I write for one of these businesses and they are great. What amazes me is the number of nursing students need papers done. I always find the irony in ethics papers
I totally agree on the on the ethics of online piracy and and cheating Because at this very moment there's a student somewhere in in the world writing a paper about internet piracy referencing a pirated
The services have been around for decades. I have been catching them for years. Another popular trick is copying from an article, or chapter from a book. One problem with the mills is that the papers are often not original. Hum, a cheating site lying about papers being reused. Who would have thought. My record is having the same paper come from 3 different students in one class.
School teacher here. It's not such a big deal as essay mills, but whenever I'm suspicious of printed homework, I type a phrase into Google and show the class my results. One student actually handed in a screenshot of a Wikipedia page - including the Wikipedia logo! A few have hand-copied an entire page from the internet - credit at least for the additional effort.
@@cosmogoblin Funny story... but true. At CSU I was required to take a uni class called "Communications and Popular Culture" where after watching Avatar in class our assignment was to CREATE a Wikipedia page from scratch about anything to do with a movie we liked. Then we were to learn how to reference Wikipedia properly. So they basically taught us how to make stuff up (opinion), as if it was proper academic information, to post online... and then reference our own work. I'm not joking.
Wouldn't you just... re-write it in your own words? It's already written for you, all you need to do is change some stuff around, modify sentences, look up synonyms for words, maybe do a last minute research hour yourself just to quickly check you understand it all and presto, a purchased essay that cannot be traced back to an essay mill
If you are serious about reaching out to one of these essay mills, a biographic comparison paper of Wellington, Napoleon and Blucher for good measure, which would culminate at the battle of Waterloo and how their experiences shaped their respective actions on the battlefield that day. Comparative force structure aside, what experience in the leaders led one (two) to victory and the other to defeat. Senior thesis, approximately 10 pages?
not realy as he credits the worker . I guess if you were honest to the teacher and told her were u got the work from. then it would be the same. ether way. in the work world people do this all the time. in the real world the grade is profitably .
Yes! This! And on how immoral bought essays are and why they should be stopped (I don't really have an opinion on its morality but I'd like the notion of someone trying to condemn bought essays in a bought essay)
I did an actual original persuasive speech in speech writing class entitled "How to Capture an Audience's Attention". I had a classmate who was actually afraid to look away. lol
Please make them write about the most ridiculous topic possible!! Maybe defending flat earth? Haha Definitely want a follow up. Super excited for this. Side note- I wish this video had been made while I was still in college. I had no knowledge of this! :(
These services have existed for decades. If you watch any of the college based movies (Animal House, Revenge of the Nerds, School Daze, etc), you can see how they worked. It was basically getting a "nerd" friend to do it for you in exchange for a favor (introducing him to a girl he liked, getting him into a party, etc) if not straight cash.
And a darker side of this seen in Back to The Future. First we see in present day, Biff extorting a coworker by making him write a report and later see that Biff had been making him do this since at least High School. And another version seen on one episode of Growing Pains, where the younger brother sold a since graduated A+ student's essays to current studies without her knowledge. The other things sometimes done were copying paragraphs from Reader's Digest / Cliff notes / Encyclopedias , but these had a high likelihood of being caught in the teacher /professor cared to check.
This is hilarious... and fairly accurate. I did ghost writing back in college for money. Mostly for the Greek society. But I charged $20-25 per page, and it went up closer to the deadline. Loved this
I have an idea for a video, or maybe a series: trade agreements/organizations & how they work... NAFTA, NATO, the EU, the implications of deal ir no deal brexit (better hurry if you want to do that last one). There is almost a bottomless rabbit hole to get lost down if you are looking into business and trade... The East India Trading Company would make a great stand alone video. How does the stock market work? ... Just spitballing ideas for your new channel
Having worked on ghostwriting sites, sometimes assignments like that get posted in those marketplaces and picked up by people in poor countries who are engineering students or otherwise have enough tech know-how to cobble together something believable-sounding. It's incredible how cheaply some of those types of jobs happen and how many people will try to claim those gigs.
@@ItsAsparageese how would you fake investigation? You can fake results, but they need to make some sense. But even like that, the person then has to defend their thesis against a jury
@@cyrustakem7993 I don’t know how it is for engineering, but I imagine it’s not too dissimilar from a physics thesis...and you need to give a defense of your thesis in physics (typically a panel of 3 or so professors). I have no idea how you’d fake that without actually studying the material, so unless you were just too lazy to write a paper that you knew all about, a paid thesis seems useless
I taught writing in the University of Hawai'i system for 42 years, including instructing students writing in 24 different languages. (UH's student body is far more linguistically and racially diverse than most US campuses.) For all students, especially those writing in English, I required all notes and two drafts to be attached to the final essay or else the final grade was F. The essay mill downloading students quickly disappeared from my classes.
That would bother the crap out of me as a student. I'm the kind of person who gets into a flow when I'm writing and very rarely goes back to revise, otherwise i end up making changes that destroy the flow of the piece and i essentially end up scrapping everything from the point i first edited onwards
Brian McKinley This sounds like the requirements for my high school reports. We had to turn in our topic ideas by a certain date, then show a certain number of cited notes on 3” x 5” cards by another date, then a preliminary outline at another point. For the final deadline, we had to turn in the final paper (typed,) a handwritten rough draft, a final outline, and 3” x 5” cards for all our research findings (whether used or not.) The intent was to teach us sound research process and avoid procrastination. My workaround process: 1. Do the rock-bottom minimum to meet all preliminary requirements, including checking out a bunch of books related to the topic. Only crack 2-3 of the books long enough to scribble down some plausible cited notes (which may or may not actually be used in the final paper.) 2. On the day before the paper is due, frantically skim a few of the reference books, bookmarking anything that might be useful. After an hour of this, inspiration will strike. Jot down the top-level categories (Roman numeral level outline points) for the paper. Cull the 3” x 5” card cited notes for any which are still relevant; set aside the rest as padding for the final deliverable. Note which bookmarked spots are most relevant. Scavenge for references supporting any category obviously skimpy on research (or consider dropping that category.) 3. Write the body of the paper (by hand,) noting where to insert which citation but not writing them out. Along the way, scavenge for more citations if needed. Then write the introduction, and finally the conclusion. 4. Type up the handwritten paper. Word for word, unless any obvious issues surface. (Efficient!) 5. Type up the bibliography for all works consulted. (Note that via this process, there won’t be many works consulted which were not also cited: efficient!) 6. Write an outline for the paper as it turned out, down to the third or fourth level. (Looks impressive! See how closely my paper followed my outline? 😂) 7. Write out 3” x 5” cards for all cited notes not already on cards. Double-check all notecards and bibliography. Remove all bookmarks. Assemble stack of final deliverables. (Efficient!) 8. Keep your eye on the clock. If time allows, nap for a few hours - usually around step 5 or 6. Set three alarms, to allow time for remaining steps and to dress and make it to class on time. 9. Turn everything in. Expect to be a zombie the rest of that day, but pat yourself on the back for your efficiency! Of course, in the end the joke was on me. It gets progressively harder to research-and-write-in-a-single-night for college/grad school papers. Decades later, I’m STILL trying to teach myself how to start earlier on projects, and really focus/motivate myself without an imminent deadline. It’s sad, really. 🤦♀️🤷♀️🙄😉
Yup I used one of these to get into nursing school. Had to do an English class as my prerequisites. by the end of the class I was just tired of writing essays. I just wanted to end the semester but I still had the final research paper. Went on reddit, posted an inquiry. Found a guy and paid him to do my essay. I was really skeptical so I ran the whole thing through a few plagiarism sites and sure enough it was 100 percent original. Turned it in and got a 97 on the final. Honestly I would do it again if I had to.
