those dark satanic mills
Here’s a terrific article from the Chronicle of Higher Education about essay mills — companies who hire writers to write papers for college students and in some cases graduate students. (There’s even an anecdote here about someone from MIT wanting to buy a doctoral dissertation in aerospace engineering, though I’m inclined to think that one is a hoax.) For students with money in hand, this is an appealing alternative to the copy-and-paste of plagiarism: there is virtually no way to get caught, even when a teacher knows that a particular student doesn't have the skills to have written what he or she turned in. A cheater with a live credit card and true firmness of purpose is almost bound to get away with it.
The excuses and justifications made by the students and the writers alike are just what you’d expect them to be; that’s not where the interest of the piece lies. It seems to me that the most noteworthy fact here is this: essay mills of this kind can succeed only because college professors all over the Western world assign precisely the same kinds of papers. No wonder some of the writers can turn out dozens of the damned things in a week — “I can knock out 10 pages in an hour,” one of them says. “Ten pages is nothing.” The assignments we professors give are so woodenly predictable that they positively invite woodenly predictable essays in response.
So there could be something good to come out of the rise of the essay mill, and the similar rise of copy-and-paste plagiarism — but only if professors develop and exercise some imagination, and come up with assignments that are distinctive to a particular class, a particular body of material, even a particular teaching style: assignments that would throw a professional essay writer for a loop, and that wouldn't benefit from something found on the internet and pasted in. Not that I’m expecting any such development, you understand. I’m just saying.
(Of course, a lot of these problems would also go away if we eliminated or at least radically revised our system of grading and credentialing, but I don't hold out any hope for major changes in those areas.)
Law schools get around this by forcing students to write their essays in a controlled environment, all at one sitting, usually by hand.
We had to do this for one of my philosophy of the mind courses in undergrad, and I remember it being successful. Students, by and large, overstudied or they failed.
— JA · Mar 18, 03:17 PM · #
It strikes me that (too much) concern about this is akin to PEG’s post from a few weeks back about his concern about rising credentialism in the US. Doesn’t it all (mostly) come out in the wash? (Yes, cold comfort to the student who’s actually putting in the hours and only managing to pull a B, while some asshole is buying an essay and getting an A. What can one say but, “Life isn’t fair.”)
I’d go one circle wider on the teaching style/assignment quality thought: What if teachers actually taught classes in a way that made the student want to do put in the time to do the work? What if writing the essays seemed like an opportunity rather than a chore, regardless of whether or not a passable cheat could be purchased online. Yes, I know, an absurd thought. Yet that was (mostly) my experience.
Or maybe I’m just nostalgic… Who can know for sure?
One last thought: Make students submit papers in long hand. Transcription of short passages is easier than writing, but (for most) it quickly descends into intolerable boredom in a few pages. Easier to just write the thing yourself.
— Tony Comstock · Mar 18, 03:28 PM · #
“It seems to me that the most noteworthy fact here is this: essay mills of this kind can succeed only because college professors all over the Western world assign precisely the same kinds of papers.”
Alan, any thoughts on the kind of outside-the-box assignment that could pose a difficulty here? Since the essays are written to spec, I’m not sure I see why an appropriately schooled freelancer couldn’t meet the assignment the same as a student — unless maybe the subject matter were so connected with classroom teaching, or with esoteric assigned reading.
Tony Comstock wrote: “One last thought: Make students submit papers in long hand. Transcription of short passages is easier than writing, but (for most) it quickly descends into intolerable boredom in a few pages. Easier to just write the thing yourself.”
I dunno. My writing skills are so bound up in word processing that if I had to turn in an assignment in longhand, I’d still do it on the computer and then copy it out. Easier than recopying half a page of handwriting because I wanted to rephrase something in the second graf.
— SDG · Mar 18, 03:37 PM · #
Also, an apropos of nothing: earlier this week my wife made the most delicious herb-crusted pork tenderloin. Last Summer we got a new oven with much more reliable temperature control and she’s really got the time/temp dials for this cut of meat.
Just now I’ve sliced a half-dozen medallions from the left over hunk, and put them between two pieces of bread with some smoked gouda and then pitched the whole assemblage onto the panini press we got as a gift last Winter. (I was dubious, but it turns out it’s a wonderful gadget!)
I am only mentioning it here because the anticipation I am feeling is so keen I have to tell somebody and I am home alone with our three year old and our dog, and neither of them are showing the proper appreciation of the miracle that is transpiring in our kitchen!
— Tony Comstock · Mar 18, 03:39 PM · #
Damn, Tony, now I’m hungry.
Regarding trying to help students want to write and engage, this is an interesting recent article.
JA: I have colleagues who have cut back on papers and done more exams just for that reason.
SDG: I think the success of essay mills depends on writers being able to write to simple and predictable formulas. The more time they have to spend puzzling over an assignment, the less likely they are to take on the job at all.
— Alan Jacobs · Mar 18, 04:08 PM · #
I ate the first sandwich and then made two more; devouring the former as I grilled the latter. It could become a way of life.
