For those of you who have earned your academic degrees, or any other accomplishment, legitimately, by busting your asses and doing your own work, how do you feel about companies that provide this kind of service?

Kinda wish they had been around when I college. I didn’t really care about philosophy but I took a year of it for the general education requirements. Those papers were long and brutal.

Lots of companies are blatant about what they do yet less loathing is reserved for them. There are companies someplace in Europe that will help you cheat on your spouse, let alone a paper. I have worked for my degrees but, for some reason, I don’t get mad at these services. It’s like it doesn’t affect me. yes, I know I’m supposed to be asleep but I forgot to webcam w/Alex briefly and so I turned my computer back on and ‘cause I’m an addict, I checked Fluther.

It’s sad. I had an instructor who thought every barrier reef was called the Great Barrier Reef. I corrected her and she told me I was mistaken, then went on to watch Seinfeld on her little tv as her students went on reading a textbook.

sad. I’m in debt for this lazy ass shit

I understand cheating is wrong. I wouldn’t personally go to those lengths, but who really has undying passion for each subject they write a paper about? I know it’s a way to learn something new, but some things we just don’t care about. Not to mention you’re not going to gain a new revelation each time you write a paper. Sometimes it’s just about turning crap in to pass, which seems like that’s the only point, anyway (sometimes).

I don’t see the point. The whole idea behind a degree is getting an education. People who cheat the system are cheating themselves.

There is an apt new word for this. Degreedation. Lol.

I have heard about universities buying papers off these kind of websites, once you give them a topic they provide very similar essays for everyone. It will likely come up as plagiarized and then you are chucked off your course. Why go to all that risk to do some work for something you will need to know inside out anyway when your exam comes?
I think that is more like cheating yourself out of finding out interesting things you may not have done anyway. Surely for you to pick to study a course at uni you must like it a bit so surely doing the work will increase your own knowledge.
I worked for my undergrad so so hard and now I’m working for my MRes even harder. I would never use something like that not because it’s cheating (although it is) but because I would miss out on actually accomplishing what I want I’m doing qualification for in the first place and that is to Learn.

It gives me the major shits. I have had people anonymously advise me students have bought essays. Not that there is much I can do unless I can find absolute evidence. I spend way too much time dealing with students who cheat though (and those who are just unaware and lack academic literacy skills). I don’t mind helping those who just need guidance.

If I did find someone had bought their essay, I would fail them and put them before an Academic Integrity committee though. As far as I am concerned, when those people who have purchased their degrees in this way, turn up in front of an employer and basically have no idea what they are doing, they devalue my degree and the degrees of all those honest students who have worked diligently for their degrees.

I see the results at my work. We have to write research documents and it’s painfully obvious some people don’t have a clue how do to it. These are people who supposedly have a bachelors. I’m not joking when I say my 14 year old daughter was writing better papers in her high school. Besides poor writing skills, their conclusions are based on speculation. They constantly have to be reminded to cite their sources; some just don’t understand why that’s important. This isn’t a majority of people, but enough to make me wonder why so many college educated people can’t write a basic research paper.

People are cheating themselves as @YARNLADY said. It’s their loss.

Holy cow, I used to feel a bit guilty if I hired my roommate’s sister to just type my papers! It was cheaper than the 40 bottles of WhiteOut I needed!
I don’t like the idea of the company that does this, and I hate the idea of the students that would do this. It will require the shift from grading based on thought processes and reasoning to grading on test scores. A serious downshift in quality.

I used to have a much bigger issue with things like this until I turned in a 15-page paper with about 13 pages of gibberish for a class I just didn’t care about but couldn’t drop. I got a C.

After that, I realized, if it doesn’t matter to you, it certainly doesn’t to them. Now I agree with the ‘you’re only cheating yourself’ crowd. Which, I personally feel, is much worse in the long run. But then, I guess it depends, some people are just there for a piece of paper.

Will they continue to provide your answers for you when you enter the workforce? Do they provide speeches for politico’s, CEO’s and the like?

For this and various other reasons I think the term “college education” itself is often as not a sham. (The next “bubble investment”, I think.) I regularly think, speak and write circles around people with graduate level degrees, and I don’t even have a BS / BA.

I’ve been thinking some more about this on the bus to teach this morning and I am against cheating when my students do it and, presumably, I’m against them using a service like this to write their papers…but when it comes to myself, I realized that I haven’t used such a service because I’m an arrogant son of a bitch – I don’t think they can do as good a job as me on any of the papers assigned to me. Take that for what it is. Nor is it worth it to get caught.

I don’t care. I’d use a similar service generating Fluther responses if one were available.

@ratboy Lol, what on earth for?

@Simone_De_Beauvoir: You and I became Flutherites at approximately the same time, but your lurve is 2.6 of mine. I can’t help thinking that if I had access to polished, professionally crafted answers, things would be different.

:-) @Ratty. You need to look at the stats. While @Simone_De_Beauvoir‘s responses are interesting and polished, she also has made many, many more of them than you have and she has asked I think 241 questions to your 8.

You don’t need to buy responses. I like your responses @ratboy. You are authentic.

I would never and never did. If others do it. Meh. It makes me look down on them, but so what.

Who cares. You get what you put in.

@rojo actually most politicians and many CEOs do not write their own public speeches. They read them from teleprompters and have only skimmed them over for the correct “voice”. and yes, as some one that has worked their back end off for many years and worked my way through college and has all the debt too, I’m a little hacked. But I’m not going to solve the worlds problems, i’m going to be the best I can be.

OMG. that’s disgusting.

@Kato This isn’t about writing speeches. It’s about the education and knowledge that writing your own essay is supposed to give you as a student.

Well I don’t have any type of academic degree but I do have an Associate Degree in Specialized Technology and I have completed several (but challenging) diploma/certificate programs as well. In my field I don’t believe these services would have been of any use to me since I had to do alot of hands on work to complete my course/s as well. Also, most everything I did learn came from trial and error from on the job field experience.

In the end taking short cuts (depending on your career field) can come back to bite you. In the end I have found that it is best to actually know why something works the way it does rather than just merely remembering that point A goes to point B.

To be honest, I am really shocked at what a casual attitude all but a couple of you have taken toward outright, blatant cheating in an academic environment. You’re only hurting yourself? Not for me, but… ? What about it being just plain wrong? As in right and wrong? No one has a problem with that? So many of you don’t think that cheating is simply, flat out wrong?

@lillycoyote If it was on a person, or in a situation that affected other people. But in my opinion, sometimes it’s just pumping out papers to be graded, then tossed off to the side to never been seen again.