Got Spellcheck. Will Write for Food
Walking by bus stops in Astana, particularly those near universities, you might see ads that read like the one illustrated here: “Will write research papers and dissertations (in Russian or Kazakh). Selection of texts and translations. Written to schedule, high-quality, CHEAP!” Other ads highlight that they write course papers in Kazakh, a big help to those students whose grasp of the language isn’t up to par.
In the US professors struggle with similar problems from fraternities that keep file cabinets full of essays to students who cut-and-paste from Wikipedia, to ads on Craigslist that advertise paper-writing services. A friend of mine recently brought to my attention an ad posted near my old university where a student was soliciting someone to write their paper for them. Plagiarists who copy from the Internet, or who resubmit a paper from a past class are easily caught–professors have google and long memories. Students who use paper writing services are harder to catch.
It’s sad that something like this can be advertised so freely on bus stops. One would hope that professors or administrators might see them and call them up in order to find out who they are and catch them, or at least learn their trademark styles in order to recognize the style of such services. But more than that, one might hope that the general public would be disgusted by such blatant cheating. Hiring someone to write a paper for you will teach you absolutely nothing and make your paper worthless–plagiarists at least have put in some research time! I certainly wouldn’t want a doctor who had used such a service operating on me. Or a lawyer or economist consulting my company!
But it isn’t surprising that students will find ways to cheat or that the market will find ways to help them. An informal interview with some students indicates that the average student sees term papers and dissertations as bureaucratic hoops to jump through. They are happy to use such services and some express admiration for the people who run paper-writing businesses, saying they must make a lot of money. One acquaintance even argued that it was an honorable profession because the guy was using his brain. It was the dumb students who were in the wrong.
In any case, few are surprised that a new form of cheating has come to Kazakhstan.
Crossposted on Chalkboard
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I fully understand your concerns. Having lived in Almaty most of my life and having friends who were in school there, cheating was almost expected. If not that, bribing the teachers was. Flowers and wine on the day of the test were a common sight. I think that cheating is universal, but just much more obvious and out in the open in Kazakhstan. The flip side of the coin is the fact that most teachers hardly get paid anything. However I am hoping and praying that the economy of KZ will expand to the extent that the educational front will grow and become better.
Comment by Patrick W — 23 January 2008 @ 10:54 pm
Hi,
I’ve been inside of such companies which do such services for a few years, now these companies slowly vanish, because it is no longer profitable. The thing is that an ordinary student is usually poor. Students get to write these research papers and dissertations quite frequently during their study. So, they cannot pay much for the service which is getting more and more expensive to produce.
There is also a bit of exageration about the word used as a translation for “курсовые” - these are actually not that important, I would say their importance is more like a coursework. “дипломные” is a research work students do on their final year, but I doubt that it is possible to pass the project presentation without actually knowing what you’re talking about.
I agree that Kazakhstani universities should be more strict about plagiarism. I also think that some universal plagiarism-detecting software could be used to identify and punish those who do such things.
Comment by Ruslan — 13 February 2008 @ 5:16 am
My Kazakhstani daughter who attends the univ in Astana told me that she always takes her exams. Since I assumed everyone did I was a little surprised to find that it is common to pay to teachers for good grades!
(She and her sister are not my biological girls, but I love them dearly and love helping them get through the university).
Comment by Charlie — 14 February 2008 @ 1:47 am
Hey there! Just wanted to let you know that I loved this article, especially the title. I’m going to use it as part of the education chapter of neweurasia’s upcoming book, “CyberChaikhana.”
cf. http://chaikhana.neweurasia.net/?p=41
Comment by Christopher Schwartz — 21 June 2008 @ 11:40 pm
Cool! Feel free to use it. Your site looks interesting and I’m happy to help out with the project in anyway. One note: your RSS feed links are really small and hard to find.
Comment by KZBlog — 23 June 2008 @ 11:08 am
Re: RSS — Hah! Thanks for pointing that out. I’ll see what I can do about it.
Comment by Christopher Schwartz — 25 June 2008 @ 11:47 pm
feed://http//chaikhana.neweurasia.net/?feed=rss2
Comment by Christopher Schwartz — 25 June 2008 @ 11:48 pm