How To Write a Term Paper

[randomness]

My friend nihilistic_kid is a published novelist who used to make something vaguely resembling a living as a term paper artist. In the above titled post, he gives some advice to undergrads:

Spring Break is over, at least in the US, and so now the shank of the semester has begun. Time for term papers! As a former term paper artist I've learned a few things about papering. Things you will not learn from other sources simply because almost nobody has the experience I have. Composition specialists, your professors, and writing center tutors have not written 5000+ model term papers in virtually every field and in every length and format.

So, if you hear different from what I am saying, remember that I am right and they are wrong.

Note: this is "How To Write a Term Paper" not "How To Learn Something." Learning is your problem!

The remainder of the post outlines the process in eight steps.

I also recommend his piece about writing for a term paper mill, "The Term Paper Artist" published in The Smart Set, at Drexel University.

I think if I'd read his post when I was an undergrad, I would have handed in more of my papers on time.

Comments

[r-ness.livejournal.com]

I'll be sure to introduce the two of you sometime. I imagine you'll be just as glad to tell him to his face.

[marmota.livejournal.com]

I'd be a bit more civil about it in person, but not by much. Mostly it would depend on whether he showed any remorse for the damage he'd done both to those of us who took on our education with honest effort, and also the damage to the world at large by enabling all those entitled idiots to falsely represent themselves. Am I really the only one seriously put off by this?

[r-ness.livejournal.com]

Am I really the only one seriously put off by this?

I doubt you're the only one put off by it, but I do think the level of moral outrage you're showing is higher than even most people who are put off by it.

Both in my LJ and in your own (and probably other places I don't read) I have noticed lately you staking out some positions which I'd be glad to discuss sometime, probably in person. LJ is a fine place for generating heat but not particularly for generating light. I don't necessarily think your positions are wrong, and they have by and large struck me as internally quite consistent--right down to your home decor, which I think is the remarkable bit--but I do think we start from very different basic axioms.

Anyway, I'm more interested in lowering the level of heat and raising the light level, so please don't take any of this as an insult; it's really meant as a jumping-off point for conversation.

[infinitehotel.livejournal.com]

I think he's well aware it's an ethically complicated issue. I doubt you'll get your desired remorse though.

He does raise some interesting questions about the responsibility of an industry that charges as much as $200,000 for a degree but can't tell whether a paper is a student's writing. It's not hard to create a system where paper-mills won't work. Schools don't. Why?

The term paper mill says upfront that these are research materials, shouldn't be submitted as-is, and in fact, doesn't even promise a passing grade. All it says is it'll give you a paper for cash. If someone can coast through four years of college using such a service and nobody in that institution notices or cares, I think you need to ask whether the college and the term paper mill aren't offering essentially the same thing.

Nick's a stand-up guy and he'd probably be amused that L. or I felt any need to defend him. He's quite capable of doing that on his own.

[r-ness.livejournal.com]

He's quite capable of doing that on his own.

That is why I said I'd make a point of introducing them. :)

[marmota.livejournal.com]

I'm unclear on how pointing out the culpability of both the paper mills and the universities somehow absolves someone of willingly contributing to their delinquency. "Hey, they're all dishonest, I might as well get some of the money being made off it too" isn't exactly what I'd call the marks of a "Stand up guy". With that kind of logic there is also money to be made in correcting the spelling and grammar of 419 scam spam, which I'm inclined to assume would be even harder to admit to at parties. Hopefully there is much more to his character to recommend him. Eh well, it'll be an interesting conversation at least.

[infinitehotel.livejournal.com]

My definition of a stand-up guy is someone who considers an action, its moral and ethical ramifications, and once they decide to do it, they don't make excuses or try to avoid the consequences. (As a rule, they're also disinterested in whether random strangers want their remorse.) They're not always good but they're often more reliable than people who pride themselves on their integrity but never make choices that require them to test it.

[jab2.livejournal.com]

so what would you recommend that schools do to prevent the use of paper-mill systems?

[r-ness.livejournal.com]

It depends. What, in your opinion, is the purpose of students writing papers? Does that purpose align with the objectives of the various stakeholders (I hate that word, but off the top of my head I can't find another one): students, faculty, administration, post-graduation employers?

Your question can't easily be answered unless there's an idea of what the point of the exercise really is.

[infinitehotel.livejournal.com]

One of the best ways is to not use papers as fire-and-forget assignments. The question isn't whether a student can regurgitate information, it's how well they absorbed and were able to use the material, and how they're able to correct their mistakes afterward. So, rewriting is essential, possibly multiple times. Preferably in class, but if nothing else with very limited deadlines. Or assignments that build upon each other in a sequence so the next assignment requires integrating and building further on the bones of the previous one. The more you have to work with the material the harder it is to fake it and with luck, the less it becomes necessary to do so. If a student bought a paper in the beginning of the semester and by the end was able to manipulate, explain, and use that material successfully, they'd still be morally questionable but at least they'd have learned something.