The wanting to learn thing. Hell I don’t know. Right after I said “make them do it in long hand,” I remember that from the age of 9 to the age of 22, I was fantastically crippled by what I can only describe as a physical inability to write standard English. I hope it’s clear by my comments here that I am not a stupid person. But if my intellect and potential had been judge solely on my hand written work from upper grade school to lower college, I would have been made a ward of the state. At a certain point I was so frustrated and humiliated (papers bleeding to death with red correction marks) that I actually refused to perform written assignments all together, and my high school moved me from the AP English, to “bonehead” and ultimately remedial English class. I guess I was feeling a little nostalgic…
Anyway, yes. Engaging students is hard, and sometimes through no fault of the teacher. I count myself very very lucky that once I got to college I found my way to a writing professor who was willing to meet me half way. (With his help I learned I could write, then the word processors came and I learned I could write well enough to get what I wanted, whether that was writing convincing arguments and pulling good grades or talking banks into lending me money.)
I do feel that something has gone amiss in the culture regarding learning and scholarship. I’m leery of that feeling because that’s how every feels once they get old enough, but it nags at me none the less. I am watching my own daughter’s enthusiasm for school being beaten down by (mostly) well intentioned policies that have terrible consequences. Trying to teach her how to be serious about school but not to take it too seriously; how to be deferential to the institution and it’s processes, while trusting her own instincts… well what can one say? That’s too much for most adults, let alone a girl who’s barely nine years of age.
Which brings me to another bit of nostalgia. I think I’ve mentioned the drawing teacher I had who tried, for a time, to give meaningful grades. Once tenured he gave up, and now only gives B’s and F’s. I chatted with him a couple of years ago. He’s still there. The administration has long given up on changing him, so he’s still giving B’s and F’s; and students are still breaking into tears at having their GPAs destroyed by his whimsy.
Life isn’t fair. It all comes out in the wash, or it doesn’t. The various crimes perpetrated against me have left indelible marks. So have the opportunities…
— Tony Comstock · Mar 18, 04:43 PM · #
Regarding trying to help students want to write, I’d say that it’s more important to teach students to write even when they don’t want to. Otherwise, they will only learn to write crap.
— The Reticulator · Mar 18, 04:44 PM · #
Regarding trying to help students want to write, I’d say that it’s more important to teach students to write even when they don’t want to. Otherwise, they will only learn to write crap.
I think I’ve got enough cred in the delayed gratification, virtue is it’s own reward, put in your time, pay your dues department to say with some measure of authority that this is a load of crap.
— Tony Comstock · Mar 18, 04:55 PM · #
It seems to me that general interest in long-form writing is a lost art among college students. While in graduate school back, from 2004-2006, the two things I feared most were group papers and being asked to critique another student’s essay. The quality of writing was atrocious, and I’m not just talking about one’s ability to convey complex thoughts. The actual grammar was almost uniformly poor. Even allowing that most student writing is lackluster and even staid, it should be at least coherent and free from errors one would expect to be ironed out in high school.
— James F. Elliott · Mar 18, 06:06 PM · #
what about writing assignments that require the student to turn in preliminary drafts, or to defend the content of their papers?
My own writing assignments require the students to design and carry out a group research project, and to present it in poster form as well as writing the paper, so I’m not concerned about paper mills. I also used to assign papers that required them to interpret fabricated data about an alien organism and explain its physiology or genetics, and I dare any paper mill employee to do that successfully! But even for people who don’t teach such courses, profs can require students to present their papers orally or engage in class discussions of them. I’ll be teaching philosophy of science next year, and am toying with the idea of setting students to debate one another in their papers – half writing on one position, half writing on the other, then exchanging and answering each other’s arguments.
— Pat · Mar 18, 10:40 PM · #
No panini press—but leftover (uncrusted) pork loin and (unsmoked) Gouda in the fridge.
When I was an English TA, a student turned in a paper that was plagiarized in full from a book, complete with footnote. I went to the library, found the passage, and took it to the director of the freshman writing program, along with the paper. He said I couldn’t penalize the student; she had given attribution.
Tony’s right. (Mortal) Life’s not fair, within the endpoints of the segment. * * * *
I once worked in an engineering office at the same university. A faculty once told me that the only difference between the university and MIT was the students.
Right.
— Julana · Mar 19, 12:36 AM · #
Mmm…sammiches.
As one of the rare students who actually enjoy constructing complicated arguments in long essay form (I’ll leave it up to Alan to say whether I was any good at it when I was in his class), I’m a little averse to the limitations of the in-class essay, though I’ve always appreciated the sportsmanlike challenge of it. And as an inveterate procrastinator, it was better for my academic and social health to know exactly when and for how long I was going to have to write.
Still, there’s no real replacement for learning how to write an extended essay, which takes more than a class period to compose. So for other alternatives that could weed out the frauds, while perhaps also adding some educational value:
How about oral defense? I suppose you could move the American model closer to the Oxbridge tutor model by requiring students to individually discuss assignments with professors, or to field questions from other students. From what I understand, this would prepare them better for grad school as well.
