Seminary students "seem so blissfully unaware of the inherent contradiction in paying somebody to help them cheat in courses"

I busted a gut laughing so hard when I read this article. Particularly the end:

The 75-page paper on business ethics ultimately expanded into a 160-page graduate thesis, every word of which was written by me. I can’t remember the name of my client, but it’s her name on my work. We collaborated for months. As with so many other topics I tackle, the connection between unethical business practices and trade liberalization became a subtext to my everyday life.

So, of course, you can imagine my excitement when I received the good news:

“thanx so much for uhelp ican going to graduate to now”.

Yes, I bet you are going to graduate.

And how many of these same seminary students insist they are called into ministry???

What does it say about the state of academia today if the editors of a professional journal for academics are too obtuse to realize they have been punked?

Maybe those professionals paid a few surrogates themselves?

This was recently discussed by Randy Alcorn, Justin Taylor & Jared Wilson on their respective sites a few weeks ago. I am still in shock that pastors and Christian students (especially guys training to be pastors) do this kind of stuff. I remember always being told that if you tried to rip off someones paper then your teacher could find out about it by googling it. But when they pay a professional writer to write it for them then how do they catch that?

I didn’t see anywhere in the article a mention of which seminaries were being referenced. This is an important part of the issue in my mind.

Do not these cheating seminary students show the same degree of dishonesty as those who claim the degrees from very sub standard schools or degree mills? We have the sub standard schools such as HAC and WCBC. Then we have the very sub standard schools which include such as Louisiana Baptist University and Seminary and some other online schools. These are really degree mills with some work required to make some claim for legitimacy. Those who pursue such education and then use the degrees in their Bio or after their name are also cheating. If they claim the same academic level of work as the accredited or established and widely accepted schools, they are just kidding and embarrassing themselves. It is a very confusing academic world out there.

There are legitimate honorary degrees awarded by established and recognized academic institutions. Then there are the honorary DDs and LLDs conferred by Bible Colleges not qualified to recognize such honorary academic achievement. Many IFBX pastors have some sort of honorary doctorate and make sure they are called doctor or Doc. Are these not more guilty of fraud than the cheating seminary student?

Before we point out the harmful splinter in the seminary students eyes we should recognize the beam protruding from the many eyes of those already in ministry.
The concepts of academic and ministry dishonesty is rampant and accepted in fundamentalism. Why are we in any way shocked or surprised by this article?

It seems there is still much that schools can do to thwart this. For one thing, I doubt such hired-guns have the breadth of knowledge to write intelligently on every topic that gets thrown their way. Teachers ought to be able to detect shallowness and little substance in such papers. Also, why not interview each student? Sit the student down and ask about 5 minutes of questions concerning the paper he turned in. If he cannot intelligently talk about his paper, he probably didn’t write it. Have the student bring all of his work in. I recently wrote a 17 page paper for a D.Min. class. I have a hanging file folder about 2 inches thick with photocopied articles, notes I made on sections of books read, rough outlines of my paper and rough drafts.

[Jonathan Charles] Also, why not interview each student? Sit the student down and ask about 5 minutes of questions concerning the paper he turned in. If he cannot intelligently talk about his paper, he probably didn’t write it.

I agree that the method suggested would most likely work. The problem is the issue of time. In the classes that I teach, I do not have the time to interview each student who submits an assignment. In a class where I have 20 or so students, by the time I scheduled everyone, take the time to meet them, etc. the costs, to my mind, would vast outweigh the benefits.

When I have suspected a student of plagiarism, I have asked him to provide me with earlier drafts or the notes he has taken during research, but often times, I am limited in the actual amount of detective work that I can do. Often times, students do not take notes in the traditional sense, as they work almost exclusively electronically.

Only once have I had a student who, after I approached him, admitted his wrong doing and accepted his punishment. Most of the time, I hear phrases such as, “I respect myself too much to cheat.”

[Jonathan Charles] It seems there is still much that schools can do to thwart this. For one thing, I doubt such hired-guns have the breadth of knowledge to write intelligently on every topic that gets thrown their way. Teachers ought to be able to detect shallowness and little substance in such papers.

