Course Hero is Worth $3.6 Billion?

Plus, The Score drops episode 5. Plus, cheating spikes 58% at Oklahoma.

Issue 80

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Cheating Company Course Hero Raises $380 Million, Valued at $3.6 Billion

Cheating pays.

Course Hero, one of the Big Three cheating providers, announced this week that investors had given it another $380 million, placing the company’s valuation at a baffling $3.6 billion.

Though that may seem surprising, it’s not. Even after losing about half its value amid revenue concerns, Chegg, another of the Big Three, has an estimated value of $4.4 billion. And Quizlet, the third member of this terrible triumvirate, is also valued at more than $1 billion and may be looking to go public (see Issue 54).

In case you’re interested in who decided that investing in academic fraud was a good idea, the Course Hero press release says the recent $380 million came from:

Sequoia Capital Global Equities, OMERS Growth Equity and D1 Capital Partners, as well as existing investors including, GSV Ventures, NewView Capital, SuRo Capital, TPG and Valiant Peregrine Fund.

GSV incidentally also backs Photomath, an insidious cheating enabler I wrote about over at Forbes.

These folks must know what Course Hero does. Profit over principle I guess.

The Score Podcast: Episode 5

The Score, the outstanding podcast on academic integrity hosted by education writer Kathryn Baron, released its fifth episode this week.

This one features two educators - Dr. Mark Biggin and Dr. Karen Symms Gallagher.

Biggin is an affiliate of Biological Systems and Engineering Division at Lawrence Berkeley National Lab. I wrote about Biggin in Forbes back in April.

Gallagher is a professor and Veronica and David Hagen Chair in Women’s Leadership at Rossier School of Education at University of Southern California. She’s also former Dean of the Rossier School and penned one of the best pieces of 2021 on cheating (see Issue 67).

Go listen.

No, go listen.

Gallagher - as if seeing the future - said,

We know the saying, there's an app for that. Well, when it comes to cheating, there are hundreds of apps for that. That is because contract cheating, which really is outsourcing answers or essays for an exchange of money, is very lucrative. In the last 10 years alone, there have been a sizable investment by venture capitalists in apps that clearly are cheating apps.

She continued,

But with these apps ... it's just that it is very lucrative for these for-profit ed-tech companies.

A sizeable investment by venture capitalists in apps that are clearly cheating apps, you say? Scroll up one story and tell me that one again.

What caught my ear from Biggin’s interview was his note that few people and institutions are even measuring cheating, making them incapable of addressing it. Worse, he said,

There are a few tiny studies published in the literature that look at this. One or two classes at one school. I also know I've reliably informed some other schools. They also conducted some small data, but the administrators haven't allowed it to be published. But I know of no school that has really done a large scale study.

Catch that?

Even when there are small data sets about the prevalence of cheating, administrators keep the information locked up. That’s not surprising. As I’ve noted many times, American schools hate to talk about cheating, preferring to pretend it does not happen at their school.

Gallagher, in mentioning the cheating spike at USC this past year (see Issue 40) said,

I really want to pick up on this notion of measuring it. I found out about the 115% increase in [cases] at USC through a student publication. We do not publish what's going on at USC in our handling of student disciplinary actions, nor do most universities.

I add my meager voice to those of Biggin and Gallagher and others - how in the world are we going to do anything about cheating if we don’t know where or how or how often it happens? What can we do if we’re too afraid to even admit it happens?

Anyway, The Score is awesome. Go listen.

Oklahoma University Reports 57% Surge in Cheating

According to OUDaily, the independent student paper for Oklahoma University, the school saw a 57% jump in reports of academic misconduct, citing some very familiar causes. Quoting the paper:

With classes shifting online, cases of academic misconduct began to rise.

The numbers:

From the 2018-19 academic year to the 2019-20 academic year, OU saw a 57.6 percent increase in academic misconduct cases, going from 565 cases to 891. The next year, the Office of Academic Integrity received 886 academic misconduct cases, following the same trend as the year prior.

The assistant director of the university’s Office of Academic Integrity Programs told the paper:

the rise in cases is largely due to students taking classes at home. 

Boy have we heard that over and over again.

You know what else we’ve heard before? This, also from the OU paper:

Another resource students used more frequently to help them cheat is Chegg

Imagine that.

An OU student who serves as a paid advisor and advocate for students accused of misconduct told the paper,

At the end of the day, when we go to OU, we all want to get a degree from OU that is valuable in the job market,” [he] said. “We can't do that if OU has a reputation for being a school where people are allowed to get away with cheating and academic misconduct. So it's important, obviously, to prosecute cases of academic misconduct.

Note: I am planning on doing an end-of-year wrap up Issue. So, if you have suggestions or nominees for things such as quote of the year, news item of the year, person of the year in academic integrity - please drop me a note.