Hate to admit it but, this was actually BIG, BIG business in the 'States as recently as the early 1990's!! I can remember being in both H.S. and in college and running into people purchasing other people's PREVIOUSLY SUBMITTED (term paper) WORK. The one person who had a 'jump' on it though, was my former H.S. english teacher (shout out to, Mrs. Rose Lutjen, in case anybody remembers her). She was so far ahead of the game. 1) Mrs. Lutjen was in the habit of PRE-WARNING all her students not to borrow, copy, cheat, buy papers or even heaven forbid to buy a copy of, "Cliff Notes". Yes, just as the name states Cliff Notes were small phampleted black and yellow publications that gives readers synopsis' of most any printed book, play, or movie you could imagine. Cliff Notes was another big seller. 2) What Ms. Lutjen would do is run our term papers through a special program or software -- as old or as sophisticated as it may have been for the time, to check for originality. She would even tell us she was going to do it. In addition, she had a habit of keeping term papers (I think) for about 5 years. IF your paper did not pass muster and she found out your paper is a rehashing of someone else's work you automatically FAILED THE ASSIGNMENT.....NO QUESTIONS ASKED. You would think that people would have sense enough not to try.....not to test the waters. Nooooo. Nothing-doing. Naturally, there were a few 'bravehearts' who decided to test the waters, anyway. As can be predicted she promptly gave them an "F" / or 39% in UK terms. She was a tough teacher. We all hated her grading system at the time. However, being someone much older now I can turn around and look at what she did with admiration and pride. It is because of her, not in spite of her methods that I have a well ingrained set of ethics and morality which I adhere to, to this day. Blessings to you, Mrs. Lutjen wherever you are.
@@LSSYLondon That's the whole point. The teacher didn't want her 'system' to be by-passed. It was specifically meant to deter such behavior, in the first place.
Yeah, I always thought cheating was too much of a pain to be worth it. It doesn't make sense unless you get away with it. That takes more effort than just doing the work.
As an American reading this, are Cliff Notes now considered some old relic that no one's heard of? Because that's how they're being described in this comment.
The problem is that you couldn't know who was successfully getting away with it - people get away with murder and various other "bad things", this isn't any more of a possibility.
When I was subscribed to Seventeen magazine, there was an article about high school kids cheating, one of the methods of which was using written essays for either free or paid. Ways teachers caught students cheating in this way was finding strings of words that were identical in two or more papers, a red flag that it's ot the students' own work, and typing suspicious strings of words into Google to see if they find a match. This was probably in the mid 2000s. Oh, and you're pretty much right on with your guess of what a report card is.
I once wrote an essay for an acquaintance at a different college for $150... His professor ended up using it as an example of how to “Get a perfect score without following a single one of the professor’s requirements for the paper” 😂😂
Hi Simon, Perhaps an essay about Walt Disney and the killing of the Los Angeles Subway system. Los Angeles is the only large metropolitan area in the entire world that doesn't have a subway-type system. Why is that? The story I heard is that Walt Disney and his cronies had money invested in building the freeways up in the area, and wanted to kill the subway system because it would mean less people driving cars, less money for freeway building. So oerhaps we have Disney to thank for all the happy traffic people everyday in LA. He had just built Disneyland and wanted to build up the Interstate 5 and 405, etc freeways, for it was all orange fields at the time. They had even started digging tunnels underneath the city and they are still there now closed off for many years. As always, love the channel.
THAT INTRO Also my friend was talking about how she wrote an essay early on Twitter and a bunch of bots for essay writers were offering to do her assignment that she’d already done. :|
Commission an essay for a 'degree media course' on the subject of launching a UA-cam channel about "fun business facts from history and the present." You'll get an essay on how to launch Business Blaze, should be easy to grade :)
I remember seeing advertisements for these essay mills as a student when I would go on websites that would help you formate your sources for your Works Cited page. Evil geniuses, advertising there (I never was tempted, but you’ve got to admire the logic).
I hear you. I always was of the opinion that there's no point in cheating unless you get away with it. To me, that took more effort than just doing the assignments.
@@kyletucker3811 I agree with you 100%. Just do the work yourself - it's easier than all the effort required to ensure you're not caught cheating, plus [more importantly] you'll get the learning & experience benefits that you're paying for!
The interesting problem with a PhD dissertation is that it has to be defended in front of a panel of other Phd"s that would be more than happy to use their intellect to tear holes in the thesis. No thanks, too much politics behind a PhD degree. Getting back to the topic of the video-----"If there's money involved, then somebody will find a way tp cheat the system."
in almost 6 years of working in science and doing my own PhD and being part of countless other thesis, i have never heard of anyone having trouble with those panels. From my experience it is just a bunch of people who want to hear someone smart to talk about their work and check if they actually did something with their data and such. Their was never any animosity or politics involved. Because everyone knows, if you fuck them over, they fuck you over and then no1 wins
@@ijustownyouall You've never heard of anyone having trouble with panels because the people you hang out with actually did the work their thesis describes. It would be a whole different story if they just used someone else's work. I don't really see anyone who's actually done the work to obtain a PhD going through the trouble of having someone else write the thesis for them. They'd need to spend way too much time explaining everything for to be worth it. But in all honesty, I don't really see how anyone could realistically get to a defense with a thesis they didn't write anyway. At least in my experience, all PhD students have a supervisor who supervises the creation of the thesis. And before the student can defend their thesis the supervisor has to give the go ahead. And since the reputation of the actual supervisor is on line for this, they will make sure that the piece of work a) corresponds to what was actually done during the years of research and b) is sufficient to receive a PhD (in their opinion).
I mentioned Preston Tucker in my comment in your previous video, but that’s a story you should definitely do. The Tucker 48 was a car that was ahead of its time, and it’s now a seven figure classic. Unfortunately, Tucker was the subject of an SEC investigation that ruined his reputation, despite being acquitted. He was planning to set up shop in Brazil, but he passed before anything could come from his Brazilian venture. Ironically, the prosecutor who relentlessly pursued Tucker would later be convicted and jailed for unrelated offenses. I also mentioned Malcolm Bricklin, who is a very interesting character. There’s a lot to talk about, as the man has had many ideas and business ventures. Here are a few key points; He brought Subaru to the U.S. but the car in question received such a scathing review that Subaru of America nearly went bust. Then, he went to Canada to manufacture his own car. The Bricklin SV-1 is a cool looking car with equally cool gullwing doors, but also flopped. Then, along came the infamous Yugo. This time, he was out of Yugo America before the company folded, but he wasn’t happy about it.
I used to do this for friends for fun. Well, to be precise, I wouldn't completely write the essay for them, but rather I would "fluff" what they had already written. They might have a single paragraph but needed it to be at least 500 or 1000 words, so I would take what they had and expand upon it in both sentence stretching as well as increased research into their topic of study. If they needed rough drafts to show their work, it was easy enough to mock those up as I went along by changing sentence structures from simple to complex and deleting bits from the final copy to make it look like there was a progression towards the final. Granted I would always recommend that they go through and change any wording that didn't sound like something they would have typed previously so it wasn't blatant that it was written by somebody else. I even helped some friends enter essay contests. I never took money though- this was just something to kill time and amuse myself after I had been out of school long enough to miss it.
You just keep coming out with all these new videos Simon, and I guess I never realized that there's a lot of pre-work put into this kind of stuff. Thanks to you and others making these videos possible.
I thoroughly enjoy all of your channels, but I especially enjoy this format! It's awesome to hear the writers' scripts, and then your personal thoughts. It feels a lot more genuine and candid! Keep it up! Your teams are awesome!!
I work as a thesis supervisor for a B.Ed programme. One of the ways we combat cheating is regular content check ins. Students receive dates for check ins well in advance and are penalized on their final work grade if they don't provide their continuous work at the required times. This works well. I have caught a few cheaters in the past and usually what gives it away is a phrase or sequence of words that are out of character for that student. If I've seen someone struggle with a concept for a while and then suddenly they've mastered it on paper, I'm always a little suspicious. 🤔
I knew a guy that operated one of these businesses in Canada. The writers were all grad students. The students were mostly foreign students. The per page cost was closer to an up-scale meal for two. Students went to a university with high standards. If you didn't get an A, they would write emails to dispute the grades with the prof for you. I didn't use it, but I learned that if the grader perceives you as a hassle (like emailing them complaints about your grades) they will often start giving you good grades to avoid the hassle.
@@chloesavannahcummings7982 contact Preeminent Academic Writers for the real deal. Thousands of professors and college graduates work for us. Google Preeminent Academic Writers and you will find the website.
