Quote:Questionable online homework resource raises in popularity at SU
By Dara McBride

Staff Writer

| Published: Wednesday, April 28, 2010

Updated: Wednesday, April 28, 2010

When college student Adam Richman found himself and his peers overwhelmed with work, he turned to entrepreneurship for help.

Richman helped create a site, cheaphomework.com, that provides a staff to complete a student's homework in exchange for money. [Regionally accredited] Syracuse University ranked as one of the top three users, Richman said.

"We just heard a lot of people complain that they didn't want to do their homework anymore, that they'd prefer to go out, enjoy their night," Richman said. "We always saw on people's Facebook statuses, 'Hey, I'd pay someone $20 to do my math homework,' 'I'd really like to go out tonight, does anyone know someone who could write me an essay?' And we thought we should probably capitalize on this."

Richman named [regionally accredited] Arizona State University, [regionally accredited] University of Central Florida and the [regionally accredited] University of Massachusetts as other big users.

More than 500 assignments have been completed since the site began about a month ago, and between 50 and 100 of those are from SU, said Richman, a college student at an undisclosed university. He said he does not know how the site became so popular among SU students.

The site operates with a staff of about 10 college-educated people, mostly graduate students, located throughout the United States, Richman said.

"They're located all over the United States, so if an assignment comes in at 3 a.m., we have someone on the West Coast that can complete it, we have someone on the East Coast who can complete the assignments during the day," Richman said. "The person who does our math just graduated from Stanford."

Richman reviews every assignment for quality and neatness, spending five to 10 minutes checking that it matches the student's requirements.

"We do everything from papers to all questions on quizzes to essays and book reports to science projects to math homework," Richman said.

There's no set price per assignment, but factors like the length, amount of research and time affect the costs. Students include an estimate of how much they'd like to pay, but they can't use a school e-mail address for privacy reasons.

Richman uses the service himself and said it was nice to know he is not the only student overwhelmed with work. He said he recognized the site was morally wrong, but without federal laws forbidding plagiarism, Richman saw nothing wrong with operating the business.

"I don't really see how there are no state or federal laws that relate back to doing someone's homework," Richman said. "Obviously, there are going to be professors that aren't too happy about it. What we're doing is morally wrong, but I donÕt think there is anything illegal about it."

Richman described the company as a tutoring service and said it is up to the student to decide how to use the service. A disclaimer on the website states the business is a tutoring service and students decide how to use it within the guidelines of their high school, college or university.

SU's Academic Integrity Policy considers papers downloaded from the Internet or obtained from a paper mill to be plagiarism. Richman recognized students would likely get in trouble for using the site but did not consider the business to be a particularly bad moral offense in the long run.

"There are a lot of things that are morally wrong, but if you're an entrepreneur and you run a company, money comes first, I guess," Richman said.

Gary Pavela, director of SU's Office of Academic Integrity, said that the university has been encouraging faculty members to discuss and respond to homework in class in an effort to curb plagiarizing.

"We are reminding students that solid research shows that those who fail to do their own home or lab work are significantly disadvantaged in subsequent examinations, including national examinations for graduate and professional schools," Pavela said. "Using these services isn't only unethical - it's stupid. A waste of hard-earned tuition money."

Pavela said the number of students using the site might be questionable, given the source.

"Promoting honesty doesn't seem to be their highest priority," Pavela said.

Students should be careful of the decisions they make regarding academics because of potential issues later in life, Pavela said. He called attention to the advertising slogan the site uses: "Party now and pay later."

"More than ever, in this economy, students need to know what their transcript says they know. Prospective employers are screening with extraordinary care," Pavela said.

Ben Bradley, professor of ethics at SU, said he has encountered several issues with plagiarism in the past, all of which originated from online sources. One semester, Bradley found four to five papers out of 20 that were plagiarized, he said. After noticing a change in a student's writing style, Bradley said, he would look on Google for the original source.

"There's lots of stuff that's morally wrong that's not legally wrong, such as just lying to people," Bradley said. "But you shouldn't do it."

In response to problems, Bradley said he has assigned fewer papers and relied on in-class exams. He said it was a shame he could not allow students the extra time to learn how to write a paper. Ultimately, Bradley said the issue was with students, not the operators of online sites.

"Should we do anything about this guy who is doing people's homework for them and getting them to pay him? I guess I don't really view our beef as being with him so much as with our students," Bradley said.

Shakira Smith, a freshman information management and technology major, said she uses the online study resource StudyBlue, an operation that pays students for uploading notes from classes. She said she has been using the site for the past semester and that it helps her study and interact with other students in her class.

