department

On February 10th, Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner gave an interview where he began to lay out some of the Obama Administrations plan to help fix the economy.  He said that the Treasury would create a website called FinancialStability.gov to keep the public apprised of the situation.

Its now March 23rd and the top of the website currently reads:

 

financial-stability

Always Running is Excellent

I just finished reading Always Running: La Vida Loca: Gang Life in LA by Luis Rodriguez.  It is a memoir that Rodriguez started when he was 16 and is  about his life growing up as a member in one of the most vicious gangs in LA.  It is a window into a life that I am very glad that I never had to experience.  His feelings of neglect, isolation and rejection come tearing off the pages as his life spirals downward and he decides to leave school to join a gang full time.

His battles with drugs, alcohol, inhalants, violence, abusive police, racism, rival gangs and most of all, his family, are constant reminders about the life Rodriguez once lived and eventually escaped.

At first, his decision to join a gang baffled me.  It is evident from the beginning of the book that Rodriguez is smart kid.  It is also clear that he wants to be successful and will work hard to improve his chances at success, but for a long time, he does not.  He falls into gangs, drugs, crime and depression.

Its scary to think how easy it was for someone as brilliant and talented as Rodriguez to succumb to the gang lifestyle, even when he was smarter than most of his peers.  He was talented enough to do well in school, but did not. What does this example say about kids with lower intelligence or talent levels from similarly disadvantaged backgrounds?  If the smartest kid falls into gangs, the outlook must be even more dismal for the other, less talented kids.

Rodriguez’s thesis is that all kids, even smart kids, who feel isolated will try to carve out an existence for themselves.  In many cases in poor communities, the only niche available is gang life.  Rodriguez argues that the solution is creating opportunities and bringing disadvantaged kids in from isolation.  After reading the book, I think that I gained a new perspective on how many people in this country continue to feel on a daily basis.

I would highly recommend reading Always Running.

How Much is Fair to Tip a Tour Guide?

My friend (I can’t use her real name because her company does not like employees to talk about tips) graduated from UW-Madison this past May and decided to take a different path than most graduates.  Instead of setting for a 9-5 desk job, she decided to travel and get jobs wherever she ended up.  I truly admire her decision and hope I am able to do something similar at some point.

She is currently living in London working as a tour guide for free walking tours in central London.  She is paid a small wage per tour, but the bulk of her compensation comes from tips from tourists on her guided tours.

When she first began giving tours, she would wait until the end of the tour and then say “If you had fun, I will graciously accept tips.”  Some people would tip, but many would not and her Pounds per person rate was rather low.

Last week, she changed her pitch at the end of tours to “I work on a tips only basis, so if you had fun, I will graciously accept what you think this tour is worth.”  When she took a tour group past one of the many bus tours of central London, she would say “look at all of those lazy people on the buses.  They paid 30 pounds for their trip and all they do is sit.”

Her tips have increased by over 50%.

Her story is an interesting case of how small changes in messages to create a large change in viewer reaction.  The Nudges Blog talks about these types of issues every day.  She also uses anchoring to get people to think about what her tour is worth.  By letting her tourists know that people who are on the bus tours pay 30 Pounds, she is giving them an idea of what other tours are worth.  She is setting a high anchor for people so that when they are asked to tip, they base their tips on a known commodity.

Although her tips have increased, she is still looking for other nudges that will increase them even more.  See if you can help her out by posting your ideas in the comments.