Essay Mills, Blackmail and Expulsion
Plus, should schools not consider evidence of cheating if it comes from a blackmailer? Plus, Edtech Digest pumps up cheating tool. Plus, have you seen this woman?
Issue 186
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Essay Mill Blackmail and Expulsion
Daniel Sokol, a British barrister, academic integrity lawyer and friend of The Cheat Sheet, has another article this week - this one in Wonkhe.
In it, Sokol tells of a post-grad student on a study visa who used the services of an essay mill and was blackmailed after submitting his mill-assisted work. The blackmail scheme is fairly common - pay more or be turned in to your school for cheating. I wrote about one in Issue 48.
What’s different about the case Sokol shares is that the blackmailing essay mill actually followed through and turned the student in, leading to expulsion, revocation of the student visa and having to re-pay significant program fees.
The student simply did not believe the paid essay writer would do it.
Interestingly, Sokol suggests that essay mill blackmail may become more common soon as essay mills struggle to sustain business or fight to change their service models in the ChatGTP era. Personally, I think essay mills will be fine, given how wrong and predictable ChatGPT can be. But it’s an intriguing consideration and he may well be right.
Further in the article, Sokol suggests that, to combat this type of blackmail, universities refuse information from blackmailers. He writes:
To discourage blackmail, universities should refuse “tip offs” of cheating without proof of identity by the reporter and if there is evidence of unconscionable conduct, such as threats and blackmail, directed at the student.
I disagree.
The risk of blackmail or the risk of being caught is a deterrent to using contract cheating providers. If students know that their schools will ignore evidence of cheating when it comes from a co-conspirator or blackmailer, there’s less downside to using an essay service. Promising to disregard evidence of misconduct incentivizes misconduct.
It is dangerous to do business with people who sell fraud - it’s possible they cannot be trusted. If schools want to help their students, they should tell them that.
In fact, I’d prefer to see schools have policies committing them to act on all evidence of essay or education fraud, even if it comes from dubious sources. Certain action, and stories such as the one Sokol relays - cheating, blackmail, being turned in, expelled and kicked out of the country - will prevent cheating. That should be what we all want.
Cool Tool. But Not for School.
For reasons that escape me, Edtech Digest, has added QuillBot - the cheating friendly paraphrasing engine owned by Course Hero - to its series “Cool Tools.”
That’s not true, actually. I have a pretty good idea why.
Anyway, the write up is laughable:
On average, QuillBot helps students save 75% of their time spent on a writing project
Wow. That is cool. I bet it is pretty darn easy to save 75% of your writing time when you don’t have to actually write anything.
And, golly:
Here’s a solution that helps lifelong learners transform their thoughts into comprehensive and compelling write-ups.
Transform thoughts into compelling write-ups. You mean, it writes for you. Yes, that’s what it does. It’s a cheating engine. Everyone knows it. And yet, in the Edtech Digest write up, not a word about cheating - not even the usual toothless warning not to use it for cheating. They don’t even mention that it’s owned by Course Hero.
They do say that Quillbot has “7 million monthly active users,” which is probably true.
And Edtech Digest did thoughtfully tweet it to their 42,000 followers:
I just don’t know what more to say.
Interpol Seeks Leader in Singapore Cheating Case
According to this article by the BBC, Interpol is seeking Poh Yuan Nie, 57, for her role in exam cheating.
The article is absolutely worth a read.
Here’s an excerpt:
Poh's ex-girlfriend Tan Jia Yan, then aged 30, also sat for the papers as a private candidate. She did so with a camera phone attached to her chest via sticky tape, and hidden beneath her clothes.
Using FaceTime, Tan broadcast a livestream of the papers to Poh, her niece Fiona Poh and an employee Feng Riwen, who were waiting at the tuition centre.
The trio then worked out the answers and fed them to the students via their headphones. "If I heard them clearly, I should keep silent, if not, I should cough," testified one student.
The scheme unravelled when an exam supervisor heard unusual transmission sounds coming from one of the students, who came clean when questioned.
Poh, the article says, was convicted of 27 counts of cheating and sentenced to “between two and four years” in jail. And now Interpol wants her.
Damn. Don’t cheat in Singapore, right?