Quote from: ggroy;525105Were they easy to detect?

The biggest displeasure in grading papers that I remember having to do back in the day, was figuring out which students were copying the answers from stolen copies of the instructor solution manuals and/or which students were copying from one another.  (This was a common problem in many freshman and sophomore engineering courses).

Now they have paper mills, places where students can buy papers. When i first started looking for freelance writing gigs, i encountered a bunch of paper mills. They pay you to write "model" papers they can sell to students.

Quote from: ggroy;525105Were they easy to detect?

Yeah.  And even if it's just a student writing nonsense critical theory jargon, the result is the same: I write, "You need to take your studies more seriously" and give the paper an F.

Quote from: BedrockBrendan;525106Now they have paper mills, places where students can buy papers. When i first started looking for freelance writing gigs, i encountered a bunch of paper mills. They pay you to write "model" papers they can sell to students.

Interesting thing about the paper mills: they are more than happy to give universities access to their papers for comparison purposes for a fee.  So that's *really* easy to catch.

Quote from: BedrockBrendan;525106Now they have paper mills, places where students can buy papers. When i first started looking for freelance writing gigs, i encountered a bunch of paper mills. They pay you to write "model" papers they can sell to students.

Definitely.

Back in the day, I remember such essay mills were advertised in the classified ads in the last pages of publications like Rolling Stone Magazine.   Sometimes they were advertised on bulletin boards on campus (before the ads were quickly taken down), or posted on telephone poles and public transit shelters near the campus.

Over the last decade or so, such essay mills simply migrated online.


For engineering type courses, these days one can find the solutions/answers online to just about every single question/problem from almost all major textbooks used for freshman and sophomore classes.  For the more adventuresome, the instructor solutions manuals can be found on ebay or on numerous file sharing/storage sites.

Quote from: misterguignol;525107Interesting thing about the paper mills: they are more than happy to give universities access to their papers for comparison purposes for a fee.  So that's *really* easy to catch.

The never ending "arms race".  

I remember several former colleagues still in academia (in engineering or the hard sciences), mentioning that they don't even bother with assignments anymore.

For some major textbooks, the publisher have a web service where the students can take a test/exam online.  Though the catch is, that (allegedly) the numbers in the problems are generated semi-randomly and the order and choice of the problems + answers are also generated semi-randomly.  So no two test/exam question papers are identical.  (They're all multiple-choice exams).  Harder to cheat in this case, unless the students figure out how to hack the web site.

My former colleagues end up having their students take several of these online multiple-choice exams every term, instead of handing out assignments or doing paper tests/midterms.  (No need to hire any graders or teaching assistants, for this).

Quote from: misterguignol;525107And even if it's just a student writing nonsense critical theory jargon, the result is the same: I write, "You need to take your studies more seriously" and give the paper an F.

No doubt the student would claim the very act of submitting such a paper made a skewering commentary on postmodernist critical theory. It wasn't ineptitude, laziness or apathy, but a profound artistic and critical statement that soared right over your ivory-towered head!  

Quote from: Philotomy Jurament;525124No doubt the student would claim the very act of submitting such a paper made a skewering commentary on postmodernist critical theory. It wasn't ineptitude, laziness or apathy, but a profound artistic and critical statement that soared right over your ivory-towered head!  

You joke, but something very like that happened once.  Kid failed anyway.

Quote from: misterguignol;525126You joke, but something very like that happened once.  Kid failed anyway.

Kids can still flunk university courses?

At some top tier universities, the students can't even fail courses anymore.  (ie. The F grade is abolished).  At worst, they get a D grade and a pass.

Quote from: ggroy;525131Kids can still flunk university courses?

At some top tier universities, the students can't even fail courses anymore.  (ie. The F grade is abolished).  At worst, they get a D grade and a pass.

In my classes they can.  I actually have one of the higher failure rates in my department because a) my classes are challenging/my expectations are high and b) I'm willing to deal with the fallout whereas a lot of instructors aren't

Thread is making me really happy to not having any humanities classes this semester.

Quote from: misterguignol;525136In my classes they can.  I actually have one of the higher failure rates in my department because a) my classes are challenging/my expectations are high and b) I'm willing to deal with the fallout whereas a lot of instructors aren't

Cool.  Not many instructors like that left.

(Even some tenured faculty don't even bother fighting the system anymore, in regard to F grades and flunking students).

Before I left the ivory tower for good, I was overruled by the department chair on some F grades.  (The dept chair changed them to D grades).  These F grade students didn't show up at all for any lectures, didn't write any tests/exams, didn't hand in any assignments, etc ...

They were basically "ghosts".

Quote from: The Butcher;525096100% subjective. I ain't no expert at book learnin' an' sech.

REH may be dry at times, but when he's on, he's got it man. HPL is good with ambiance mostly, and Clark Ashton Smith's prose is IMO superior to both HPL and REH.

Quote from: Benoist;525147REH may be dry at times, but when he's on, he's got it man. HPL is good with ambiance mostly, and Clark Ashton Smith's prose is IMO superior to both HPL and REH.

Can you recommend some Howard, Benoist?  Of the three, he's the one I'm least familiar with.

Quote from: Planet Algol;525137Thread is making me really happy to not having any humanities classes this semester.

Not just the humanities.

Engineering is just as abysmal these days too.

Oh, I'm well aware of that from trying to build systems that "engineers" have approved...

Quote from: misterguignol;525151Can you recommend some Howard, Benoist?  Of the three, he's the one I'm least familiar with.

I love me some Solomon Kane for instance. If you like the idea of the swashbuckling, gun flinging Puritan travelling in a land filled with curses and magic, a strange man that is too righteous for his own good, and ends up in countless adventures in a variety of settings, you'll like this a lot.

I recommend reading the Del Rey compilation. It also includes drafts of unfinished stories, ideas and bits of poetry that give access to the bigger picture of REH's writing. It's not all brilliant, but there are some great keepers in there. If you bite into Solomon Kane, you'll be able to move on to Conan and Kull without problem, IMO.