[meepodeekin.livejournal.com]

At risk of flaming, I have to say I 100% agree with marmota on this one. Dishonesty is wrong. Making a personal profit by encouraging dishonesty in others is wrong. Period. It doesn't hurt anyone except the few honest students left.

Being a professor is hard. A lot harder than you or nihilistic_kid seem to think it is. It is a time and a half full time job, without spending your day policing for cheating. I don't know whether there are things that "schools" can do to get paper mills out of the system. I'm sure there are things that professors can do. But those things involve working hours 80-120 over and above your actual job. The profs I know all make honest efforts not to accept dishonest work in their classes. But it is remarkably difficult to detect. It is disingenuous, dishonest, and, frankly, unfair, to say that because profs could be doing even more to prevent cheating that the cheating that gets through is not the cheaters' fault. Blaming the victim is wrong. And doesn't help to solve the problem. I don't know what would, but that isn't it.

At the risk of posting something tl;dr, I'll give this a try.

[r-ness.livejournal.com]

(I'm sure LJ will reject this comment as being too long, anyway.)

So, a step back.

I recognize that you work hard at your job, and that someone submitting papers they didn't write makes a hard job more difficult. Granted.

The point is not that.

The point, I think, is that many of the people in the colleges do not belong there. And that, I believe, goes to the heart of why students are asked to write papers in the first place.

I think everyone would agree that there are a variety of reasons why students go to college. I also think there would be a fair amount of agreement that many of those reasons are not served very well by the institution of the university as it is currently constructed.

As a result, I think, many students go to universities to perform activities they learn very little from being taught by professors who are pushed to give assignments which do not actually teach in ways professors wish to teach.

What, exactly, is served by a process where students who want to make a better living are forced to jump through hoops whose point has never been explained to them? What is served by a system which forces professors who wish to become better teachers and mentors to instead publish or perish? (Or the reverse, who wish to do research but are forced to teach unwilling undergraduates?)

I will be the first to defend the value of a liberal education. I spent years of my youth, not to mention a small fortune, acquiring one. My only regrets now are that I neither spent enough time acquiring it, nor did I acquire it at a time in my life when I could appreciate it as much as I would if I were there, doing so now.

None of that, however, addresses the fact that many people do not have the desire to acquire such an education. But we as a society demand they get one anyway. Much follows from this: the careerism of undergraduates who don't understand the point of a liberal education, but understand that this arcane ritual is related to their making more money when they have had their ticket punched; the public stereotype of the ivory towered intellectual, out of touch with "real life", informed by the public's experience as students at university; the pressure of workload on junior professors to process undergrads through the system and at the same time publish research of a quality and quantity acceptable to their tenure committees; the oversupply of graduate students, essential as cheap labor in their role as teaching assistants, but left to fend for themselves in a job market which simply lacks enough positions for them as junior professors when they graduate.

The problem, I think, is that we as a society have created a mismatch between the expectations and needs of the market economy and the institutions of education. The universities are complicit in this, because by acting as the gatekeepers between young people and jobs with any sort of future, they can exercise great monopoly power standing between people and their livelihoods. And the universities as institutions have profited from this monopoly. Not for nothing was it observed that Harvard could be thought of as a hedge fund with a tax-shelter called a university attached. (And their finances have suffered as a result, like many other hedge funds.)

There will always be people who game the system. These are, as Brad DeLong likes to describe us, East African Plains Apes we're talking about, and like any other animal these apes respond to incentives. When, however, there are a lot of people gaming the system, that is a sign that the system has problems and needs fixing. Not the universities alone, but the entire way we train people for their futures.

Blaming the people is a profoundly traditionalist way to frame the issue; while there is certainly culpability there, if you blame the people your only recourse is to change their natures. Generally, this means changing the larger society, either by improving the incentives to do what you consider "good" or increasing the penalties for doing what is considered "bad". Perhaps it would be easier to change the way this society trains people, rather than changing the overall incentive structures within a society.

(continued below)

[r-ness.livejournal.com]

(continuing previous comment)

Think of it this way: if people actually believed that what they were trying to accomplish were being served by writing papers, they would write the papers themselves. That they are finding it easier to pay other people to write papers is a sign that something is wrong. Perhaps it is because the people are deluded as to what purpose is being served. Perhaps it is because no one has ever explained to them what the purpose actually is behind the act of writing papers. Perhaps it is because they know and disagree, but are being told they must produce papers. Some might still game the system, but if their interests were aligned with the production of papers they would only be cheating themselves, as my teachers used to like saying.

