High Order Plagiarism

Lately I have become aware of the many essay-writing services available online. A few suspiciously fluent papers submitted by my students had me trolling the web for possible sources.

The sites promise that they will not sell you, the student, a plagiarized paper. I suppose that is true - it is not a plagiarized paper until the moment the student submits it under his/her name when it was actually written by someone at the essay-writing service. By promising that the paper will pass plagiarism software scans, the service is not assuring the buyer of a high ethical stance; they are telling the buyer they won't get caught.

One site suggested you could tell the scams from the professionals by looking at the quality of the writing on the site pages themselves. I had already found several errors on their own site - including a completely incorrect use of a preposition - and so they provided me with a chuckle.

Here is the opening sentence of a term paper sample posted on the Custom Essay Meister.com site at this address on this date [http://www.customessaymeister.com/?page=samples&handle=termpaper&sampleid=1#sampleanchor] :

Over the years the evolution of the structure and functions of the family have
made this institution a hotly debated topic in the public arena.

Umm. So the main noun of the subject is evolution, which is a singular abstract common noun, and the verb form used in the sentence is plural. [Never mind that an institution is not, in and of itself, a hotly debated topic.] A basic grammar mistake in the opening line of a paper that is supposed to be a major term paper? Someone is going to charge per page for this? A student is going to buy this paper and submit it? Woe to the student if they submit it to me.

One of the student testimonials for that service purports to come from a student in my city. Her testimonial said

My writer was great, your company and writers have assisted me in a few of my projects required so i may work full time, study and look after my family. Thank you!

Students should pay for help with their writing if they need the help. The kind of help they need is not the easy buy-a-paper kind. Buying a paper is hugely dishonest. Beyond the plagiarism, which can get a student expelled from a university, is the deceit of receiving a grade that does not reflect the achievement of the student. When these students graduate, their lack of writing skill will expose them as frauds. The grades given by their university will make the university look ridiculous.

The help most students in university need is ten years late. They were not taught how to write well by their educators, whether in schools or in the family. Too many students graduate from high school with bad writing skills. The writing skills are not an indication that they are stupid or dull - many a competent writer is dull as dishwater. These students are sociable and eager to learn, but they are ignorant of their own language. So they squeeze into universities, who accept them because the universities need the money and the body count, and instructors are then faced with scads of students who cannot write effectively. The deficit is not always owing to poor writing skills; many of the same students cannot express themselves coherently in speech.

Tuition is steep. Students face a tough challenge: finding the money to pay tuition often means working so many hours that they cannot meet their obligations to their course work. Buying essays, term papers, and various other assignments seems like the quick way to meet the course deadlines and obligations.

It doesn't. The students who buy an essay have not met the obligations of the course. The students have not had their knowledge base enriched through the research. They have not had their cognitive skills exercised in the synthesis phase. They have not learned anything except how to cheat themselves and others.

As painful as it may be, students who did not learn skills for clear and effective writing before they entered university must seek remedial writing help while also juggling their jobs and course work. It may not seem fair to them, but the alternative is to allow universities to confer degrees on people who are barely literate.

My next rant is likely to be about the instructors who are reluctant to fail students who cannot make the grade.