Forbes Fawns All Over Course Hero

Plus, illicit writing services "thrive" on TikTok and Meta/Facebook. Plus, a bigwig in university governance resigns over plagiarism.

Issue 238

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Forbes Falls All Over Themselves to Flatter Course Hero

About a month ago I stood in front of 350 or so educators, administrators, and test center directors and said cheating provider Chegg was Purdue Pharma - knowingly selling an addictive and debilitating product while trying to shield themselves with nonsense such as “most people use it for good.”

A few minutes later, I said:

If Chegg is Purdue Pharma, then Course Hero is a straight-up Mexican drug cartel.

I retreat not one inch from either statement.

But that is why it was so nauseating and embarrassing to see that - just days later - Forbes decided to lionize the leader of that illicit, and in some jurisdictions illegal, cheating enterprise.

I chose “embarrassing” with precision because I am a Forbes contributor and I am whatever is well past embarrassed. Mortified. I’m mortified that they put Andrew Grauer, founder of Course Hero and the leader of an empire of academic fraud, on the digital cover of their magazine. I mean literally:

Part of what makes the Forbes piece so puzzling is that back in 2021, Forbes did the definitive piece on the cheating company that is Chegg (see this Issue, before I started numbering them). They put that story, calling Chegg what it is, on the cover of their actual, in-print magazine.

Unlike that effort’s journalistic honesty, this new Forbes offering on Course Hero is nothing but slobbery genuflexion. It is neither critical nor even questioning, saying, for example:

Andrew Grauer, the cofounder of Course Hero, and CEO of parent, Learneo, has cash in the bank and a strategy that might keep him up with the changes.

Golly, that is swell. Good for him.

What’s downright odd about the piece though is it seems that the Forbes “general assignment” writer knows what Course Hero actually does. It appears that she or others just did not think it worth pointing out or exploring.

The piece says, for example:

Grauer started building Course Hero, an online library of class notes, essays and exam answers, mostly crowdsourced from other students.

Essays and exam answers.

And:

Easier, sometimes, to stay in your room and get answers online.

Get the answers online.

And that, in 2014 it raised $15 million in funding to:

keep growing its core business, which by that point included tutoring and individual questions answered.

Individual questions answered.

Forbes even identified Chegg, the very company they devoured as a cheating engine, as a Course Hero competitor:

publicly traded Chegg had risen to dominate the market for online study help (or, as a lot of professors see it, cheating), with its army of experts answering questions from India.

And that little “as a lot of professors see it” was the only mention of cheating in the whole article. Even that was about Chegg, not Course Hero.

Nonetheless, if you put the pieces together - Course Hero competes with Chegg, it provides essays and exam answers, and answers individual questions because it’s easier - that is what Course Hero does. Forbes just doesn’t call that what it is - selling cheating.

Maybe it’s no surprise that Forbes did not interview a single teacher. Not one. Let alone any authorities on academic integrity.

Instead, they interviewed people such as Michael Horn, who “writes and consults on education disruption.” Forbes does not point out that Course Hero sponsors Horn’s podcast (see Issue 164). Or that Horn is on the Advisory Board for GSV Ventures, which invests in Course Hero. Though Forbes does obligingly report that Horn:

frames Grauer’s approach as a smart strategic choice.

I bet he does.

But there is accidental actual news in the Forbes piece. In trying to say how Jiminy Cricket fabulous Course Hero is, they share some numbers. In addition to the $15 million in funding which they mention from 2014, they report:

Course Hero raised $80 million in the summer of 2020, hitting unicorn status, and another $395 million in late 2021—at a hefty $3.6 billion valuation (making Grauer’s estimated 20-25% stake worth as much as $900 million, at least temporarily, on paper).

And that:

So far, Grauer has picked up seven businesses, building to more than $250 million in annual sales, 750 employees and 100 million monthly active users worldwide of products ranging from CliffsNotes to artificial intelligence enabled writing tools to a math problem search engine.

And that, although the company won’t say how many paying cheat - I mean subscribers - it has:

across all of Learneo’s businesses, the company says, it had 3 million paying subscribers last year, up from 1 million in 2019

Let that sink in. Course Hero’s various cheating platforms have three million paying customers. They have 750 employees and 100 million active users. They were, at one point, valued at more than $3.5 billion.

The piece also notes that:

Grauer acquired the digital solutions division of struggling Barnes & Noble Education—the unit sells writing help, tutoring, question answering and online texts directly to students through its bartleby and Student Brand labels. In March, bartleby began offering educators a free tool that lets them check essays for the probability they were written by AI.

Three things here.