I recognize the difficulty of changing the way this society trains new generations. I think some of the problems are, in fact, based on the tension between the market economy and the academic system. And the interests entrenched on all sides are powerful. I deny none of that. Nor do I have an answer; if I did, I'd be out there finding a way to make it happen, not least of all because there is a market opportunity to do so, but also because I would dearly love to get all the people who don't want to be forced to get some semblance of a liberal education into a different system so that those of us who want one can get down to the business of getting one without the distraction and disruption people who don't can cause just by being there.

None of this is to take anyone off the hook for their individual decisions. But if you think it's easier to change moral beliefs and behavior in a society than to change some academic and economic incentives, I invite you to examine the history of the culture war over the last few generations. I just want to fight the easier battles first.

[meepodeekin.livejournal.com]

I don't have time to do justice to the length of your comment, for which I apologize. Just a few notes--There are many things wrong with higher (and primary and secondary) education in the United States. Many things. However, the world grows more complicated every day. A solid college education is as necessary to having a hope of approaching our world as an educated adult in the 21st century as a high school education was in the 20th or a grade school education in the 19th. A "liberal arts" education isn't some cockamamie idea for the educated elite. It's a way of helping people to be good citizens and informed members of society. Creating an explicitly two-tiered system where some youth get that and some youth get a vocational certificate or credential would further the already vast socio-economic gulfs troubling our society, just as sorting kids in high school between "vocational" and "college prep" tracks does. I have many complaints about the system for which I work, but the fact that we try to give kids an education rather than a certificate is not one of them. That more and more kids only want the piece of paper is a flaw of our society, which is overly materialistic and has a ridiculously narrow definition of the word "success." It's not a flaw of the higher ed. system.

Also, saying that you disagree with the system and then using that to justify making personal profit egging the system on (as term-paper mills undoubtedly do) is wrong. Disowning individual responsibility simply because we live in a flawed world is a slippery slope. If thinking that makes me a "Traditionalist," then I am proud to be one.

[r-ness.livejournal.com]

There are two points I'm going to address right off, because while I have a longer reply these two points in particular I feel I need to address immediately:

You are not reading what I am writing. I recognize that you are angry about this, but arguing points I am not making is not helpful. I feel like you are shouting past me. This isn't unusual in online conversation, so please don't feel that I'm singling you out here for some personal failing, but I want to say this explicitly now, because in some parts of conversation we are in violent agreement, as one of my friends likes to describe it.

I think you should ask yourself why more of your flist that actually works in higher ed. isn't replying to this thread, especially since you explicitly directed it at them. I happen to know that at least one of them is so depressed by the thread that they are really upset and afraid to comment.

This is a point I want to address right now. If I explicitly directed this thread at anyone other than as a reply to you, I don't know who it is. Moreover, if they are upset by things I am saying, that is not my intent. In fact, in general my intent is not to piss people off or make them depressed, unhappy, or afraid. That much should be obvious, but many obvious things need to be stated in online communication.

If they are upset and afraid to comment I am sorry that they are, and I invite them to send me personal email or call or contact me in whatever way they feel comfortable with doing.

I have a longer, more substantive reply where I discuss where I think some of your comments are attacking someone who isn't me, and someone who didn't say what I said.

But I had to get those two points out first.

[meepodeekin.livejournal.com]

You are not reading what I am writing. I deleted that part of my comment for a reason, and I think quoting it and responding to it is deliberately fanning flames. I may not be responding to the points you think you are making but I don't think you're responding to my points either, which were originally directed at the entire thread and in particular the way several people jumped on marmota for making an honest attempt to express what I consider to be legitimate moral outrage. Maybe I am not expressing myself well.

I 100% respect your right to say what you want in your thread on your journal. Feel free to take me to pieces so the rest of your flist can continue to laugh at me. However I won't be returning to this thread. I don't have time to.

[infinitehotel.livejournal.com]

I don't see it as a flame. I do see it as making very thin gruel based on very little text.

"It is disingenuous, dishonest, and, frankly, unfair, to say that because profs could be doing even more to prevent cheating that the cheating that gets through is not the cheaters' fault."

It may well be disingenuous, dishonest, and frankly unfair to say that. On the other hand, I didn't, did I? At what point did I place the blame on professors? Or express any opinion about the relative ease or difficulty of their profession? (I don't remember Nick doing so either, but it's been a while since I've read the article) Nor did I condone students using the service. I described doing such work as ethically complicated. What that means is I put some thought into it rather than jerking my knee.

I stand by the statement that if someone can finish four years of college in this manner, perhaps the problem isn't entirely with the student. And I do have my own opinions about students who would use such a service and if I discovered them doing so in my classes, I wouldn't have much sympathy. (I'm in the midst of an MFA and looking at possible programs in composition theory now.) However, righteous indignation doesn't erase the fact it's a complicated issue and all the hyperbole in the world doesn't change that your conclusion bore very little resemblance to what I actually wrote.