The Volokh Conspiracy

I love the exclamation point after "Thanks" in your original email. So much more authentic. :)

If only one university can come up with a non-frivolous lawsuit against Professays, they can get discovery of the customer list. I hope some enterprising attorney in a university general counsel's office figures out how to do it. You'd have as many panicked people as you do when the cops close down a local madam and get her black book.

I sort of like the idea of a site like this that _would_ use force or manipulation to get you to use their services. "You clicked our link, now buy an essay or your dog dies!" or something like that. I don't want to be subject to it myself, but it might make a nice buisness model for someone to consider.

I wonder if Professays would be willing to help law students with most feared of all creatures -- the all-day takehome exam. I did see that for $35/page Professays will turn around your request in 8-hours. Maybe I should keep this idea to myself and create a competing website.

Hysterical! I too noticed that the sample essays on the website were absolute crap. Nothing like cheating and still getting a D. I could even envision a student using this service and then going to complain to the professor about their "unfair" grade. The student would be tempted to explain that they couldn't deserve such a bad grade. After all they hired a "highly experienced" writer to help them and that writer was a "university graduate" whose "academic performance is excellent."

could a student who got a bad grade sue Professays on the theory that Professays committed consumer fraud? The defense, presumably, would be that they never guarantee a particular grade and that the student misused their product by submitting it, rather than using it a source for their own work. but then, the plaintiff would reply that it was entirely foreseeable that the purchaser would do so. and, in discovery, the plaintiff would ask for proof that the Professay writers were university graduates whose academic performance is excellent.

I’m reminded of a fabulous article Gene Weingarten wrote for the Washington Post five years ago about his efforts to obtain an “unaccredited university diploma” over the Internet. Here’s an excerpt from his correspondence with the "university":

Michelle also said that you supply actual transcripts, with courses that are like the way I lived. I would ask that you have a course in clock repair, which I would definitely get an A in, and mechanical engineering, which I would get a B-plus in, in my opinion. I would also like something very scientific, such as outer space physics, which is something I definitely would have studied if I finished school. I think I would have got a B in that. Also, if I took nuclear chemistry I would have got a B. I am not making up these grades I would have got.

Any time I see someone posting obvious essay questions on Usenet (Does anyone know about the significance of the color white in Moby Dick?) I make a point of posting long, subtly inaccurate answers. Looks like I could turn this talent into a source of income.

Maybe the poor quality is a kind of disguise. First of all, if you're the kind of student who would use this service, your previous school work has probably not been of stellar quality. A suddenly very well written paper would be suspicious. Second, notice how everyone here is surprised by how bad the papers are? That's because they expect fake papers to be of high quality. Think of it like a diamond ring on a lady's hand: The bigger it is, the more you're likely to wonder if it's fake. Submit a poor quality paper, and the professor might think you didn't learn much, but he'll never think it might be fake.

Mark Draughn has a good point. Unfortunately -- or perhaps fortunately -- not all such papers are deliberately neutered. When my wife was in grad school, she taught a section in an undergrad European history course. When one undistinguished student turned in a paper with concepts and vocabulary far beyond her (the student's) meager gifts, my wife confronted her, and the student confessed on the spot.

You'd think these students would at least customize a paper -- whether downloaded as a freebie or paid for trans-nasally (as at ProfEssays) -- to a level fitting their own abilities. Then again, I suppose we're not talking about the sharpest tools in the woodshed.

Do colleges really care about plagiarism? Not really. Look, I went to a top 10 law school, and when I was going my “pre-1l tour” the 2L guide admitted to cheating as an undergrad. Professors don’t mind, and it is only the exception to the rule when students get caught. If they do get caught, a student with social skills will avoid punishment and never have a mark placed on his transcript. See, e.g., the Phantom Professor discussing the rampant pagerism at SMU. http://tinyurl.com/9dwfj

On the other hand, most undergraduate professors are so easily co-opted by sweet-talk and sucking up that they nobody really has to cheat.

Fratboys and Jocks are expected to cheat. Schools seem to defend their rights to recycle papers over and over again. But, if a non-fratboy attempts to do the same the schools love to crack down on them. http://tinyurl.com/b27r9

Also, if anyone reading this board has EVER submitted the same paper twice without permission, they are cheaters, and they should know that, in my mind, they are worse than terrorists, as terrorists are much more honest about their anti-intellectual hatred. You, on the other hand, have asserted that you work is your own, and then you probably went on to law school based on your fraud. (In fact, I know that one person who claims to be “friends” with one of the conspirators has told me about his undergraduate cheating. I don’t know if he really is friends, or if the conspirator knows. Personally, I will not associate with these cheaters, but many people look the other way. However, many law professors have a feeling that their favorite students cheated in college, don’t seem to care (perhaps because they cheated as well.)