Smith said she did not previously consider StudyBlue to be unethical but could see how allowing access to students too lazy to go to class might be considered wrong. She said stress to complete assignments drives students to plagiarize.

"Students become so stressed and are afraid of receiving low marks, so they are convinced that they have to buy work off of others," Smith said.

Itthiphol Suratsombat, a junior psychology major, also uses StudyBlue. Suratsombat said he has used the site for the past school year to get notes from missed classes and considers the practice ethical.

"I think it's ethical because you're not copying someone's assignment. It's OK to share notes. Professors actually tell you that you should get notes from your friends if you don't make it to class, and this is what StudyBlue is used for, to get notes," Suratsombat said.

But Suratsombat said using a site like CheapHomework was unethical. Although he knows someone who has bought a paper online, he said it was not worth it.

"People that do that are lazy and unmotivated to do their own work," Suratsombat said. "When you're not doing your own work, you put yourself and your integrity at risk, but some people think they can get away with it so they do it."

4Knee Kate Wrote:If you get a degree for no or not very much work it's a "diploma mill." 

Quote:US: Students doing less study
John Gerritsen
09 May 2010
Issue: 123

New research shows modern students in the United States do less study than their predecessors in the 1960s. The research by professors Philip Babcock and Mindy Marks found US students in 1961 spent an average of 40 hours per week on academic work but by 2003 that had fallen to just 27 hours.

Academic work included such activities as homework, revision and attending lectures.

Marks says the decline has occurred among all kinds of students and at all types of universities.

It is not clear why students are studying less. Students do more paid work than in the past, she says, but that does not explain the drop in time spent on study.

The research also found that students spend more time on leisure activities than they used to.

But Marks says her peers are not surprised by the findings. "When I tell people, if anything they're shocked there was a time that students used to put in the required amount of time."

She says it is possible that modern students are more productive thanks to technology such as computers, but most of the decline in study hours happened in the 1970s - before computers were generally available.

Her sense is that the main reason for the decline is that lecturers are not demanding so much work from their students. And that has been driven by two factors: first, professors want more time for research so they set less work; second, students give better course evaluations to easier courses.

"There's really very little incentive in the current system for anybody to teach a demanding class. You're going to get worse course evaluations, the students aren't going to like it, it takes time away from other things that you could do," Marks says.

"Other than your sheer love of the material and the topic and your desire to spread that love to your students, that's it."

She says increased stratification of US universities might also have played a part. The reputation of a university sends more of a signal to potential employers than its graduates' grades.

There is less incentive for students to work hard in order to differentiate themselves from their peers.

The research indicates that students are doing less work than is required for their degrees but there is no evidence that the quality of graduates has decreased, Marks says.

It also indicates the opportunity cost of doing a degree has decreased since the 1960s. She says that is particularly interesting given the benefit in terms of increased earnings has not decreased.

As for her own classes, Marks tells students at the start of the year they are expected to do two hours of work for every hour of contact time. She says she will hold them to that and it works - they do the required hours of study.

Marks suspects that what is required to increase student study hours is a combined effort by all lecturers to lift expectations. But that will not necessarily be easy.

She notes that some universities use their leisure activities to promote themselves - for example, sending frisbees to new students. And a lecturer was recently removed for running a course that was too demanding.

The research is forthcoming in the Review of Economics and Statistics .

* Mindy Marks is an assistant professor of economics at the University of California, Riverside, and Philip Babcock is an assistant professor of economics at the University of California, Santa Barbara.

Quote:‘Original research’ for PhD on sale!

Chitleen K Sethi and Smriti Sharma Vasudeva
Tribune News Service

Chandigarh, April 8
Till three days ago, we did not know a word about the historical role of the Arya Samaj in the education of women. Today, we have on a platter a 102-page thesis on the subject for a mere Rs 8,000 [US$179], which we can submit in our name as “original research” for a PhD degree in any university in the country.

Investigating a tip-off, a Tribune team travelled across Punjab, Haryana and Chandigarh and found that theses submitted for PhD degrees in lesser-known universities in India were available for sale in “authorised” information centres of these universities.

Posing as students of History enrolled for a PhD in a university, we were asked by a source in Panjab University to contact the information centre of a South Indian university in Sector 38.

This vendor offered us a choice of three theses in Indian History, each for Rs 8,000: “Swami Vivekananda and the Indian Renaissance,” (pages 115, available in soft copy); “Women Education in Punjab 1886 to 1947 and the role of Arya Samaj,” (pages 102, available in hard copy) and “Handloom Weaving Industry in Punjab”, (pages 85, in hard copy).

