That said, any student who is desperate enough to use a website like this is probably pretty stupid themselves. Stupidity: it’s like a virus.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Hidden_Curriculum_(book)

The assignments given in the classroom and the rewards for superior work are not limited to the formal curriculum. While many tasks are cast in explicit terms — “Do problems 1 through 8 on page 67,” “Read Chapter 3 and be prepared to discuss the period 1792-94 in French politics” — there is another set of less obvious tasks which bears a most interesting and important relationship to the formal curriculum. The question for the student is not only what he will learn but how he will learn, and when he will learn. These covert, inferred tasks, and the means to their mastery, are linked together in a hidden curriculum. They are rooted in the professors’ assumptions and values, the students’ expectations, and the social context in which both teacher and taught find themselves.

When I was in high school, I took a particularly challenging (but awesome nonetheless) Humanities class. I had a friend who was also in the same class. At the end of the year, we had to write a very large, very demanding paper for a big chunk of our final grade. I busted my ass and got my paper done on time. My “friend” decided that since she was a “good girl”, she would just neglect to turn in her paper and then would look all surprised and honest when the teacher asked her about it and say “Oh, but I turned that in…! Good thing I kept a copy…” and then actually turn in the paper several days late so she would have extra time.

I don’t think I really talked to her much after that. Respect level for that kind of crap: ZERO.

I know of very few professors who accept emailed papers. I told my students that under almost no circumstances do I allow emailed papers – any emails with papers attached will be promptly ignored unless it’s a pretty solid emergency. Nope. Hard copies only.

I’ve been in college/uni for about six years now, and I have yet to encounter a teacher who will accept papers in an electronic form alone. They all want dead-trees.

You’re living in the Stone Age. Most professors at several high-profile universities I’m familiar with have been accepting emailed papers since at least 1999.

head -c4k /dev/urandom > 2pagecorruptedfile.doc. That’s 6 bucks, thanks for coming!

But now I see a counterbusiness: sell a tool that determines whether a corrupted file is really corrupted or just a load of random data.

While I am not condoning laziness or cheating in any way, I have to blame PROFESSORS (or teachers) primarily for this. That is right, I am blaming the innocent professors and teachers more than the dishonest students. Why? Because a good portion of teachers/professors have taken it upon themselves to be lazy and exploit their authority to the point that they are actually breaching academic integrity in their own way. Given that the universally accepted purpose of giving students assignments is for them to gain ACADEMIC experience, and the main point of grading this work is to evaluate its ACADEMIC quality, why is it that many teachers and professors decide to give students a ZERO for an assignment that is a few minutes, hours, or even days late?? Do they think it is better for the student to not do the assignment at all and learn nothing?? Even worse, if such professors or teachers had to specify their grading criteria for an assignment that received a zero because it was late, the criteria would be:

100% of grade- Based on whether deadline was met
0% of grade – Based on academic quality of work

To me, that is almost a JOKE, but I think it is SAD more than anything else.

I fully understand, and even encourage a deduction of 5, 10, or maybe 20 points for an assignment that is one or two days late. On the other hand, I feel it is ridiculous to say that a zero, or even a 50, is an ACCURATE grade for a paper that is a day or two late. What if that paper was of ‘A’ quality…should it receive a lower grade than a junky piece of crap that was turned in before the precious deadline?? I’m willing to bet that very few professors/teachers even believe that this is fair grade…they just see it as a very convenient way to reduce the amount of grading they have to do, or in rare cases, a way to satisfy their authoritarian egos. All this talk about “teaching responsibility” is BS!

Good thing that education is about learning rather than arbitrary deadlines for completing assignments…

Any educational program that purports to prepare students for life outside of academia also needs to teach accountability. Every job has deadlines of some kind, pretending they don’t exist makes students complacent and curriculum planning nearly impossible.

1. Copy-paste random text for as many pages as you need.
2. http://monolith.sourceforge.net/
3. Rename the .mono file to “MyPaper.doc” or whatever it was.