The only thing about this service that is different, is that 1) they are so blatant about it; and 2) the essays are comically bad.

Boston University, at one point sued one of these essay places with almost no success.

I should think it would be easy to whip up a "non-frivolous lawsuit against Professays" on behalf of any university, if we assume that academic credit is a form of good which can be the object of defrauding, there'd be a fairly simple fraud suit against the Professays people (and then civil rico would fall into place like magic) once a university caught even one student using their service. Crush 'em like bugs.

Maybe the schools could put in their internet "privacy policies" words to the effect of, "we reserve the right to monitor and record website visits and email to and from the following sources: Professays, ___, ____, ____ and ____."

When trying to diagnose asthma, first a person must choose the right doctor. Many doctors do not diagnose asthma. They just tell their patients that they are out of shape. When choosing a doctor, a cardiologist is the best choice to make. This is only for the fact that they specialize in the pulmonary system and the disease asthma affects this system.

This from their sample. It has to be a hoax. It reads like junior high school composition, and averages almost one factual error per sentence.

I cannot speak to this particular site, but I do have some experience with several others like it. Last year I stumbled across an essay I had written for a class and posted on my web site in the mid-90s which was being offered for sale on a number of these sites - most of which were run out of China.

One of the advantages of having a bar license is the ability to make very credible threats in such situations, I guess. I am glad to be able to say that a few emails (each of which copied the site's hosting provider, of course) quickly resulted in the essay's removal from all of the sites I found it on.

I'm sure I am not the only one who's had this happen, either. But I get enough Google hits on exact phrases from a few of my essays (several of which are linked by academic web sites and one of which was included in a textbook) to know that at least some professors are savvy enough to do searches to check for plagarism by their students. Using one of these sites, then, is not only fairly stupid, it also carries with it the very high probabolty that one would be paying the site for work they stole from someone else (which is doubly stupid if, as in the case of my essay, the original work is readily accessible - albeit with a copyright notice).

In response to Roger: yes, universities care. I'm a grad student/TA at a competitive, private university. Every professor I've TAed for has a zero tolerance plagiarism policy. In the course of my three years of teaching, I've caught six students who engaged in serious plagiarism (buying papers wholesale off the internet, lifting whole paragraphs or pages from Internet sources, "rewriting" a published article--and dumbing it down to make it sound more authentic, etc.). Every single one of those students failed the class and in each case a letter went on file with the head of the department and the head of the college in which the student was enrolled. The letter goes on file because a pattern of academic dishonesty typically results in expulsion. That said, I would never fail someone for a typo in a footnote (good grief!) and I've also administered lesser penalties for lesser offenses.

My favorite story: one of my professors, as a grad student, was hired to write a Cliff's Notes-type guide to Shakespeare. He did about a third of the work, but felt the whole thing was too sleazy and bowed out. The company, however, owned the rights to what he had done, had someone else finish the guide, and published it. Years later, one of his student lifted five pages from the portion that he had written and turned it in. Oops.

I, too spent some time as a TA in a “prestigious” university, and despite the fact that professors prattled on and on about a “zero tolerance policy” people were not flunked. I have been told that it is just too much work to flunk an “Ashley” or a “Jennifer.” (Girls, in my experience, cheat more than boys.) Instead, they do the “let me scare her thing.” Of course, “scaring” an Ashley or a Jennifer means a victory for them, as they know that they won’t be scarred as the dirty good-for-nothing cheater that they are.

The funny part is that this “Ashleys” and “Jennifers” only need a good LSAT score to get into the law school of their choice. After that, they make it their routine to brag about how smart they are and how good their school is.

So, let me ask you, Mr. Grad Student, how many people do you know who have graduated with Fs on their transcripts as well as some notation that they failed for being fraudsters? 10, 100? 1000? I would think that your number would be at least 1000, is it ?

Roger and Grad Student:

Universities don't care about anything. Individuals who work at universities do, and from my own experience as a prof I believe both of your experiences can be true...the degree to which faculty and TAs take cheating seriously varies as much as the degree to which they take teaching seriously.

