There's actually a web site called CheatHouse! And it's a pay site!
And if there's one, there's probably many, especially seing how professional this one looks. I wonder how much money is earned every year on students paying for access to ready-cooked essays like this?
I wonder how many are dull or stressed enough to just copy such essays directly?
I wonder how long it takes on average from an essay is posted until it is familiar to every smart teacher in the US? They are not exactly hard to find, this page was right near the top of a simple google search, along with several similar sites (it seems nobody is interested in "robber barons" except teachers and students). Although admittedly this site claims it alone has over 100,000 essays and over 30 new essays added daily. It can't be easy for teachers to keep on top of that. Unless of course several students in a class cheat from the same source.
You know, just reading the first paragraphs of a couple of these essays, it strikes me how boring it must be most of the time to be a teacher and have to constantly read and grade generally-boring-and-unoriginal (it's hard to be original and why take chances with your grades?) essays on the same eternal subjects. Wow.
Dave says:
A lot of them - at least the better, more expensive companies - give out one-of-a-kind essays. Properly researched and original, there is no way to identify them as not the work of the student.
The last time I went through a degree course, several years ago, there were explicit warnings about the absolute certainty of failure / removal from the course if found to be using such sites.
ReplyDeleteWork was submitted in an electronic format, and apparently there was software available even then that would pick up a large percentage of such 'cheats'
I've no idea how the software worked, but several of us were invited to submit a 'cheat' anonymously within a lecture group of over 100 people on that occasion ... the software stopped all but one of them (even worked on two essays that were completed by mixing up sections from multiple 'cheat' papers)!
Strangely enough, to the best of my knowledge, no-one took the risk throughout a 3 year course; at least, no-one was found out, but it's probably tantamount to the same thing.
That was circa 1998 ... such software can only have been improved since then, no?
One would think.
ReplyDeleteI'm surprised there's a business.
I'm also surprised the rules were as abrupt as you describe, I wonder if that's typical.
Most of these companies wouldn't be in business if their work could be so easily identified. A lot of them - at least the better, more expensive companies - give out one-of-a-kind essays. Properly researched and original, there is no way to identify them as not the work of the student.
ReplyDeleteIf you're risking explusion from the course or the school for cheating, you're going to put out the cash necessary to get something original.
Sure, if you got it! That can get expensive if it continues, I'm sure.
ReplyDeleteThanks for the info, I did not know about the Original Essays services.
I've never known anybody who used them, though. Or at least no one who admitted it. Even if I'd been tempted I wouldn't have done it as the penalty - expulsion - wasn't worth the risk.
ReplyDeleteI just don't think the several competing sites would be there and flourishing if they did not have a sound business.
ReplyDeleteIt must not be as easy to catch them as some people would have us believe, then.
ReplyDelete