“These have been submitted in a university but no one is likely to find out. However, in case you are caught, it would be solely your responsibility,” cautioned the vendor.

“An amount of Rs 8,000 to Rs 10,000 per thesis is the cheapest you will get readymade research work. It is because this would not have the signatures of the guide. Such thesis is basically for all those who are already enrolled in a PhD or MPhil course somewhere but cannot do the tedious research bit. I strongly recommend that a few paragraphs are changed here and there on every page,” he further suggested.

The other easy way of getting a PhD degree without picking up a single book is costlier but rampant. PhD programmes offered by universities in Rajasthan, Uttar Pradesh and Himachal Pradesh involve the registration of a student with a guide from the university and a local co-guide. Their information centres spread all over the country in the smallest of town in active connivance with local “guides” offer to do everything for the student.

“We will arrange the guide for you. He will do all research. You only have to pay Rs 1.25 lakh to him,” said a person running the learning centre of a university in Rajasthan in Patiala. The “guide” he offered was a retired teacher of Punjabi University, Patiala.

“The PhD entrance test for enrolment was on March 7. You are late but I can manage to show you as ‘appeared and clear’ from my centre for the admission. The PhD thesis would cost Rs 80,000 besides the official fee for the course which would be paid to the university,” said a person running a centre in Ambala representing the same university.

Interestingly, all that is needed to be a “guide” to a prospective PhD is to have a PhD degree with two years of teaching experience. Thousands of such “guides” are readily available to do the legwork for the student for the lure of an additional source of income.

The student does not learn anything in the process. All you have in the end are 200 plus pages of rechurned, regurgitated research, which fetches students a degree. “We will ensure that your thesis is evaluated by our own people and also guide you on how to clear the final viva voce after the end of three years. Just read your thesis once in the end!” said a woman running the centres of two universities in Sector 37.

Quote:Paid PhDs: UGC, varsities toothless, helpless
Chitleen K Sethi and Smriti Sharma Vasudeva
Tribune News Service

Chandigarh, April 10
As “paid PhDs” worm their way through university libraries and PhD degrees acquire the value of diploma certificates the University Grants Commission (UGC) and varsities across the country seem helpless in checking mushrooming of the paid research industry.

From June 2009 the UGC had notified “minimum standards and procedure for awarding MPhil and PhD degrees”. The notification was hailed as a step towards regulating the way research was done in the universities. But till date, it has not been adopted by majority of the universities across the nation.

One of the conditions laid down by the UGC was that soft copies of all MPhil and PhD thesis submitted to the varsities would be send to the UGC to be hosted on the Information and Library Network (Inflibnet) Centre, Ahmedabad, designed as the repository of all research work.

“We are yet to receive thesis from any university following this notification. However, we have had some voluntary submissions by researchers,” said Jagdish Arora, director of Inflibnet, and chairman of UGC committee on research regulations.

Arora added that the committee had recommended universities across the country to use anti-plagirisation software. “This software has some limitations but it can at least point out works where large parts have been copied verbatim. We have further suggested that the software be used to check authenticity of the thesis before the degree is given and not after. At Inflibnet we can do only a postmortem of the thesis. It is for the university authorities to be alert,” he stated.

The universities, at their end, seem to be fighting a losing battle against plagirised research. Vice-chancellor of Mahatma Jyotiba Phule Rohilkhand University, Bareilly, Satya P Gautam, said he had headed the research committee of the university to keep a check on the researchers. “The Internet has further complicated the issue.

Universities in Europe and North America take a very serious view of plagiarism and fake thesis writing. They withdraw the degree. Indian universities should do the same,” he said.

Himachal Pradesh University V-C Sunil Kumar Gupta said project reports submitted by the students too were being copied. “For PhD we are putting our research on line through Inflibnet,” he added.

Kurukshetra University Vice-chancellor DDS Sandhu said the university followed UGC norms in research. “Every researcher has to get two papers published in reputed Indian journals. This ensures that a part of his research comes in public domain and if there is something fishy, it gets noticed. Also, we are planning to put all PhD thesis on our website along with salient features of the research,” he said.

Jaspal Singh, V-C, Panjabi University, Patiala, said: “Every PhD topic is first discussed by the research board and the candidate and guide is supposed to answer queries of the panel. Also, we have adopted UGC guidelines to ensure such things do not happen. We would be tying up with Inflibnet also.”

Cogito Ergo Odd Wrote:I am shocked to learn that all forms of cheating are directly linked to the type of accreditation that a school has.

4Knee Kate Wrote:So if the "diploma mill" began splitting the take with a regional accreditation agency, a few politicians and a cheap homework service would they cease to be a diploma mill?