The problem with all zero-tolerance policies is that they discourage enforcement in at least two ways.

1) there's a tendency to ask why a student dumb enough to get caught should have their career ended when others are getting away with similar crimes...doesn't this happen for other forms of crime? IANAL, but I recall this argument being made in my one Criminal Law for undergrads elective many years ago.

2) the severity of the punishment means that the accused, in the exercise of their due process rights (which are obviously important) can mount a scorched earth defense that creates a nightmare for the accuser...especially if the institution doesn't provide much support...leading to rationalization of #1.

Note that in the Laura K Krishna story linked above, he ultimately didn't turn her in.

I was a TA for an undergrad political science class last year at a private university. I had a number of instances where plagairism was evident.

The most memorable of instances came when two people handed in the very same "reflection paper" with very minimal modifications separating the two pages.

I also TA'ed for a large intro class where ESL cheating was rampant.

I do not think that the "show no mercy" method to cheaters is really that effective. One of my favourite professors let the class know how disappointed she was that someone cheated during that week's response papers to do the trick. You loved her dear old soul so much that cheating on her felt like blatantly stealing from your grandpa. I think a warning is more effective than retribution.

I find it highly unlikely that any website offering that kind of service would put A-level material as a sample essay for all the world to see and use. After all, if a business is offering this kind of service at a premium, then it needs to protect itself from its own customers, lazy students who don't want to try to hard to get a quality paper written. If their samples were A-level material, then their prospective customers may just use the samples rather than paying for the service.

Now, I'm not so sure that Professays is quite that sophisticated. After all, the excrutiatingly bad quality of their samples makes me wonder about the quality of the purchased material which, for a typical college student, is somewhat expensive. Still, I don't think we can discount the possibility that Professays has provided shoddy work as samples to prevent plagarism of its work. After all, they aren't fans of plagarism and cheating, right?

I think that all cheaters should have their full names and pictures posted on the internet. Why not? In fact, I think that maybe it is time that we revisit whether all student work can be scanned in and posted to, at the very minimum, an intranet, so students (and others) can participate in pointing out the tremendous amounts of plagiarism that goes on. (I realize there are some legal problems with this, but it is nothing that can’t be overcome.) In fact, why don’t we offer cash bounty (wouldn’t have to be more than $250 or so) for people who can point out undergraduates who cheat. If I was a dean I would do that.

There is nothing crass about exposing cheaters. I have been threatened with lawsuits for doing so in the past (by her family, of course), but none of them have come to fruition.

To be fair, the schools could list the offending people, provide their pictures, and provide .pdfs of the offending material (and the material that it was copied from) so that future employers, graduate schools, and their families would know what kind of low-life scum would copy off the internet.

If you disagree with me on policy grounds (not privacy or due process grounds), I think you are a cheater or a professor who looks the other way.

Anyway, people who think that “warning” students or “laying on a guilt trip” is effective, are fooling themselves. If a professor does this, then everyone knows they are a pushover, and are too lazy, and stupid to ever punish the evil souls who lift stuff from the internet.

Yes, you are right. This system is a market solution to schoolwork and will allows girls to cheat all they want if their fathers are rich. (Having been a TA for 3 years, I have only seen girls cheat.)

I think it's odd that people find that girls are the ones who mostly cheat--in my experience I've seen both, but mostly guys (though I was in a guy-heavy major, business).

I went to a small private university and saw quite a few instances of cheating there.

I was a TA for Prof R., who made it his personal goal to catch and punish every cheater. We set traps for those we suspected of cheating, such as giving that person a multiple choice test that had the same questions in the same order as everyone else's, but had the answers scrambled. We caught one guy, and Prof R. flunked him, per school policy. Prof. R. learned not to go to the adminstration, because they only enforced their cheating policies if they had another reason to want the person out of the university.

In a class I took from Prof R., I saw a classmate cheating. I informed the cheater that he needed to confess to Prof R. or I would tell him myself. The cheater denied it, but turned bright red. He did go to the Prof. and was given leniency--an F on the assignment and a stern lecture.

By the time cheaters make it to college, they're pros due to apathetic high school teachers and administrators. All but 4 people in my public high school Trig. class cheated on the final, but the teacher didn't care when we told him. As long as everyone passed his class, the administration was happy--it didn't matter if they cheated their way through.

There's already this. We have an institutional account. I haven't learned it yet, but I plan to.