At $9.95 a page, you expected literature ?

15PerPage.jpgYesterday’s New York Times contains an article [2] by Charles McGrath investigating the custom essay and term paper marketplace. Using his real name and real credit card, he purchased 3 essays from commercial firms specializing in custom wiring. He then send the writing samples to several college professors asking them to evaluate the submissions and assign them a grade.

The good news about the papers was that they were badly enough written to not seem like commercial products. The bad news was that they were so badly written that the student would be lucky to receive a “D.” Most of the professors seemed to sense something wrong, and said that they would want to meet and talk to the student.

The article has a couple of nice bonus items … a description of the assignment as well as links to the actual papers purhcased. It would have been interesting to run these by, for example, graduate teaching assistants typical of those at many larger universities who are normally assigned to first year courses – and may not have much experience with papers, with grading, and with cultivating undergraduate writing skills.

Notes:

[1] The image for this item (source: http://customessaywriting.com/images/15PerPage.jpg, was found by a google search for an image depicting a “term paper” comes from such a custom firms, Custom Essay Writing. The somewhat higher price is supported by the claim: Our staff consists of talented individuals that love to read, write, and conduct research. Their passion is backed up by college, masters, and doctoral degrees. You could have seen their works in newspapers, magazine articles, television (ads/news/etc.), and a lot more. They’re friendly too!

[2] Charles McGrath, “At $9.95 a Page, You Expected Poetry?”, New York Times, September 10, 2006. http://www.nytimes.com/2006/09/10/weekinreview/10mcgrath.html On Monday, September 11th, this article was rated as the “Most Emailed” article; it also failed to make the top 10 in the “Most Blogged” list. Maybe this says something about the New York Times readership.

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