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12/12/2006
Term Papers To GoOnline essay grade: 'D' for don't buy them
Northwestern Michigan College English instructors Dr. Mark Howell said the purchased paper would receive a failing grade, and that there would be additional consequences for any student discovered to have bought one. TRAVERSE CITY — On deadline? Can't get to your English homework? Too lazy to bother? Well, the Internet is here to save you. Web sites like TermPaperRelief.com will take your order — be it a term paper, dissertation or book report — and churn out a tailor-made piece of writing just for you. The catch? Well, none — except that students who buy them run the risk of failing the assignment, the course and being added to a database that keeps track of cheaters at some institutions. They're known as "essay mills” — hundreds of Web companies that promise papers penned by "Ph.D-holding ex-professors,” written in a format dictated by students with sources they specify. Such sites charge anywhere from $10 to $30 per page, depending on the turnaround time. The Record-Eagle sat down with Northwestern Michigan College English instructors Dr. Mark Howell and Dr. John Mauk and had them grade a five-page essay purchased from TermPaperRelief to see if the text would pass muster. They didn't even get through the first paragraph before the red pens came flying out, along with suspicions of a cooked paper. "To see that first sentence, I would immediately sit down and Google that,” said Howell, a nine-year NMC English instructor with a doctorate in American culture studies. The assignment was an in-depth analysis of the relationship between the individual and community — a routine essay topic at NMC. "If people who have achieved full individual justification in a plural society find that they do share a political conception of justice, then an 'overlapping consensus' forms and even further level of justification — 'public justification by political society' — has been achieved,” reads the opening sentence of the paper. The rest is chock full of similar-sounding syntax, they said. It's not in the format requested at time of purchase. And it's littered with other obvious red-flags. "There's no way you could turn this essay into me,” said Mauk, a five-year NMC instructor, whose doctorate is in rhetoric and writing. "You might as well hand me a ham sandwich — I need to see all of the work.” That would be rough drafts, works cited and peer edits compiled during the essay development — a path of thought to follow, which Mauk and Howell grade as much as the final draft. When a student cannot produce that body of work for whatever reason, the instructors said, often they resort to buying a paper. That can be painfully obvious to spot. "Instantly within a few sentences, I get this sort of thing and know that its plagiarized,” Mauk said. "These sentences aren't emerging from any particular consciousness that's trying to form a point. They're just fashioned together in some way.” But is it plagiarism since it's made to order instead of being copied and pasted from the internet? "Absolutely,” said Tim Dodd, executive director of the Center for Academic Integrity at Duke University. In researching an essay, a student goes through a learning process that involves exploring, investigating, synthesizing, analyzing (don't forget writing), and, Dodd said, "If you haven't done any of that, you cannot claim ownership.” Students may feel differently. An academic integrity survey released by the Center in 2005 shows that levels of plagiarism and cheating remain high around the country. Almost 50,000 undergrads on 60 American campuses participated in the survey started in 2002. While they did not specifically cover custom-written essays, the Center found that 70 percent of students admitted to some form of cheating on most campuses. And in students' eyes, the Internet has blurred standards on plagiarism. With the absence of "clear direction” from instructors, 77 percent of surveyed students feel that lifting sentences from a source on the Internet without appropriate citation and weaving them into a paper isn't a big deal. And almost 40 percent freely admitted to doing so. But not every instance of homework outsourcing is against the rules. Some professional researchers turn over their notes to a writer. In art schools, the written copy of a design project is routinely handed to another student. At NMC, a student who submits a cooked paper can either, a): receive a zero grade, b): fail the course, c): have a mark go on their academic record or, d): all of the above. The penalty depends on the severity of the offense.The call is left to the instructor. Howell said the paper from Term Paper Relief would result in a student failing his class. "The reading I gave it was extensive compared to what I would do,” Howell said. "It's premeditated plagiarism, it's done on purpose, it was planned out — game over.” The paper would also land the offending student's name in the new database NMC uses to keep track of cheaters. The database is new to the college this fall. The policy language behind it was drafted by Howell, who served as NMC communications department chair in 2004-2005. He said during that time, the plagiarism problem seemed to be reaching critical mass. "We were just getting case after case after case,” he said. Mauk and Howell both feel the tide has turned, helped by the word of the new database spreading. And they both say a refinement in the way essay assignments are given is the biggest deterrent to the problem. Smaller class sizes allow them to give more attention to the process of writing, instead of handing out a canned assignment. And if backed into a corner, students should call the instructor. "The school's not going anywhere and deadlines can be shifted,” Howell said. "Whatever reason for your panic, it's not worth going down this road.”
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