Doing Other People's Assignments Online
Doing Other People's Assignments Online
(OP)
The business of writing other people's academic articles has been going on for quite some time. I read a book by a certain lawyer today who complained that in the 80s, some of his friends would mail the details of their projects (term papers, as they are known in some countries that don't use metric, haha) to other students/researchers in Europe, US, etc., and send them money via Western Union to have them done for them. His friends would then enjoy the rest of their semester stress-free, while he had to go to the uni library and do lots of work.
Fast-forward a few decades, and today, the case is quite a bit different. From what I've heard, more and more students, "researchers", etc., in the west are sending their projects to people in other parts of the world to do their work for them. You could say that academic research is being outsourced. It's actually cheaper, because a writer from, say, Kenya or India, can underbid a writer from the US since 10$ goes a longer way in their country. Almost all the writers I know of/have heard of are in higher education, or have just recently graduated and are still tarmacking (job-hunting), so to them, academic writing is a side-hustle. Although I do have a former classmate who paid his school fees, bought his own car, and is building a farm, I hear, all from being paid for these jobs.
It's way easier too, nowadays. Instead of Postal Mail that might take weeks, you have email that takes seconds. Instead of Western Union, you have services Paypal, MPesa, mVisa, various escrow services, etc. Some of these services send the money straight to your phone. Instead of browsing a directory looking for people/companies that can write for you, you have sites like upwork, etc., that quickly connect you to them.
I've never wanted to do academic writing jobs for others online, because I've always felt like it's just dishonest. To be honest, I don't think I ever will, but I'd like to know:
1. What do you guys think of term papers being outsourced in this way, from an ethical standpoint?
2. Do the people who use these websites know the kind of people doing their work for them? The questions to be written on have varying levels of difficulty. Some are easy, others are hard, and I'm sure that there are people competent enough to do proper research on the hard ones. But, some are just plain incompetent, and I can't help but wonder at the quality of the work being handed in. Just the other day, a classmate of mine whose proficiency in MS Word goes as far as the keyboard and the save button came to me asking him to help him write a paper on the benefits of Outlook. Then, I know someone who studied accounting in school, who was given a job related to power plant efficiency.
3. Do they also know that there's a blackmarket for the most highly ranked accounts on these sites? Your visibility on these sites depends on how many articles you've written, plus other factors like your previous "employers'" ratings of your work, etc. But, these accounts sell like crazy, because if you sign up the proper way, it'll be a long time till you get any work.
4. Do professors know when their students submit outsourced work?
Which way, engineering?
Some references:
1. https://www.elance.com/trends/talent-available/geo
2. http://www.freelancewritinggigs.com/2015/12/freela... (from 2015, outdated)
3. The list on http://www.biasharainsight.com/2016/01/list-academ... outlines some popular academic writing websites.
Fast-forward a few decades, and today, the case is quite a bit different. From what I've heard, more and more students, "researchers", etc., in the west are sending their projects to people in other parts of the world to do their work for them. You could say that academic research is being outsourced. It's actually cheaper, because a writer from, say, Kenya or India, can underbid a writer from the US since 10$ goes a longer way in their country. Almost all the writers I know of/have heard of are in higher education, or have just recently graduated and are still tarmacking (job-hunting), so to them, academic writing is a side-hustle. Although I do have a former classmate who paid his school fees, bought his own car, and is building a farm, I hear, all from being paid for these jobs.
It's way easier too, nowadays. Instead of Postal Mail that might take weeks, you have email that takes seconds. Instead of Western Union, you have services Paypal, MPesa, mVisa, various escrow services, etc. Some of these services send the money straight to your phone. Instead of browsing a directory looking for people/companies that can write for you, you have sites like upwork, etc., that quickly connect you to them.
I've never wanted to do academic writing jobs for others online, because I've always felt like it's just dishonest. To be honest, I don't think I ever will, but I'd like to know:
1. What do you guys think of term papers being outsourced in this way, from an ethical standpoint?
2. Do the people who use these websites know the kind of people doing their work for them? The questions to be written on have varying levels of difficulty. Some are easy, others are hard, and I'm sure that there are people competent enough to do proper research on the hard ones. But, some are just plain incompetent, and I can't help but wonder at the quality of the work being handed in. Just the other day, a classmate of mine whose proficiency in MS Word goes as far as the keyboard and the save button came to me asking him to help him write a paper on the benefits of Outlook. Then, I know someone who studied accounting in school, who was given a job related to power plant efficiency.