The companies that choose to hire through your school’s career assistance center may not be a very representative sample of employers. The only times anyone wanted to know my GPA was when I applied to grad school and when I applied for teaching positions.

Granted, as a designer most people are more interested in my portfolio than my grades. But my brother, who is an engineer, got started in his career because of all the engineering projects he’d worked on by the time he had his diploma.

Any educational program that purports to prepare students for life outside of academia

Your implied assumption being white-collar office job, in the kind of firm that you’re familiar with?

also needs to teach accountability. Every job has deadlines of some kind, pretending they don’t exist makes students complacent and curriculum planning nearly impossible.

You’re confusing a university education with job training… specifically the aforementioned tacit training of life inside what you assume will be a traditional corporate job.

In other words, you’re indoctrinating your students in a prescribed culture of “professionalism” — to make them into an “organization man” (or woman).

The least professors could do for their students is admit that much, while they do it.

“Hi class, I know you’re here to learn about metabolic pathways and modeling, but what I’m actually going to teach you is how to obey your boss, struggle to meet arbitrary and sometimes impossible deadlines, and how to bullshit your way through the work demanded of you.”

Because my experience has been that 95% of students merely bullshit their work well enough to be what’s “common knowledge” or what the professor/boss expects to hear — entirely without critical thought or original research, so that they can complete their papers by the afforded deadline. No actual learning or examination of the material ever occurs. The entire aim of why they’re in university in the first place is completely lost.

You’re throwing that word “lazy” around awfully casually. Care to explain?

Your implied assumption being white-collar office job, in the kind of firm that you’re familiar with?

Look who’s being presumptuous now. (FYI, I’m a designer and educator- I never had what I’d consider a “white collar” job.) No, I meant it when I said any job has deadlines of some kind, where you are accountable to some person for something. This applies to freelancers, construction workers, politicians, every paycheck-earning position I can think of.

You’re confusing a university education with job training… specifically the aforementioned tacit training of life inside what you assume will be a traditional corporate job.

No, I’m saying that a university education should prepare you for life outside of a classroom- where you will have to deal with other human beings at some point.

Because my experience has been that 95% of students merely bullshit their work well enough to be what’s “common knowledge” or what the professor/boss expects to hear — entirely without critical thought or original research, so that they can complete their papers by the afforded deadline. No actual learning or examination of the material ever occurs. The entire aim of why they’re in university in the first place is completely lost.

I’m sorry that you had such a shitty university education, but just because an assignment comes with a deadline doesn’t mean that it can’t involve critical thinking.

The good news is that if you think such an education is worthless then you shouldn’t care if the professor flunks you for not turning in your work.

That said, I completely agree with AGoodSandwich. Why go to college and cheat? If you’re paying a jillion dollars to go to college, you should get as much out of it as you can.

I’m sorry that you had such a shitty university education, but just because an assignment comes with a deadline doesn’t mean that it can’t involve critical thinking.

Even the typical 14-week semester makes critical thought and independent research on the subject presented extremely unlikely. (Unless you’re either a natural genius or have a rampant Adderall prescription.) Let alone the typical work cycle of 1-2 significant papers written each week (per class).

The good news is that if you think such an education is worthless then you shouldn’t care if the professor flunks you for not turning in your work.

What bothered me most was ostensibly paying for a credential when I was learning everything on my own anyway. Classes and professors were worse than useless. (Not that all professors were bad, I personally enjoyed many professors. But when it came to questions of, “suppose I want to do X, Y, and Z, how would one go about that?” they were completely ineffectual as intellectual resources.)

In Deschooling Society, Ivan Illich calls for the disestablishment of schools. He claims that schooling confuses teaching with learning, grades with education, diplomas with competence, attendance with attainment, and, especially, process with substance. He writes that schools do not reward real achievement, only processes. Schools inhibit a person’s will and ability to self-learn, ultimately resulting in psychological impotence.

There’s nothing wrong with getting an self-directed education independently of a structured system like a University, and there is plenty that can be improved in how schools measure success. But the only way to lead a life completely devoid of deadlines and responsibilities is to shun society altogether and become a hermit.