While I can agree with you somewhat, I think that the steps the author wrote about would be good enough to start providing some substance in writing these papers. Remember what the author wrote?

[article] It’s not implausible to write a 75-page paper in two days. It’s just miserable. I don’t need much sleep, and when I get cranking, I can churn out four or five pages an hour. First I lay out the sections of an assignment—introduction, problem statement, methodology, literature review, findings, conclusion—whatever the instructions call for. Then I start Googling.

I haven’t been to a library once since I started doing this job. Amazon is quite generous about free samples. If I can find a single page from a particular text, I can cobble that into a report, deducing what I don’t know from customer reviews and publisher blurbs. Google Scholar is a great source for material, providing the abstract of nearly any journal article. And of course, there’s Wikipedia, which is often my first stop when dealing with unfamiliar subjects. Naturally one must verify such material elsewhere, but I’ve taken hundreds of crash courses this way.

After I’ve gathered my sources, I pull out usable quotes, cite them, and distribute them among the sections of the assignment. Over the years, I’ve refined ways of stretching papers. I can write a four-word sentence in 40 words. Just give me one phrase of quotable text, and I’ll produce two pages of ponderous explanation. I can say in 10 pages what most normal people could say in a paragraph.

So while I would imagine that doctoral dissertations are complex enough that he might have to give himself over to the subject for several weeks, I think that banging out canned class papers on something broad enough like the Trinity would be easy enough to do. I’m also fairly sure that this person keeps a record of projects already done, so he can crib from those old subjects as well.

I am not naive enough to say that I don’t think this happens at Fundy schools, but I’m fairly sure that most students at BJU or Calvary Lansdale aren’t doing this - it would be more of the major mainstream seminaries like Yale, Cambridge, etc…the ones where there are far larger student bodies than our schools and the ‘academic mores’ are more…slack…than where our conservative Fundy schools would be.

The thing that scared me the most wasn’t as much this - although I certainly never would have guessed there was a market for it - but the quality of the texts and messages that the person got from his clients. Look at:

“Thanx u so much for the chapter is going very good the porfesser likes it but wants the folloing suggestions please what do you thing?:

“ ‘The hypothesis is interesting but I’d like to see it a bit more focused. Choose a specific connection and try to prove it.’

“What shoudwe say?”

“thanx so much for uhelp ican going to graduate to now”.

Two days had passed since I last heard from the business student. Overnight I had received 14 e-mails from her. She had additional instructions for the assignment, such as “but more again please make sure they are a good link betwee the leticture review and all the chapter and the benfet of my paper. finally do you think the level of this work? how match i can get it?”

I’ll admit, I didn’t fully understand that one.

It was followed by some clarification: “where u are can you get my messages? Please I pay a lot and dont have ao to faile I strated to get very worry.”

Her messages had arrived between 2 a.m. and 6 a.m. Again I assured her I had the matter under control.

That’s what really scared me. Are we (as a society) so addicted to our phones and texts that we can’t write coherently anymore?

Before we jump on the bandwagon of condemnation…. let’s apply a little suspicion

The numbers in the article don’t add up. The author claims to only make $66,000 a year, then discusses the incredible number of hours he works, while describing how he will make $1,000 on a quick 2 day project.

And that is presented as normal.

If he makes that kind of money in 2 days, his annual earnings would be way beyond $66K.

So his numbers don’t add up. But that’s not the only thing that stinks in the article.

He justifies sin upon sin. He is a false witness to everybody. Furthermore, he is a false witness who boasts of his ability to falsify.

Third, he justifies lying to teachers because they, according to this false witness, are responsible for churning the paper mill under the pressure of administrations who clamor for money and graduation rates. For him, others doing wrong validates him to do wrong.

“A false witness is one who utters lies” (Pro. 6:19). He is lying.

Further, he is a professional liar, both spiritually and financially. He sits in the seat of the scoffer.

So all of this means his testimony and article should be regarded with the deepest suspicion.

I say prove it. If anyone can reach this guy, tell him to post one of his papers, with someone’s real name on it, and the school, and the professor. And make it from a conservative seminary.

Until then, I dismiss it.