What definition of 'good' are you using? It seems like an extremely immoral and illegal way to make money that only the most morally-bankrupt would every seriously consider.
I once caught a student when their 2nd essay was astronomical better than their 1st. I can't remember if any specific sanction was applied, but the department had a list of names of suspect students, whose work would always be double checked.
I wrote all my girlfriend's essays ranging from 2000 to 4000 words for her MBA in fashion and design. All I wrote it on was a few dot points and maybe 2 hours of research. She (I) received 5 HD's (high distinctions the highest mark in aus) and 1 distinction. The ability to write is a marketable skill. My main focus study wise was applied science. The furthest from what she was studying. P.S when she got her masters I really wanted a copy to cross her name out and write mine. P.P.S. Love all your channels
My roommate worked at my university's writing studio which was a free service for students to help with writing via tutors. They always knew when a student didn't write the paper because when asked about the paper, the student would not be able to answer.
A fellow student once came to me personally and offered me money to write an essay for my favorite professor's class. This student was in danger of failing. I don't remember the exact amount, but I do remember it was a *lot* of money, like I was shocked that anyone would, apropos of nothing, offer me that much money to write something. I ended up asking for samples of previous work and some time to consider, before turning the offer down. I then wrote the essay anyway as sort of an exercise. I guess now that I see this in writing, it kind of explains why the student picked me out of all the people to ask. "Hey, here's this guy who likes writing so much that he'll do it for free; maybe if I pay his rent he'll write something for me."
I went to college before there was an internet, so I had to do my essays myself. I didn't cheat because I just knew I'd get caught, then my mother would find out and I'd hear about it for the rest of my life.
@@brainblaze6526 Doesn't suck to be me, either then or now. However, it would have had my mother found out I was cheating. My mother was a force to be reckoned with, and I find that the older I get the more like her I'm becoming. Now that's scary.
I taught essay writing. When you get a fake paper, you know it. The best way to combat it is to get the students to build their papers with multiple assignments and drafts, and to be a bit forgiving about late work. Before the due date, most of the work will be done, so why hire someone? If there is an emergency fake or real, ask for an extension. More work for me, but plagiarism stops.
Danny would probably have included a random story about how he typed essays for students out on an actual typewriter between matching people in his dating service
Watch out TIFO script writers--you're getting replaced by cheap essay mills! ;) I actually remember discussing this with a friend about 10 years ago. I wasn't sure how you could actually ban it. You could maybe reign in the marketing some, but at it's core, it's just commissioning someone to write an essay for you, which has plenty of legitimate purposes.
The best way to prevent that is make the students handwrite it then bring in a handwriting expert. Everyone has unique handwriting and style that no one else can replicate.
aragonjohn7 In these days when kids aren’t even taught penmanship anymore, this would be cause for revolt! Most teens I (mom of a teen) know can’t even read cursive. And having to PRINT anything so long - oh, agony for kids unaccustomed to writing anything by hand beyond maybe their math homework.... 😂
You can even ask for assignments to be target a specific grade as to not raise awareness. If you're a straight B student they can aim for a B in your style. At my university the official school facebook group had people advertising their services. They even offer to take exams for you and the school doesn't even care.
Heya Simon, I am a PhD student in computer science currently working on my dissertation (in the USA). This would be prettty much impossible. A good deal of my thesis relies on novel theoretical and experimental results that I have compounded over the better part of a year. In addition it builds on a work that I had written and was accepted in computer science conference. To do it effectively you would have to 1) keep your advisor in the dark 2) write at least one paper that was accepted in peer reviewed conferences 3) fool your entire PhD committee 4) have enough knowledge of the work to present on it (and its predecessor) for multiple hours to an extremely hostile audience who WILL ask every question under the sun about it (as well as assume it is worthless (not really... but kinda)). I do run into this sort of thing when TA-ing lower level computer science courses but it is really easy to figure out. If you want I can explain that in a reply!
Read up on the MyMaster case in Australia that blew up a few years ago. Students caught had their qualifications annulled and many more were expelled from their universities. Many of the students were overseas students, primarily from China. It's an interesting case.
For undergraduate courses they could just switch to writing on a randomly selected topic while sitting an x-hour length exam session. I remember doing those, and they’re kind of a relief compared to a perfected essay. It prevents cheaters from going to higher levels where more thoughtful essays are more critical.
You should get an essay on the same subject as an upcoming casual criminalist episode, then measure the quality by seeing if they go into nearly as much depth and accuracy as your script.
I'm from Montreal and I stayed at the University of Toronto one summer in 2013. They have all these ad spaces outside on campus where literally anyone can post any ad. I would say 75% of the ads were essay mills and the next 25% *drumroll* were sex ads, you know the 'looking for models' type. How the University of Toronto could not give a shit about this is beyond my understanding. Around the same time, richer kids in Montreal would pay their poorer friends to write their essays for them *sigh*. It's something I saw with people near me though I had graduated by then. Just like you Simon, I was also in college ten years ago and I did not have to deal with any of this.
We actually get checked every couple of weeks for progress and have to clock hours. But we actually work on a project throughout the semester and have to turn applications in, so basically, you would have to do nothing for the essay, hire the service with your group and make the app line up with the work. That sounds like more work than putting the hours in.
Pitch for an essay (if you don’t mind being meta): As a gamer, this is a topic that comes up a lot. What is the point of pay-to-win? At the end of the day, in gaming or in academia, if you pay-to-win you never learn the intended skills. TL;DR pay-to-win screws the end user out of an important life lesson.
I think you are right about the dissertations. I know in my field I have to spend month out in the field and doing lab work if I were interested in writing a dissertation
Report cards were quarterly grades for classes given to students to show their parents with a returned signed copy. There were also progress reports typically issued halfway between each report card.
In the US, they used to do "report cards" that had A, B, C,, D, or F. Now they do a number system where 1 is great, 2 not so much, 3 needs improvement or something similiar, 0, is failure.
My university was very aware of this. I studied in Beijing, and we all knew how easy and cheap it was to get an essay. If we had presentations, we could even buy the slideshows online. Most people didn't though, but it wasn't unheard of. If someone got caught, the punishment was that you failed the entire semester and had to redo all classes.
My former coworker did this! She only worked at the restaurant on and off for a couple months but she also wrote essays and made okay money doing it, especially for being in high school and not really having bills other than her car and gas. And her Starbucks.
My friend who has a masters in history was an essay writer for one of these sites. He actually read books and did research as if it was his own assignment and would change his vocabulary based on the grade level. He might have been an exception but in his case every paper was original.
My younger brother used to sell MY old essays and tests to his classmates. I was off at college, but all my high school papers and tests were in my desk at my parents’ house. My brother had most of the same teachers I had in high school, and he figured out that his classmates would pay good money for test answers and good essays. This apparently went on for two years before one astute teacher caught on and changed up her tests and essay topics, at which point my brother and a bunch of his classmates failed. That teacher warned all the other teachers, and my brother’s income dropped to zero. At that point, my brother contacted me and offered to cut me in if I’d write new essays and papers. As I hadn’t seen a penny of the money he’d been earning off my work up to that point, I turned him down. I was busy writing papers for my friends at college, anyway....
I wrote the high school papers (and creative stories, poems, etc) for the guy who was valedictorian of the class below me. He wasn't a native English speaker, and even though you never would have known that from his spoken language skills, it was more evident in his written work. He was determined to be valedictorian, and I made a TON of money doing this for him for three years. I was the poet laureate for my class, went to art school and had a great reputation for my writing skills. It really wasn't that hard to vary my writing style to his, and I helped him re-write things so that they were more obviously his voice. However, I was able to do this because we were in such close contact. Likewise, I wanted to apply to one of these "essay mills" and it's actually not easy to become a career plagiarist!
senior thesis (aka: Bachelor's thesis/senior project; 20 pages) subject: History of Extra Sensory Perception (ESP) in Psychology. (It's turning out to be a very uncomfortable subject for them due to "recent" proof that it exists in subtle ways, mostly having to do with primal needs like mating and survival) Alt subject: rebuilding the understanding of the universe from the quantum level up rather than the macro world down. (You could actually get a PHD on this topic...)
