Ah, and another screen that firms use for potential employees turns to mush.
It's a really interesting situation to think about. If these foreigners (from places with much less opportunity) are able to produce work of this caliber (while the students paying for them are either unable or unwilling), it makes one wonder whether those foreigners should be in the students' places. For a long time, one's success was more a function of where one was lucky enough to be located rather than one's ability. Manufacturing workers in America would be paid better than skilled labor in less fortunate areas. However, that seems to be breaking down as advances in communication and transportation tear down the old barriers.
I can't imagine this situation staying indefinitely - those writing the essays must know that they are getting a pittance in return for the gains they're helping the students achieve. How long will people accept being outsourced to while others realise the gains of their hard work? That sounded a lot more "the people will rise up" than I meant. Like, it's one thing to be offered less than the value of your production - corporations won't take the risk of us not producing value without that and we, in exchange, get guaranteed revenue. It's a fine situation and I'm personally happy to have the stability. However, in this case the students getting their degrees are potentially gaining a few million in lifetime earnings and these essay writers are getting a paltry $2-3 per page. Sooner or later, more of the people with these skills will want to compete with those students - given the chance.
I think you have a valid point about exploited labor, but I think you're conflating education and essay writing.
An educational degree is supposed to be about learning, not about of how many tests you have taken, homework assignments completed, essays turned in. I mean, when I was in college, I was highly aware of my credit requirements too and planned for them. My point is that the tests, the assignments, credit requirements all are simply proxy measurements of learning. Learning is what really matters. By gaming the system, and skipping the actual learning, the rich and lazy students are not getting anything in return either.
I guess it's a little naive but I'd like to believe that if you really got nothing out of your education, it will show. The paper only gets you so far.
But everything's a proxy for everything. Employers don't really want educated employees, they just use the college degree as a proxy for the skills and qualities they actually want. The college degree itself doesn't certify learning or the qualities desired by employers; it just certifies that you found a way to make it through college. Ultimately, anything anybody does is largely based on luck, their ability to game the system, who their friends are, etc. If some rich kid has an essay written for him, he's just equaling out the luck some other rich kid had in getting an easy teacher.
Personally, I found that my ability to write papers decreased as I wrote more of them. In that sense, I didn't learn anything by writing; in fact, I unlearned things. Maybe I would be a better writer if I had outsourced my papers.
A chimp is still a chimp, even if it's wearing a business suit.
Basically, a moron will still be a moron even if they have all the paper to get into a job. There's no doubt a few people who can get by in a job despite not being the smartest, but once companies start catching on I expect there'll be lots more loop holes to fire people.
I simply can't imagine a Ph.D. situation in which the advisor knows so little about the candidate that this would actually work. I could maybe see if the candidate did the work but wanted help with the 'wordsmithing' that s/he could pull it off. But even then. An alert advisor would get suspicious, I would think.
Maybe the word alert in the above sentence is where it breaks down.
It's a really interesting situation to think about. If these foreigners (from places with much less opportunity) are able to produce work of this caliber (while the students paying for them are either unable or unwilling), it makes one wonder whether those foreigners should be in the students' places. For a long time, one's success was more a function of where one was lucky enough to be located rather than one's ability. Manufacturing workers in America would be paid better than skilled labor in less fortunate areas. However, that seems to be breaking down as advances in communication and transportation tear down the old barriers.
I can't imagine this situation staying indefinitely - those writing the essays must know that they are getting a pittance in return for the gains they're helping the students achieve. How long will people accept being outsourced to while others realise the gains of their hard work? That sounded a lot more "the people will rise up" than I meant. Like, it's one thing to be offered less than the value of your production - corporations won't take the risk of us not producing value without that and we, in exchange, get guaranteed revenue. It's a fine situation and I'm personally happy to have the stability. However, in this case the students getting their degrees are potentially gaining a few million in lifetime earnings and these essay writers are getting a paltry $2-3 per page. Sooner or later, more of the people with these skills will want to compete with those students - given the chance.