One, good for Barnes & Noble for ditching their cheating engine.

Two, it’s fascinating that Course Hero owns an AI writing tool and owns a system that supposedly detects it. I cannot fathom how that works or who’s clueless enough to trust Course Hero to check for AI writing. Although other companies are indeed helping to sell cheating services while also somehow convincing schools to pay them to stop cheating (see Issue 208).

Third, if I worked at a school, I’d call my campus bookstore right now to see if they are still promoting bartleby. When it was owned by Barnes & Noble, direct student access through approved, official bookstores was its competitive advantage. If bartleby is still there, your campus bookstore is selling Course Hero. I’d want to know that and I’d want to know that right now.

But this is about Forbes and the damage this kind of unthinking, obedient coverage does. Course Hero and other cheating providers spend millions of dollars trying to confuse people and appear legitimate. When publications such as Forbes praise them as smart and innovative, it enhances their brand, insulates them from honest criticism, and sells more cheating. At some point, journalists have an obligation to do better than that, to be better than that.

I know it’s hard to believe after I just wrote 800 words about this, but I really am speechless.

AI Cheating Services Are “Thriving” on TikTok and Meta

Speaking of media blowing their coverage of integrity, Fast Company has. I even gave them a “dishonorable mention” for the worst coverage of the year in 2022 (see Issue NYE22/23).

But a few days ago, Fast Company reported on AI-powered cheating services advertising on social media platforms such as TikTok and Meta. That’s not news. Social media is the lifeblood of cheating providers. That’s why cheating companies hire influencers (see Issue 234).

The article is important because it says clearly that, when notified of ads from cheating providers on its platforms, TikTok removed the ads and banned the advertisers:

A TikTok spokesperson tells Fast Company that the videos highlighted in the research have been removed and the accounts that posted them banned for breaching the app’s advertising policies.

Meta did not comment and it’s not clear whether they removed the ads or took other action.

That’s because, the article reports:

such mills are soliciting clients on TikTok and Meta platforms—despite the fact that the practice is illegal in a number of countries, including England, Wales, Australia, and New Zealand. 

Ireland too.

An associate professor in technology law from London told Fast Company:

“Platforms like TikTok and Meta are committing a criminal offense by advertising these systems because most of these laws contain explicit criminal provisions about advertising”

Yup.

I’ve maintained and advised for a long time that all anyone had to do was ask Meta/Facebook/Instagram, TikTok, X/Twitter and the rest to remove or not accept ads from cheating companies - and they probably would. I think that’s especially likely given the precedence they’re setting in other areas. If they won’t, I’d sure like to know why not. But, as far as I know, no one has officially asked them to do anything.

Near the end of the article, it says:

And as it becomes more standard, playing whack-a-mole with ads promoting AI-powered services may be a futile game, given the number of services out there

That’s true but also not true. Some providers will go to the trouble of masking their identities and hiding their payments in order to advertise. They don’t have any choice.

But the likes of Chegg, Course Hero, and Quizlet probably can’t. And given the share of the market controlled by a few specific players, whacking those moles would be very big. So big in fact, that Chegg told its investors that being blocked from social media ads would be a threat to its business.

I also have to note that I disagree with the below, from Thomas Lancaster, “an academic integrity specialist at Imperial College London.” Generally, he knows what he’s talking about. But he apparently told Fast Company:

“We already know that AI use cannot be reliably and consistently detected”

Factually, that’s not true.

The entire premise of the article is how essay mills are cleaning up AI text to create work:

that is undetectable by software designed to catch cheating.

If it cannot be reliably detected, why bother?

President and CEO of the Association of Governing Boards of Universities and Colleges Resigns over Plagiarism

Inside Higher Ed has the story of Henry Stoever, President and CEO of the Association of Governing Boards of Universities and Colleges (AGB), who has resigned after being accused of plagiarism in a column he “wrote” for the association magazine named - irony alert - Trusteeship.

An internal inquiry found that:

the framework and content in the column were used without appropriate attribution

The article is worth a review because it also runs through several recent incidents of plagiarism and their consequences. Let’s just say that this case is not unique.

It’s good, as one expert said in the article, to show that we still care about these things.

It’s also interesting to me that, according to IHE:

“Moving forward, AGB will re-evaluate its editorial standards, policies, and procedures for verifying that all written work published by AGB is original to the author and contains appropriate attribution for the work and ideas of others”

I’m sure that nearly 100% of the schools that their members run do this. It’s kind of surprising that AGB didn’t.

But just wait until they - and other serious organizations - start uncovering that work has been written by AI and passed off as original. What then? Are they even checking? Anyone want to wager?