I have been binge-watching all your past episodes and just watched this one. Did you ever purchase one of these essays? I would love to see how it turned out if you did. Can you do one, or give me the link to one you did (assuming you did one).
I looked into writing these essays as school has pretty much taught me how to write essays and nothing else (and I'm only able to do some form of work for a couple of hours a week due to disability), but found it does not pay well enough to be worth it. Remember that the writer doesn't get the full payment, and many places only pay less than a penny per word, same as with copywriting mills.
A report card is a quarterly (every 45 days of school in a 180 day school year) report mainly meant for parents to see. Some teachers require a signature or confirmation from the parents of receipt of the report card. Also there's "progress reports" that we had at my school which were kinda like, halfway between report cards.
Graduated college in 2010, even back then they had defense against this sort of thing. It was called Turn It In. It took your entire essay and compared it word for word with basically everything on the internet. I’m sure now they have even more sophisticated ways to bust students. Don’t do it kiddos. Sometimes being sneaky and lazy has some terrible repercussions. Do you really want to fail, be expelled, and become an embarrassment to your family and yourself? Nope
I agree this is a huge problem. I just want to point out... There are other ways to do this and when you point it out to the management teams of those "other ways" they're not really scrambling to take action...
I was one of those weird students who loved essays and term papers. As a student of the 60s and 70s there were no computers, and since I didn't learn to type until I got to high school I'd have to write my papers in longhand.
Absolutely do an Essay Mill test video!!! As far as suggestions (all of my suggestions are going to be physical anthropology based, sorry) you could do a short paper about whether or not Au. sediba should be considered a new species or just a derivative of Au. africanus. Or explaining the origins of Secondary Sexual Characteristics (like boobs, beards, and butts).
I confess, I used one of these years ago to for an assignment that I didn’t have time to do. I got caught of course because someone had seen the paper before, but the professor understood and gave me alternate assignment. I did that one honestly and the professor dropped the matter. That’s incidentally also how I came to read Frank Herbert’s “Dune”.
I remember at university our professor telling us about a time when they thought someone had cheated with this kind of system but he could prove he didn't by showing the notes of his progress. Obviously this may not work for every subject but it seems that often if the system flags an essay they will take into consideration the student's previous essays, conduct etc. Basically the point was if the system flags it you will have to prove you didn't cheat, rather than them proving that you did.
You took away something from me today. I thought I had created the captain Phillips meme. But there it is, in a video posted two months before I made it. 😂 😂
I 'Tutored' NCAA Div I Athletes as a TA back in the day. In two years I only met three basketball players face to face. The rest would show up to class day one to pick up thier syllabi and drop them at the facility. Essentially I did their classwork and proctored their exams on the road. Needless to say my school got caught about ten years ago and paid out the nose. To the best of my knowledge nothing has changed. BTW, the players I did meet turned into well known professional players and are now great business leaders.
Despite never being able to afford to go to college, I did a bunch of assignments for friends when they went. One actually got published. Good money, and good times.
I actually used to do this! Well, not exactly this, but similar; back in the earlier days of 4chan, I can't recall the board, but there were Amazon Wishlist threads - I got hooked up with a group lazy college kids who didn't like writing their history papers, who'd pay history-loving 15 year old me like $50/$75 if it graded well.
Oh snap, Simon. You could get one of these for a business blaze video and a geographics video, then compare that video's stats with your baseline and figure out if it works well.
I used to offer a similar service for TAFE and Uni students, though I wouldn't write out the essays...because I'm too fucking lazy. What I used to do was just flat-out sell the shortest form answers that were possible. This gave them the exact answer to whatever they had due, but prevented them from just directly handing in my work and forcing them to put it in their own writing. The arrangement I had was pretty simple. Give me all of your books and course material for the whole year, and (on average) $5,000, and then come back one week later for your answers and return of your possessions. From there the onus was on the student to turn that into a Pass, Distinction, or High Distinction. I never once had any complaints, and made a fairly decent amount of coin from it.
Report Card: At the end of the semester/term (for high school and college) and the end of the year (for elementary and middle school) you receive a piece of paper that has your grades on it for each class. Sometimes contains your grade point average. And usually contains the grade you ended the year/semester/term with, the grade you go on your final exam, and sometimes the grade you averaged in addition to what you finished with. These almost always have to be signed by your parent or guardian and turned in. With the possibility of failing if you don't do so.
In the us universities and colleges overprice the entire education so much anyway and they will still fail you miserably, so it makes fucking good sense to pay an already degrreed student deep in debt to make sure you pass though.
When I was in college decades ago my professors used to like me because they said they could tell I wrote my own papers (don't know if that's really a complement or not). I remember one of them saying, "These papers some of these students are handing in, I don't know where they're getting them, they're so professional." It's been going on a while.
In my one business 200 class I took because it was a requisite, as a freshman, there was a case study on a company sending employees to a business ethics class and complaining that the employees got a failing grade even though they paid for the tuition. As if, paying tuition guaranteed a passing grade.
These paper mills are a new take on the 'licensing review' seminars that are held at every site and at the time of every medical state board licensing exam. They have only gained in popularity since their introduction in the late 1960s/early 1970s. Some of these companies have been around for 40 or 50 years. One tactic is to ask their 'attendees' to memorize as many questions that are on the boards and as soon as one leaves the exam, head over to the seminar and write down the questions for the 'presenters' to share as most boards are given in a staggered schedule over a weekend. It is also common to use the same questions over and over again as this avoids the possibility of a lawsuit being filed against a licensing board that claims that the exam in year 'x' was harder than the one in year 'y'. If the same questions are utilized year after year, it defeats that type of lawsuit (which became a popular tactic to use if you failed the boards - higher a lawyer and sue the state).
I imagine super-short deadline papers with substantial volume requirements, are likely distributed among multiple writers. These service operator probably analyze output and match up writers with similar abilities, styles and speed, in teams.
You should have them write a 10 page paper on academic dishonesty
and then they will pay more for that essay.
@@balamstudios
I believe most require payment up front.
This is awesome. Need like 5 sources too.
I write for one of these businesses and they are great. What amazes me is the number of nursing students need papers done. I always find the irony in ethics papers
I totally agree on the on the ethics of online piracy and and cheating
Because at this very moment there's a student somewhere in in the world writing a paper about internet piracy referencing a pirated
The services have been around for decades. I have been catching them for years. Another popular trick is copying from an article, or chapter from a book. One problem with the mills is that the papers are often not original. Hum, a cheating site lying about papers being reused. Who would have thought. My record is having the same paper come from 3 different students in one class.
School teacher here. It's not such a big deal as essay mills, but whenever I'm suspicious of printed homework, I type a phrase into Google and show the class my results. One student actually handed in a screenshot of a Wikipedia page - including the Wikipedia logo! A few have hand-copied an entire page from the internet - credit at least for the additional effort.
@@cosmogoblin Funny story... but true. At CSU I was required to take a uni class called "Communications and Popular Culture" where after watching Avatar in class our assignment was to CREATE a Wikipedia page from scratch about anything to do with a movie we liked. Then we were to learn how to reference Wikipedia properly. So they basically taught us how to make stuff up (opinion), as if it was proper academic information, to post online... and then reference our own work. I'm not joking.
@@LSSYLondon That's actually quite scary!
If I was a lazy student buying an essay I would check it 1st to see if it's original and complain right away to the essay mill if it wasn't.
Wouldn't you just... re-write it in your own words? It's already written for you, all you need to do is change some stuff around, modify sentences, look up synonyms for words, maybe do a last minute research hour yourself just to quickly check you understand it all and presto, a purchased essay that cannot be traced back to an essay mill
If you are serious about reaching out to one of these essay mills, a biographic comparison paper of Wellington, Napoleon and Blucher for good measure, which would culminate at the battle of Waterloo and how their experiences shaped their respective actions on the battlefield that day. Comparative force structure aside, what experience in the leaders led one (two) to victory and the other to defeat. Senior thesis, approximately 10 pages?
Robert Whyte
I support this 100%
Awesome idea!