3. Do they also know that there's a blackmarket for the most highly ranked accounts on these sites? Your visibility on these sites depends on how many articles you've written, plus other factors like your previous "employers'" ratings of your work, etc. But, these accounts sell like crazy, because if you sign up the proper way, it'll be a long time till you get any work.
4. Do professors know when their students submit outsourced work?
Which way, engineering?
Some references:
1. https://www.elance.com/trends/talent-available/geo
2. http://www.freelancewritinggigs.com/2015/12/freela... (from 2015, outdated)
3. The list on http://www.biasharainsight.com/2016/01/list-academ... outlines some popular academic writing websites.
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The EAC - One People, One Destiny... One Federation.





RE: Doing Other People's Assignments Online
RE: Doing Other People's Assignments Online
RE: Doing Other People's Assignments Online
RE: Doing Other People's Assignments Online
RE: Doing Other People's Assignments Online
Ghostwriting is a fascinating practice, and I think it is okay if there is no true reason for someone to produce a work themselves. An professional academic using a ghostwriter would be unethical, but a fiction author could use them until the cows came home and I wouldn't care as long as the ghostwriter was good at reproducing the original author's style.
RE: Doing Other People's Assignments Online
http://www.npr.org/sections/thetwo-way/2013/01/16/...
Dan - Owner
http://www.Hi-TecDesigns.com
RE: Doing Other People's Assignments Online
Dik
RE: Doing Other People's Assignments Online
When I was going through college, a group of students copied lab work from students' from the previous semester. They were sloppy and failed to change some critical things so the prof recognized whose lab work they had copied. He flunked them all and partly because they were too stupid to change the lab work prior to submittal.
I suspect most professors wouldn't be able to identify outsourced with if the students used the same writers consistently. There would be no original work to compare against. Some very savvy profs may be able to discern ability through examination and thought processes exhibited solving problems on exams and homework.
I knew some students that didn't know how to program their calculators correctly and the programs weren't to be used on exams anyway. Needless to say, they failed that exam and were found out. It didn't go well.
Pamela K. Quillin, P.E.
Quillin Engineering, LLC
NSPE-CO, Central Chapter
Dinner program: http://nspe-co.org/events.php
RE: Doing Other People's Assignments Online
Dik
RE: Doing Other People's Assignments Online
That will apply to many things in professional life; it's good to know that it's acceptable to simply not bother.
RE: Doing Other People's Assignments Online
Good-news or bad, sometimes it is worth while to identify those cases where a detailed analysis is useful and others where there are enough unknowns that a less detailed approach is sufficient.
RE: Doing Other People's Assignments Online
Pamela K. Quillin, P.E.
Quillin Engineering, LLC
NSPE-CO, Central Chapter
Dinner program: http://nspe-co.org/events.php
RE: Doing Other People's Assignments Online
RE: Doing Other People's Assignments Online
So as long as it's obvious you plagiarize your work, it's ok to cheat..... got it.
RE: Doing Other People's Assignments Online
Dik
RE: Doing Other People's Assignments Online
RE: Doing Other People's Assignments Online
In the history of engineering at the university, I was likely the first and only student to have done that. It wasn't that I couldn't have done the problem...
Dik
RE: Doing Other People's Assignments Online
RE: Doing Other People's Assignments Online
Dik
RE: Doing Other People's Assignments Online
Some people just don't "get it".
Dan - Owner
http://www.Hi-TecDesigns.com
RE: Doing Other People's Assignments Online
"Everyone is entitled to their own opinions, but they are not entitled to their own facts."
RE: Doing Other People's Assignments Online
"Everyone is entitled to their own opinions, but they are not entitled to their own facts."
RE: Doing Other People's Assignments Online
A couple of smart guys on my class had access to the previous tests (which they didn't share with any others) and started cheating. Some were even to the limit of making the tests at home (and deciding between the group who would get which marks) and just replace it during test. All went well until the day that the teacher messed up the order of the tests and some of cheaters were caught answering questions of the wrong test...
All those guys got disciplinary hearings ...
The only time that I paid for "outsourced" academic work was on my MBA's final thesis because not being English native, I had to have someone make an English revision...
RE: Doing Other People's Assignments Online
Dan - Owner
http://www.Hi-TecDesigns.com
RE: Doing Other People's Assignments Online
I lurk on an Editor's Facebook page. Editors edit graduate theses. I see no problems if they looked for spelling, grammar and poor sentence and paragraph structure, especially if you are ESL.
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JHG
RE: Doing Other People's Assignments Online
"Everyone is entitled to their own opinions, but they are not entitled to their own facts."
RE: Doing Other People's Assignments Online