I just accidentally found out that this exists and now you all have to too:
I can’t stop laughing just thinking about the process that went into making it. The conversations. The ideas sessions. Approving the video. The recording session. I’m going to be giggling at random intervals for days, lads.
I have an extended family member who is a complete moron, and a drug addict, who went to one of those unaccredited trash law schools and passed the bar. He almost certainly cheated (he later spent time in federal prison for fraud), but I can’t even imagine how he pulled it off.
Grouping all China together = grouping all Euro together
Read the USC article. Only thing that bothered me was the obvious kidney sale.
Schools should auction off a small number of slots to defray costs for all students. 50 students at 250K+ a shot could cover quite a few scholarships.
University cheating is rampant but of course it is. My default is to always assume someone is cheating or attempting to cheat at everything, but I’ve found that it’s basically hopeless to get non-gamblers to that level of skepticism. I was explaining to a prof friend recently how Chinese applicants are currently cheating the GMAT, aside from straight up bribing people, and he didn’t seem to understand the leveraged impact it would have on scores given the format and scoring algorithm. People just don’t want to believe this shit until they see Aunt Becky de Rothschild on TV. A friend of mine had a cat burglar steal exams from his office. Do you guys remember that 22 poster with the company that wrote grad students’ theses and dissertations?
As a corollary, I vaguely remember Dan Ariely talking about this once. His point is that big cheaters are rare; the far more common phenomenon is little cheaters which are rampant and more costly:
Adam Grant: How common is dishonesty in organizations?
Dan Ariely: Very common. But the thing that is common is not big cheaters. The common thing is little cheaters…. What we find is that lots of people can cheat a little bit. If we cheat a lot, we … face the possibility that we will feel bad about ourselves. So we play a game within ourselves.
We have run experiments on cheating [with] close to 50,000 people so far. We found a handful of big cheaters, and we lost a few hundred dollars to big cheaters. We found more than 30,000 little cheaters, and we lost tens of thousands – $60,000, $70,000 – to the little cheaters. We think about the big cheaters, but the reality is that the economic activity that we need to worry about is all the little cheaters. That is the first step.
I’m not sure he’s exactly correct about deterrence though. I can’t imagine salt-of-the-earth Americans seeing Aunt Becky and Saudi Princes buying off schools and going to jail is going to restore their faith in the criminal justice or higher education systems. I’d bet it’s the exact opposite while they’d never even conceive of the small ways they are beating cheated, perhaps to greater effect.
No. Cliffs?
I can’t remember the account name(s). Had some role in a “consulting firm” that was essentially a thesis/dissert shop from what I recall. I think they catered to quant analysis for arts and humanities but I’m really stretching my memory. Could have been as far back as 2005.
Oh, I think I know the one you were talking about. I think I saw a couple of posts about it but I didn’t have any reason to think it wasn’t a legit firm. Who figured out they were shady? And how?
I don’t really remember which is why I asked if anyone else did. I think it was discussed in the IRC channel but dunno where I might even have those logs. They could be 15 years old. And I’d have to comb through tons of Dids shitposting to find the relevant parts if I could even track them down.
I’m pretty sure I know what you’re referring to. Just not sure how they were found to be frauds. I’ll PM you my guess.
Friends, Melkerson has delivered the names and we have located the sauce:
Victor didn’t reply so I’ll chip in and say the average American isn’t some sophisticate from CA or NY but some fucking hick who wants libertarianism for himself and totalitarianism for people he doesn’t like, so he belongs in the top right square along with Trump and Pence.
I was more alluding to the idea that Saudi prince could buy admissions through bribes then pay these guys to ghostwrite dissertations. But actually, turns out it’s even better than I remember. Saudi prince pays thousands to felon convicted of SEC fraud falsely claiming to hold dual PhDs from MIT who then farms the work out to the Philippines and a gambling site owned by a white nationalist!
And schools don’t give a shit about cheaters especially when it comes to international students. They pay big bucks to attend and universities are willing to be extremely forgiving.
Teachers know they won’t get backed up by the school so they don’t stress out over it.
When I was doing my PhD someone got caught plagiarizing a huge part of theirs. He had found some obscure Russian thesis and copied it.
What. The. Fuck.
Seriously, whose idea was this?
Give it like 20 seconds.