I second this
This is for your professor ain’t it?
@@sebastianyu5383 My exact thought.
Plot twist: Simon gets all his scripts through a service like this.
not realy as he credits the worker . I guess if you were honest to the teacher and told her were u got the work from. then it would be the same. ether way. in the work world people do this all the time. in the real world the grade is profitably .
davrick davrick it was a joke brah.
Did you mean to type: "Danny™"
Oh, so "Danny" is the name of the essay mill. Clever , Simon, clever.
Have the essay guy do a essay about the best way to write a essay
Yes! This! And on how immoral bought essays are and why they should be stopped (I don't really have an opinion on its morality but I'd like the notion of someone trying to condemn bought essays in a bought essay)
I did an actual original persuasive speech in speech writing class entitled "How to Capture an Audience's Attention". I had a classmate who was actually afraid to look away. lol
Step one make a friend, Step two speak spanish, step three write your friend a letter.
an* essay
Have the essay guy write an essay about how to write an essay about the essay guy that writes essays
Please make them write about the most ridiculous topic possible!! Maybe defending flat earth? Haha Definitely want a follow up. Super excited for this.
Side note- I wish this video had been made while I was still in college. I had no knowledge of this! :(
These services have existed for decades. If you watch any of the college based movies (Animal House, Revenge of the Nerds, School Daze, etc), you can see how they worked. It was basically getting a "nerd" friend to do it for you in exchange for a favor (introducing him to a girl he liked, getting him into a party, etc) if not straight cash.
And a darker side of this seen in Back to The Future. First we see in present day, Biff extorting a coworker by making him write a report and later see that Biff had been making him do this since at least High School.
And another version seen on one episode of Growing Pains, where the younger brother sold a since graduated A+ student's essays to current studies without her knowledge.
The other things sometimes done were copying paragraphs from Reader's Digest / Cliff notes / Encyclopedias , but these had a high likelihood of being caught in the teacher /professor cared to check.
"banned in New Zealand" laughs in Russia Server.
EXACTLY
@@brainblaze6526 this video is sponsored by nord vpn
@@brainblaze6526 this video is sponsored by nord vpn
This is hilarious... and fairly accurate. I did ghost writing back in college for money. Mostly for the Greek society. But I charged $20-25 per page, and it went up closer to the deadline. Loved this
Glad you enjoyed it!
I have an idea for a video, or maybe a series: trade agreements/organizations & how they work... NAFTA, NATO, the EU, the implications of deal ir no deal brexit (better hurry if you want to do that last one). There is almost a bottomless rabbit hole to get lost down if you are looking into business and trade...
The East India Trading Company would make a great stand alone video.
How does the stock market work?
... Just spitballing ideas for your new channel
Hi, I like all your channels, but this is most fun. Keep it on.
Thanks! Will do:)
It’s less fun now that he’s fired all of the writers and has outsourced the material to various essay mills...
@@littleboxxes lmfao. Exactly what I was going to say.
@@littleboxxes amazed they even reply to us little people
I told my girlfriend I found another channel with you on it and she asked, "is he doing his British accent?". She mad me laugh.
Try some engineering dissertation, how would they even fake it?
Results and experiments are needed
Having worked on ghostwriting sites, sometimes assignments like that get posted in those marketplaces and picked up by people in poor countries who are engineering students or otherwise have enough tech know-how to cobble together something believable-sounding. It's incredible how cheaply some of those types of jobs happen and how many people will try to claim those gigs.
@@ItsAsparageese how would you fake investigation? You can fake results, but they need to make some sense. But even like that, the person then has to defend their thesis against a jury
@@cyrustakem7993
I don’t know how it is for engineering, but I imagine it’s not too dissimilar from a physics thesis...and you need to give a defense of your thesis in physics (typically a panel of 3 or so professors). I have no idea how you’d fake that without actually studying the material, so unless you were just too lazy to write a paper that you knew all about, a paid thesis seems useless
I taught writing in the University of Hawai'i system for 42 years, including instructing students writing in 24 different languages. (UH's student body is far more linguistically and racially diverse than most US campuses.) For all students, especially those writing in English, I required all notes and two drafts to be attached to the final essay or else the final grade was F. The essay mill downloading students quickly disappeared from my classes.
SMART
That is an extremely good idea. If I ever get students who actually _do_ the assigned writing, I shall use it.
That would bother the crap out of me as a student.
I'm the kind of person who gets into a flow when I'm writing and very rarely goes back to revise, otherwise i end up making changes that destroy the flow of the piece and i essentially end up scrapping everything from the point i first edited onwards
Brian McKinley This sounds like the requirements for my high school reports. We had to turn in our topic ideas by a certain date, then show a certain number of cited notes on 3” x 5” cards by another date, then a preliminary outline at another point. For the final deadline, we had to turn in the final paper (typed,) a handwritten rough draft, a final outline, and 3” x 5” cards for all our research findings (whether used or not.) The intent was to teach us sound research process and avoid procrastination.
My workaround process:
1. Do the rock-bottom minimum to meet all preliminary requirements, including checking out a bunch of books related to the topic. Only crack 2-3 of the books long enough to scribble down some plausible cited notes (which may or may not actually be used in the final paper.)
2. On the day before the paper is due, frantically skim a few of the reference books, bookmarking anything that might be useful. After an hour of this, inspiration will strike. Jot down the top-level categories (Roman numeral level outline points) for the paper. Cull the 3” x 5” card cited notes for any which are still relevant; set aside the rest as padding for the final deliverable. Note which bookmarked spots are most relevant. Scavenge for references supporting any category obviously skimpy on research (or consider dropping that category.)
3. Write the body of the paper (by hand,) noting where to insert which citation but not writing them out. Along the way, scavenge for more citations if needed. Then write the introduction, and finally the conclusion.
4. Type up the handwritten paper. Word for word, unless any obvious issues surface. (Efficient!)
5. Type up the bibliography for all works consulted. (Note that via this process, there won’t be many works consulted which were not also cited: efficient!)
6. Write an outline for the paper as it turned out, down to the third or fourth level. (Looks impressive! See how closely my paper followed my outline? 😂)
7. Write out 3” x 5” cards for all cited notes not already on cards. Double-check all notecards and bibliography. Remove all bookmarks. Assemble stack of final deliverables. (Efficient!)
8. Keep your eye on the clock. If time allows, nap for a few hours - usually around step 5 or 6. Set three alarms, to allow time for remaining steps and to dress and make it to class on time.
9. Turn everything in. Expect to be a zombie the rest of that day, but pat yourself on the back for your efficiency!
Of course, in the end the joke was on me. It gets progressively harder to research-and-write-in-a-single-night for college/grad school papers. Decades later, I’m STILL trying to teach myself how to start earlier on projects, and really focus/motivate myself without an imminent deadline. It’s sad, really. 🤦♀️🤷♀️🙄😉
Lol I would just give the person my Google drive account and pay them to do all the notes and drafts
Yup I used one of these to get into nursing school. Had to do an English class as my prerequisites. by the end of the class I was just tired of writing essays. I just wanted to end the semester but I still had the final research paper. Went on reddit, posted an inquiry. Found a guy and paid him to do my essay. I was really skeptical so I ran the whole thing through a few plagiarism sites and sure enough it was 100 percent original. Turned it in and got a 97 on the final. Honestly I would do it again if I had to.
Maybe you could have an essay mill write a paper about essay mills :D
Lets go meta :D
Millception
Hate to admit it but, this was actually BIG, BIG business in the 'States as recently as the early 1990's!!
