Chegg Sponsors Student Athletes Now
Plus, pulling the sweater's thread on Chegg. Plus, storytelling instead of proctoring.
Issue 111
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Cheating Company Chegg is Paying Student Athletes to Promote its Services
Chegg, which is probably the largest and best known cheating provider, has added a new tactic to its arsenal of marketing efforts to convince the world it’s a legitimate education company.
According to multiple news reports, at the end of March, Chegg signed an endorsement and promotion deal with Paige Bueckers, of the University of Connecticut and the 2021 National Player of the Year in NCAA Women’s Basketball.
In the announcement, Bueckers says,
As a college sophomore balancing so many things, I’ve always appreciated Chegg’s commitment to meeting students where they are and supporting them in a meaningful way
I wish I could be angry about this, but it’s sad.
Chegg throwing money at highly visible college athletes is part of their ongoing effort to partner with legitimate people and organizations - a pattern I wrote about nearly a year ago. Chegg says Bueckers is:
its first student athlete brand ambassador
First.
Maybe universities don’t have any control over the companies that their athletes endorse. But a student athlete endorsing a cheating provider isn’t a good look for the athlete, the school or its athletic program - for any athletic program. Reasonable people may think athletic programs would want to keep a very safe distance from cheating, academic or otherwise.
In any case, it’s just more evidence that cheating companies are playing a different game than those who care about academic integrity, quality or fairness.
New Jersey Increases its Investment in Chegg
Cheating company Chegg, as you likely know, is a public company. Its shares trade on the New York Stock Exchange and, according to this little news blurb, the New Jersey state pension fund is an active investor:
State of New Jersey Common Pension Fund D grew its stake in Chegg, Inc. (NYSE:CHGG – Get Rating) by 27.3% during the fourth quarter … The firm owned 106,121 shares of the technology company’s stock after purchasing an additional 22,769 shares during the period
At current share prices, New Jersey’s stake in Chegg is worth about $3.3 million.
In other words, while New Jersey is investing in its colleges and universities, the state is also profiting from those who cheat them. Nice.
Chegg, LinkedIn Comments and the Threads of a Sweater
You may remember or may have seen that Chegg is advertising on LinkedIn - trying to buy course materials from professors (see Issue 62).
One of their ads is here:
I included it because, as of now, it has 46 comments. Most of them from professors who correctly say Chegg is a cheating provider and a threat to legitimate academic progress. As the kids say, the comments are lit.
One of those commenting was JW Bruce, an engineering professor at Tennessee Tech University. I reached out to professor Bruce to hear his experience with Chegg.
The summary is that he caught 12 or 13 students using Chegg on an online exam - out of a class of about 60. He suspected there were more. But some students made successful efforts to avoid detection.
And though Chegg cooperated in his inquiry, Bruce said that doing the digging into the misconduct,
Was like pulling the thread on the sweater, the more I dig, the more I found
In addition to consequences for the students, receiving an F in the course, Bruce also talked about an overlooked and highly important consequence of cheating - the impact it has on professors,
I’ve been teaching for 22 years and this is not the first time there’s been misconduct. But you still get this feeling in the pit of your stomach. Now I have to deal with it. And it defeats the purpose of why we’re here.
And
I felt like this clinical depression. For weeks, I kept asking myself, ‘why do I do this?’
More on this interview to come.
If you’ve got a story of dealing with cheating providers such as Chegg, Course Hero, Quizlet, Bartlby, Photomath or others - and you want to share it - let me know.
Storytelling Instead of Proctoring
Roy Ying, a senior lecturer at the Hang Seng University of Hong Kong, wrote a piece recently for Times Higher Ed, which, incidentally, continues to be the best outlet around for coverage of academic integrity.
In his piece, Ying starts by saying that, since cheating cannot be eliminated, professors should learn to use it their advantage. He suggests allowing students a single study sheet in tests, something they put together themselves.
That’s an interesting idea, though it’s unenforceable in online, unproctored exams. Ying concedes the solution:
becomes a challenge when the exam venue is the students’ home, or wherever they may be, with zero invigilation [proctoring]. The use of online proctoring has been widely discussed, as the technology can reduce academic misconduct using webcams and other tools, studies show.
And though he knows proctoring online exams can reduce cheating, he says,
My institution … has opted to not use remote proctoring services, unless it is a requirement from the industry governing body. I welcome this approach because current students are already stressed from dealing with the challenges of the pandemic. Remote proctoring simply creates an additional layer of anxiety.
So, professor Ying says,
In lieu of such technology, my colleagues and I are doing our best in promulgating the importance of academic honesty through personal appeals and storytelling.
Personal appeals and storytelling.
I try very hard to not blame professors when their students make bad academic decisions. Sometimes, it’s a challenge.
Two Notes
One: In the last Issue of “The Cheat Sheet,” I said that New York Times writer Kashmir Hill was:
uniformed or misinformed.
Naturally, I meant “uninformed” instead of “uniformed.”
Though, in my defense, I have no idea what the dress code is at the New York Times. For all I know, she could very well be uniformed. Moreover, since I used “or,” I am off the hook. She’s at least misinformed.
Anyway, oops.
Two: Just a reminder that “The Cheat Sheet” is searchable.
The necessity to share information on misconduct is essential and, for about two minutes, I tried using hashtags on the stories. But that was not working, for reasons I cannot explain. So I stopped. In any case, the standard search option still works.
To search “The Cheat Sheet,” go to the main page and click the little magnifying glass on the right side. Type in a search term - a school name, a company, a service, whatever - and press enter.