This sort of activity might be a bit difficult to impose within the classroom system, however. It’s better fitted to the small seminar. In fact, I’m not at all sure that there’s a way to prevent essay fraud while retaining the massive classroom style that’s so popular in America.
— Ethan C. · Mar 19, 01:44 AM · #
How about oral defense?
In my Advanced Con-Law and Space Law classes, Glenn Reynolds combined basically all the suggestions mentioned above. We had one grade, the final paper, but broken into segments. Within the first three weeks or so we submitted our topic. After another couple of weeks we submitted an outline, then a rough draft a couple weeks later. The last few weeks of class were reserved for our 15 minute oral presentations, and the final draft was due by the last day of exams. We also met for class at Downtown Bar and Grill, over as many glasses of micro-brewed beer as we could afford.
Good times.
— JA · Mar 19, 02:00 AM · #
Tony, I don’t see how your cred could possibly give you the necessary authority to declare my statement to be crap. It’s a disservice to unsuspecting students to give them the idea that it’s of such utmost importance to be enjoying what they’re doing. Many times I’ve seen where successful writers explain what made them successful. To hear them tell it, a lot of it comes down to making themselves write even when it isn’t fun.
— The Reticulator · Mar 19, 04:25 AM · #
Mr. Reticulator,
I am of the opinion that it is far more important to cultivate the stamina to pursue one’s passions than to endure tedium, and because of this opinion I hold the inculcation of students in the importance of performing uninteresting tasks in low regard.
— Tony Comstock · Mar 19, 11:49 AM · #
I teach Biblical Studies. Here’s the thing: By and large, undergrads really don’t understand how to read a text carefully, nor do they have a clear idea how to do research. This leaves them in the position of producing a lot of impressionistic, fuzzy-headed gobbledygook, when it comes to writing a paper about — for example — a Biblical text.
Because that is so, I really don’t feel like I have the option of not assigning a paper. You can’t use the Bible effectively — or even learn very much about what’s in it — if no one ever teaches you how to do exegesis.
Because my students are so far from being able to even do the kind of thing that I am asking for, I break the paper up into several parts, and set due dates for each of the sections. Once I have read the papers, I return their work (ungraded) with as much critical commentary as possible. When they turn in the next section, they also give me an updated version of the previous material, so that I can check their progress. This continues until the final due date.
This is a little extra work for me during the semester, but it does also produce all of the following positive reults: 1. I have to read almost nothing when the grading deadline arrives, becuase I have already read the material several times; 2. I’m pretty sure that the kids have turned in their own work, because I have been talking with them about it for a whole semester; 3. The kids actually learn how to read a text carefully, and how to find stuff in the library; 4. The paper is almost always listed on student reviews as one of the best parts of the class.
With regard to this discussion, I suspect that all of the writing and rewriting and deadlines makes it virtually impossible to use one of these sevices effectively. It would cost a fortune, I think.
I sometimes worry that this will just turn out to be an exercise in which I tell kids what to write. But that’s never actually how it turns out. They appreciate getting a little personal attention, and most of them really seem to pick up the ball and run with it. They interact with research that I’m not always familiar with, and often, they make connections that I would never have thought of. So, I feel like it works pretty well.
I don’t know…Is any of that transferrable to a Literature course?
— yo la tengo · Mar 19, 04:04 PM · #
Short college essays are the humanities’ equivalent to problem sets in math and science. Would it surprise anyone that a person with a BA in chemistry could knock out the solutions to a sophomore-level problem set in an hour?
The point of the short essay is not to allow the student to express himself, or to develop new perspectives on great issues. The point is to have the student perform an exercise in clear thinking and expression. These students need to learn to write clearly and logically so that a reader can quickly and accurately understand what the student means to say. That’s a skill that is highly valued in academia, government, and business, and it takes practice.
And nothing useful that a professor can assign will “throw a professional essay writer for a loop,” because the professional is a better writer than the students are. If the professional can’t do it, then the students won’t be able to do it, either.
— Bloix · Mar 19, 04:14 PM · #
Because my students are so far from being able to even do the kind of thing that I am asking for, I break the paper up into several parts, and set due dates for each of the sections. Once I have read the papers, I return their work (ungraded) with as much critical commentary as possible. When they turn in the next section, they also give me an updated version of the previous material, so that I can check their progress. This continues until the final due date.
Add in a measure of tolerance for my habit of misspelling words and even forgetting to write them down altogether, and you are more or less describing the exact method used by the writing professor who saved me from a life of virtual illiteracy. Remembering him, and thinking about what a difference he made in my life has me so overwhelmed with nostalgia and gratitude I’m hunting the internet to see if I can find a phone number so I can call him and thank him.
I’d call him out by name, but I’m sure my gratitude would be matched by vitriol from any number of online communities upon which his patience unknowingly unleashed my enthusiasm for engaging the world and expressing myself through the written word.
— Tony Comstock · Mar 19, 04:59 PM · #