I can remember being in both H.S. and in college and running into people purchasing other people's PREVIOUSLY SUBMITTED (term paper) WORK. The one person who had a 'jump' on it though, was my former H.S. english teacher (shout out to, Mrs. Rose Lutjen, in case anybody remembers her). She was so far ahead of the game. 1) Mrs. Lutjen was in the habit of PRE-WARNING all her students not to borrow, copy, cheat, buy papers or even heaven forbid to buy a copy of, "Cliff Notes". Yes, just as the name states Cliff Notes were small phampleted black and yellow publications that gives readers synopsis' of most any printed book, play, or movie you could imagine. Cliff Notes was another big seller. 2) What Ms. Lutjen would do is run our term papers through a special program or software -- as old or as sophisticated as it may have been for the time, to check for originality. She would even tell us she was going to do it. In addition, she had a habit of keeping term papers (I think) for about 5 years. IF your paper did not pass muster and she found out your paper is a rehashing of someone else's work you automatically FAILED THE ASSIGNMENT.....NO QUESTIONS ASKED. You would think that people would have sense enough not to try.....not to test the waters. Nooooo. Nothing-doing. Naturally, there were a few 'bravehearts' who decided to test the waters, anyway. As can be predicted she promptly gave them an "F" / or 39% in UK terms. She was a tough teacher. We all hated her grading system at the time. However, being someone much older now I can turn around and look at what she did with admiration and pride. It is because of her, not in spite of her methods that I have a well ingrained set of ethics and morality which I adhere to, to this day. Blessings to you, Mrs. Lutjen wherever you are.
So you have ethics and morals... but no million dollar business figuring out how to get around her system...
@@LSSYLondon That's the whole point. The teacher didn't want her 'system' to be by-passed. It was specifically meant to deter such behavior, in the first place.
Yeah, I always thought cheating was too much of a pain to be worth it. It doesn't make sense unless you get away with it. That takes more effort than just doing the work.
As an American reading this, are Cliff Notes now considered some old relic that no one's heard of? Because that's how they're being described in this comment.
The problem is that you couldn't know who was successfully getting away with it - people get away with murder and various other "bad things", this isn't any more of a possibility.
When I was subscribed to Seventeen magazine, there was an article about high school kids cheating, one of the methods of which was using written essays for either free or paid. Ways teachers caught students cheating in this way was finding strings of words that were identical in two or more papers, a red flag that it's ot the students' own work, and typing suspicious strings of words into Google to see if they find a match. This was probably in the mid 2000s. Oh, and you're pretty much right on with your guess of what a report card is.
Think the point of these mills is so that searching them wouldn't be possible. It is an orginal piece created.
I once wrote an essay for an acquaintance at a different college for $150... His professor ended up using it as an example of how to “Get a perfect score without following a single one of the professor’s requirements for the paper” 😂😂
Hi Simon,
Perhaps an essay about Walt Disney and the killing of the Los Angeles Subway system. Los Angeles is the only large metropolitan area in the entire world that doesn't have a subway-type system. Why is that? The story I heard is that Walt Disney and his cronies had money invested in building the freeways up in the area, and wanted to kill the subway system because it would mean less people driving cars, less money for freeway building. So oerhaps we have Disney to thank for all the happy traffic people everyday in LA. He had just built Disneyland and wanted to build up the Interstate 5 and 405, etc freeways, for it was all orange fields at the time. They had even started digging tunnels underneath the city and they are still there now closed off for many years. As always, love the channel.
THAT INTRO
Also my friend was talking about how she wrote an essay early on Twitter and a bunch of bots for essay writers were offering to do her assignment that she’d already done. :|
Commission an essay for a 'degree media course' on the subject of launching a UA-cam channel about "fun business facts from history and the present."
You'll get an essay on how to launch Business Blaze, should be easy to grade :)
I remember seeing advertisements for these essay mills as a student when I would go on websites that would help you formate your sources for your Works Cited page. Evil geniuses, advertising there (I never was tempted, but you’ve got to admire the logic).
I hear you. I always was of the opinion that there's no point in cheating unless you get away with it. To me, that took more effort than just doing the assignments.
@@kyletucker3811 I agree with you 100%. Just do the work yourself - it's easier than all the effort required to ensure you're not caught cheating, plus [more importantly] you'll get the learning & experience benefits that you're paying for!
The interesting problem with a PhD dissertation is that it has to be defended in front of a panel of other Phd"s that would be more than happy to use their intellect to tear holes in the thesis. No thanks, too much politics behind a PhD degree. Getting back to the topic of the video-----"If there's money involved, then somebody will find a way tp cheat the system."
in almost 6 years of working in science and doing my own PhD and being part of countless other thesis, i have never heard of anyone having trouble with those panels. From my experience it is just a bunch of people who want to hear someone smart to talk about their work and check if they actually did something with their data and such. Their was never any animosity or politics involved. Because everyone knows, if you fuck them over, they fuck you over and then no1 wins
@@ijustownyouall You've never heard of anyone having trouble with panels because the people you hang out with actually did the work their thesis describes. It would be a whole different story if they just used someone else's work.
I don't really see anyone who's actually done the work to obtain a PhD going through the trouble of having someone else write the thesis for them. They'd need to spend way too much time explaining everything for to be worth it.
But in all honesty, I don't really see how anyone could realistically get to a defense with a thesis they didn't write anyway. At least in my experience, all PhD students have a supervisor who supervises the creation of the thesis. And before the student can defend their thesis the supervisor has to give the go ahead. And since the reputation of the actual supervisor is on line for this, they will make sure that the piece of work a) corresponds to what was actually done during the years of research and b) is sufficient to receive a PhD (in their opinion).
I mentioned Preston Tucker in my comment in your previous video, but that’s a story you should definitely do. The Tucker 48 was a car that was ahead of its time, and it’s now a seven figure classic. Unfortunately, Tucker was the subject of an SEC investigation that ruined his reputation, despite being acquitted. He was planning to set up shop in Brazil, but he passed before anything could come from his Brazilian venture. Ironically, the prosecutor who relentlessly pursued Tucker would later be convicted and jailed for unrelated offenses.
I also mentioned Malcolm Bricklin, who is a very interesting character. There’s a lot to talk about, as the man has had many ideas and business ventures. Here are a few key points; He brought Subaru to the U.S. but the car in question received such a scathing review that Subaru of America nearly went bust. Then, he went to Canada to manufacture his own car. The Bricklin SV-1 is a cool looking car with equally cool gullwing doors, but also flopped. Then, along came the infamous Yugo. This time, he was out of Yugo America before the company folded, but he wasn’t happy about it.
I used to do this for friends for fun. Well, to be precise, I wouldn't completely write the essay for them, but rather I would "fluff" what they had already written. They might have a single paragraph but needed it to be at least 500 or 1000 words, so I would take what they had and expand upon it in both sentence stretching as well as increased research into their topic of study. If they needed rough drafts to show their work, it was easy enough to mock those up as I went along by changing sentence structures from simple to complex and deleting bits from the final copy to make it look like there was a progression towards the final. Granted I would always recommend that they go through and change any wording that didn't sound like something they would have typed previously so it wasn't blatant that it was written by somebody else. I even helped some friends enter essay contests. I never took money though- this was just something to kill time and amuse myself after I had been out of school long enough to miss it.
You just keep coming out with all these new videos Simon, and I guess I never realized that there's a lot of pre-work put into this kind of stuff.
Thanks to you and others making these videos possible.
I thoroughly enjoy all of your channels, but I especially enjoy this format! It's awesome to hear the writers' scripts, and then your personal thoughts. It feels a lot more genuine and candid! Keep it up! Your teams are awesome!!
I work as a thesis supervisor for a B.Ed programme. One of the ways we combat cheating is regular content check ins. Students receive dates for check ins well in advance and are penalized on their final work grade if they don't provide their continuous work at the required times. This works well. I have caught a few cheaters in the past and usually what gives it away is a phrase or sequence of words that are out of character for that student. If I've seen someone struggle with a concept for a while and then suddenly they've mastered it on paper, I'm always a little suspicious. 🤔
Smart system.
I knew a guy that operated one of these businesses in Canada. The writers were all grad students. The students were mostly foreign students. The per page cost was closer to an up-scale meal for two. Students went to a university with high standards. If you didn't get an A, they would write emails to dispute the grades with the prof for you. I didn't use it, but I learned that if the grader perceives you as a hassle (like emailing them complaints about your grades) they will often start giving you good grades to avoid the hassle.
I've known people who used essay writing to help pay their way through college. It's good money.
Where do I sign up
@@chloesavannahcummings7982 contact Preeminent Academic Writers for the real deal. Thousands of professors and college graduates work for us. Google Preeminent Academic Writers and you will find the website.
@@preeminentacademicwriters5704 can you explain what your services do? I do happen to be a graduate of Architecture with a first in my degree.
What definition of 'good' are you using? It seems like an extremely immoral and illegal way to make money that only the most morally-bankrupt would every seriously consider.
@@kindoflame not morally bankrupt. Just financially
Lawrence is a great writer and you did a good job on delivery Simon.
I once caught a student when their 2nd essay was astronomical better than their 1st. I can't remember if any specific sanction was applied, but the department had a list of names of suspect students, whose work would always be double checked.
I wrote all my girlfriend's essays ranging from 2000 to 4000 words for her MBA in fashion and design. All I wrote it on was a few dot points and maybe 2 hours of research. She (I) received 5 HD's (high distinctions the highest mark in aus) and 1 distinction. The ability to write is a marketable skill. My main focus study wise was applied science. The furthest from what she was studying.
P.S when she got her masters I really wanted a copy to cross her name out and write mine.
P.P.S. Love all your channels
Nothing like having others benefit from your hard work!
My roommate worked at my university's writing studio which was a free service for students to help with writing via tutors. They always knew when a student didn't write the paper because when asked about the paper, the student would not be able to answer.
Thank you Laurence for the great script!
Every time I got discouraged on an essay I'd look up the costs to have someone write it, then go back to writing. I couldn't afford that
I'm curious what kind of essay you get from a mill. Definitely do a video about it.
A fellow student once came to me personally and offered me money to write an essay for my favorite professor's class. This student was in danger of failing. I don't remember the exact amount, but I do remember it was a *lot* of money, like I was shocked that anyone would, apropos of nothing, offer me that much money to write something.
I ended up asking for samples of previous work and some time to consider, before turning the offer down. I then wrote the essay anyway as sort of an exercise. I guess now that I see this in writing, it kind of explains why the student picked me out of all the people to ask. "Hey, here's this guy who likes writing so much that he'll do it for free; maybe if I pay his rent he'll write something for me."
I went to college before there was an internet, so I had to do my essays myself. I didn't cheat because I just knew I'd get caught, then my mother would find out and I'd hear about it for the rest of my life.
Sucked to be you. Everyone else just buys them online like a normal person these days.
Imagine if Amazon started offering essays 😂
@@brainblaze6526 Doesn't suck to be me, either then or now. However, it would have had my mother found out I was cheating. My mother was a force to be reckoned with, and I find that the older I get the more like her I'm becoming. Now that's scary.
I taught essay writing. When you get a fake paper, you know it. The best way to combat it is to get the students to build their papers with multiple assignments and drafts, and to be a bit forgiving about late work. Before the due date, most of the work will be done, so why hire someone? If there is an emergency fake or real, ask for an extension. More work for me, but plagiarism stops.
Danny would probably have included a random story about how he typed essays for students out on an actual typewriter between matching people in his dating service
Watch out TIFO script writers--you're getting replaced by cheap essay mills! ;)
I actually remember discussing this with a friend about 10 years ago. I wasn't sure how you could actually ban it. You could maybe reign in the marketing some, but at it's core, it's just commissioning someone to write an essay for you, which has plenty of legitimate purposes.
The best way to prevent that is make the students handwrite it then bring in a handwriting expert. Everyone has unique handwriting and style that no one else can replicate.
aragonjohn7 In these days when kids aren’t even taught penmanship anymore, this would be cause for revolt! Most teens I (mom of a teen) know can’t even read cursive. And having to PRINT anything so long - oh, agony for kids unaccustomed to writing anything by hand beyond maybe their math homework.... 😂
@@goosebump801 hah ( : I'd like to see the revolution.
You can even ask for assignments to be target a specific grade as to not raise awareness. If you're a straight B student they can aim for a B in your style.
At my university the official school facebook group had people advertising their services. They even offer to take exams for you and the school doesn't even care.
So, I never bought an essay but have used a ghostwriting service. Most require major rewrites but does save time.
This isnt about the essay thing, but it reminded me of an idea for a video. Would you do one about those fake titles they sell online?
Heya Simon, I am a PhD student in computer science currently working on my dissertation (in the USA). This would be prettty much impossible. A good deal of my thesis relies on novel theoretical and experimental results that I have compounded over the better part of a year. In addition it builds on a work that I had written and was accepted in computer science conference. To do it effectively you would have to 1) keep your advisor in the dark 2) write at least one paper that was accepted in peer reviewed conferences 3) fool your entire PhD committee 4) have enough knowledge of the work to present on it (and its predecessor) for multiple hours to an extremely hostile audience who WILL ask every question under the sun about it (as well as assume it is worthless (not really... but kinda)). I do run into this sort of thing when TA-ing lower level computer science courses but it is really easy to figure out. If you want I can explain that in a reply!
Read up on the MyMaster case in Australia that blew up a few years ago. Students caught had their qualifications annulled and many more were expelled from their universities. Many of the students were overseas students, primarily from China. It's an interesting case.
For undergraduate courses they could just switch to writing on a randomly selected topic while sitting an x-hour length exam session. I remember doing those, and they’re kind of a relief compared to a perfected essay. It prevents cheaters from going to higher levels where more thoughtful essays are more critical.
You should get an essay on the same subject as an upcoming casual criminalist episode, then measure the quality by seeing if they go into nearly as much depth and accuracy as your script.
I'm from Montreal and I stayed at the University of Toronto one summer in 2013. They have all these ad spaces outside on campus where literally anyone can post any ad. I would say 75% of the ads were essay mills and the next 25% *drumroll* were sex ads, you know the 'looking for models' type. How the University of Toronto could not give a shit about this is beyond my understanding. Around the same time, richer kids in Montreal would pay their poorer friends to write their essays for them *sigh*. It's something I saw with people near me though I had graduated by then. Just like you Simon, I was also in college ten years ago and I did not have to deal with any of this.
How about an in depth essay about ethics?
Yes please!!!
Or resourcefulness!
We actually get checked every couple of weeks for progress and have to clock hours. But we actually work on a project throughout the semester and have to turn applications in, so basically, you would have to do nothing for the essay, hire the service with your group and make the app line up with the work. That sounds like more work than putting the hours in.
Pitch for an essay (if you don’t mind being meta): As a gamer, this is a topic that comes up a lot. What is the point of pay-to-win? At the end of the day, in gaming or in academia, if you pay-to-win you never learn the intended skills.
TL;DR pay-to-win screws the end user out of an important life lesson.
All gaming screws people out of is money and time.
I think you are right about the dissertations. I know in my field I have to spend month out in the field and doing lab work if I were interested in writing a dissertation
Report cards were quarterly grades for classes given to students to show their parents with a returned signed copy. There were also progress reports typically issued halfway between each report card.
In the US, they used to do "report cards" that had A, B, C,, D, or F. Now they do a number system where 1 is great, 2 not so much, 3 needs improvement or something similiar, 0, is failure.
My university was very aware of this. I studied in Beijing, and we all knew how easy and cheap it was to get an essay. If we had presentations, we could even buy the slideshows online. Most people didn't though, but it wasn't unheard of. If someone got caught, the punishment was that you failed the entire semester and had to redo all classes.
I learned about that from an episode of Degrassi: Next Gen when Paige Michalchuk bought a term paper and got a fail on it from the professor at Uni.
My former coworker did this! She only worked at the restaurant on and off for a couple months but she also wrote essays and made okay money doing it, especially for being in high school and not really having bills other than her car and gas. And her Starbucks.
So this is basically "ghostwriting for dummies" ?
"I try and read them all", Hi Simon and co, love your stuff
My friend who has a masters in history was an essay writer for one of these sites. He actually read books and did research as if it was his own assignment and would change his vocabulary based on the grade level. He might have been an exception but in his case every paper was original.
I would love a follow up episode where you purchase an essay!
My younger brother used to sell MY old essays and tests to his classmates. I was off at college, but all my high school papers and tests were in my desk at my parents’ house. My brother had most of the same teachers I had in high school, and he figured out that his classmates would pay good money for test answers and good essays. This apparently went on for two years before one astute teacher caught on and changed up her tests and essay topics, at which point my brother and a bunch of his classmates failed. That teacher warned all the other teachers, and my brother’s income dropped to zero.
At that point, my brother contacted me and offered to cut me in if I’d write new essays and papers. As I hadn’t seen a penny of the money he’d been earning off my work up to that point, I turned him down. I was busy writing papers for my friends at college, anyway....
A business blaze episode on essays would be awesome, I do enjoy the half hour ones.
I wrote the high school papers (and creative stories, poems, etc) for the guy who was valedictorian of the class below me. He wasn't a native English speaker, and even though you never would have known that from his spoken language skills, it was more evident in his written work. He was determined to be valedictorian, and I made a TON of money doing this for him for three years. I was the poet laureate for my class, went to art school and had a great reputation for my writing skills. It really wasn't that hard to vary my writing style to his, and I helped him re-write things so that they were more obviously his voice. However, I was able to do this because we were in such close contact.
Likewise, I wanted to apply to one of these "essay mills" and it's actually not easy to become a career plagiarist!
senior thesis (aka: Bachelor's thesis/senior project; 20 pages)
subject: History of Extra Sensory Perception (ESP) in Psychology. (It's turning out to be a very uncomfortable subject for them due to "recent" proof that it exists in subtle ways, mostly having to do with primal needs like mating and survival)
Alt subject: rebuilding the understanding of the universe from the quantum level up rather than the macro world down. (You could actually get a PHD on this topic...)
I have been binge-watching all your past episodes and just watched this one. Did you ever purchase one of these essays? I would love to see how it turned out if you did. Can you do one, or give me the link to one you did (assuming you did one).
students: we deserve free education! its too expensive
same students: imma buy my way to a phd
I looked into writing these essays as school has pretty much taught me how to write essays and nothing else (and I'm only able to do some form of work for a couple of hours a week due to disability), but found it does not pay well enough to be worth it. Remember that the writer doesn't get the full payment, and many places only pay less than a penny per word, same as with copywriting mills.
A report card is a quarterly (every 45 days of school in a 180 day school year) report mainly meant for parents to see. Some teachers require a signature or confirmation from the parents of receipt of the report card.
Also there's "progress reports" that we had at my school which were kinda like, halfway between report cards.
Graduated college in 2010, even back then they had defense against this sort of thing. It was called Turn It In. It took your entire essay and compared it word for word with basically everything on the internet. I’m sure now they have even more sophisticated ways to bust students. Don’t do it kiddos. Sometimes being sneaky and lazy has some terrible repercussions. Do you really want to fail, be expelled, and become an embarrassment to your family and yourself? Nope
I agree this is a huge problem. I just want to point out... There are other ways to do this and when you point it out to the management teams of those "other ways" they're not really scrambling to take action...
I was one of those weird students who loved essays and term papers. As a student of the 60s and 70s there were no computers, and since I didn't learn to type until I got to high school I'd have to write my papers in longhand.
Absolutely do an Essay Mill test video!!! As far as suggestions (all of my suggestions are going to be physical anthropology based, sorry) you could do a short paper about whether or not Au. sediba should be considered a new species or just a derivative of Au. africanus. Or explaining the origins of Secondary Sexual Characteristics (like boobs, beards, and butts).
I confess, I used one of these years ago to for an assignment that I didn’t have time to do. I got caught of course because someone had seen the paper before, but the professor understood and gave me alternate assignment. I did that one honestly and the professor dropped the matter. That’s incidentally also how I came to read Frank Herbert’s “Dune”.
Vintage Business Blaze is so chill
I remember at university our professor telling us about a time when they thought someone had cheated with this kind of system but he could prove he didn't by showing the notes of his progress. Obviously this may not work for every subject but it seems that often if the system flags an essay they will take into consideration the student's previous essays, conduct etc. Basically the point was if the system flags it you will have to prove you didn't cheat, rather than them proving that you did.
You took away something from me today. I thought I had created the captain Phillips meme. But there it is, in a video posted two months before I made it. 😂 😂
I 'Tutored' NCAA Div I Athletes as a TA back in the day. In two years I only met three basketball players face to face. The rest would show up to class day one to pick up thier syllabi and drop them at the facility. Essentially I did their classwork and proctored their exams on the road. Needless to say my school got caught about ten years ago and paid out the nose. To the best of my knowledge nothing has changed. BTW, the players I did meet turned into well known professional players and are now great business leaders.
Do that!! You sould ask for an essay on the same topic as one of your videos and compare and see what points they bring up and whatnot.
Despite never being able to afford to go to college, I did a bunch of assignments for friends when they went. One actually got published. Good money, and good times.
I actually used to do this! Well, not exactly this, but similar; back in the earlier days of 4chan, I can't recall the board, but there were Amazon Wishlist threads - I got hooked up with a group lazy college kids who didn't like writing their history papers, who'd pay history-loving 15 year old me like $50/$75 if it graded well.
Simon, you need a channel where you just smile, wink, and blow kisses into the camera for fifteen minutes.
"Thank you to Lawrence" for writing this essay on having other people write your essay...
"10 people who became millionaires, and then quickly lost it all, in the most amazing and ridiculous ways."
My schooling was pre-internet, but there were ways to buy papers even then. Sometime there were even answers to exams available.
Oh snap, Simon. You could get one of these for a business blaze video and a geographics video, then compare that video's stats with your baseline and figure out if it works well.
I used to offer a similar service for TAFE and Uni students, though I wouldn't write out the essays...because I'm too fucking lazy. What I used to do was just flat-out sell the shortest form answers that were possible. This gave them the exact answer to whatever they had due, but prevented them from just directly handing in my work and forcing them to put it in their own writing.
The arrangement I had was pretty simple. Give me all of your books and course material for the whole year, and (on average) $5,000, and then come back one week later for your answers and return of your possessions. From there the onus was on the student to turn that into a Pass, Distinction, or High Distinction.
I never once had any complaints, and made a fairly decent amount of coin from it.
Report Card: At the end of the semester/term (for high school and college) and the end of the year (for elementary and middle school) you receive a piece of paper that has your grades on it for each class. Sometimes contains your grade point average. And usually contains the grade you ended the year/semester/term with, the grade you go on your final exam, and sometimes the grade you averaged in addition to what you finished with.
These almost always have to be signed by your parent or guardian and turned in. With the possibility of failing if you don't do so.
In the us universities and colleges overprice the entire education so much anyway and they will still fail you miserably, so it makes fucking good sense to pay an already degrreed student deep in debt to make sure you pass though.
1: Oooh, I gotta comment on that. 2: Wait, that was months ago. 3: What ever came of this? This would be great!
Me: Writes essay
Professor: So, you like girls with glasses?
When I was in college decades ago my professors used to like me because they said they could tell I wrote my own papers (don't know if that's really a complement or not). I remember one of them saying, "These papers some of these students are handing in, I don't know where they're getting them, they're so professional." It's been going on a while.
In my one business 200 class I took because it was a requisite, as a freshman, there was a case study on a company sending employees to a business ethics class and complaining that the employees got a failing grade even though they paid for the tuition. As if, paying tuition guaranteed a passing grade.
Is it bad that i immediately thought oh hey, how do i get lazy kids to pay me?? I'll write your essays for you!
These paper mills are a new take on the 'licensing review' seminars that are held at every site and at the time of every medical state board licensing exam. They have only gained in popularity since their introduction in the late 1960s/early 1970s. Some of these companies have been around for 40 or 50 years. One tactic is to ask their 'attendees' to memorize as many questions that are on the boards and as soon as one leaves the exam, head over to the seminar and write down the questions for the 'presenters' to share as most boards are given in a staggered schedule over a weekend. It is also common to use the same questions over and over again as this avoids the possibility of a lawsuit being filed against a licensing board that claims that the exam in year 'x' was harder than the one in year 'y'. If the same questions are utilized year after year, it defeats that type of lawsuit (which became a popular tactic to use if you failed the boards - higher a lawyer and sue the state).
I imagine super-short deadline papers with substantial volume requirements, are likely distributed among multiple writers. These service operator probably analyze output and match up writers with similar abilities, styles and speed, in teams.
This would be great for writing documentation!