Paid for essays

LegacyUser

Started a really technical post grad course recently. While it's a challenge I love every minute of the course. While I made friends with everyone on my course, I became close with one girl in particular.

This girl is a foreign student. She told me on numerous occasions that she was finding the technical language of the course very difficult. Although I tried to help her it sometimes seemed that she wasn't making that much of an effort.

As luck would have it, we were placed in three separate group projects together. Our first essay together was an experience. It was badly written with little focus. I had to do a lot of work to make it readable. As she was a non native English speaker I was expecting some errors but nothing on this scale.

We have 3/4 weeks in college left at this stage. Today she came to me and asked me to do her work in the group projects and she would pay me. She even mentioned that she did this in her undergrad.

I'm really struggling at the moment. A mistake by susi meant that I had to pay 4000 of my grant fees. I can barely afford to pay bus fare in the mornings. Cash like this would be great before Christmas. I can't say that I'm not tempted but I don't think it's something I can do.

Problem is, if I don't take the offer her work could pull the whole groups grade down.
She also mentioned that she was living with another person who works in the field that were studying, so she might get offered the task.

I'm really conflicted and annoyed. Any advice would be welcome.

Brokestudent

Brokestudent wrote: »

Problem is, if I don't take the offer her work could pull the whole groups grade down.

Speak to a supervisor about it, explain the issue. Or a rep or someone in the college who can give advice on how to handle the situation.

Getting a bit of extra cash won't be worth getting kicked out of your course for doing someone else's work

loalae

I agree with Bluewolf - tell someone about this! Actually probably best to tell the module co-ordinator.

No wonder you're annoyed! She's taking advantage! She doesn't deserve the qualification if she isn't able for the work and the rest of the group do not deserve a bad grade because she's not capable of the work.

If you do it once she'll keep coming back to you. You may even get away with it. But if you do get caught, can you handle repercussions such as being kicked off the course or receiving a NG for this module for everyone involved in the project? Because either of them could happen.

December2012

Don't do it.

It is up to her to prove her competency in the course and language - no wonder she is bad at written English if she cheated last year too!

Wellyd

Please don't do it. You'll regret it so much. When I was in college I witnessed the fall out of a similar situation and believe me it wasn't worth it for those involved. Regarding being broke, try going to the college welfare officer. They may be able to help you in some way. They normally have a budget to help students that are struggling financially.

clairefontaine

I'm not going to tell you what you should do, because ultimately it's your decision.

I will tell you what I would do. I would, without hesitation do it.

I'd even do it for free, in fact I have done it for my sister in law for free.

The rest of the group does not deserve to get a bad grade because her English is not up to par.

Secondly, the college should not have accepted her or her tuition money if her English is that bad. If they want to make a racket off taking tuition money from foreign students and accepting below competency English then they can stuff their so called ethics, because they don't have any in the first place.

If you really want to cover your tracks, then ask her to provide a rough draft of a couple of pages and then re write it and if you get called out on it, then just say you edited it and you have a rough draft on hand as proof.

iusedtoknow

Don't do it

She needs to take the fall on this - i would present the work with the name of the people that wrote it, and only them. She shouldn't get a free ride just because she is part of the group. If she didn't do the work, then she shouldn't benefit from the work being done. Real life is like that, we all take up the slack for workmates every now and then, but not to this level

As for the money side, talk to the college welfare people, they may be able to help.

Paddy Cow

Brokestudent wrote: »

Started a really technical post grad course recently......I became close with one girl in particular......Today she came to me and asked me to do her work in the group projects and she would pay me......I can't say that I'm not tempted......Problem is, if I don't take the offer her work could pull the whole groups grade down.

OP I can't believe that at post grad level you are even considering this :eek: I'm only an undergrad and academic integrity has been drilled into us by all the lecturers. We have been told in no uncertain terms that if students plagurise or copy from each other, they will both get a big fat 0. That is just undergrad, I assume the standards are higher for a Phd.

Your "friend" is not your friend and is using you. It sounds like she coasted through her undergrad degree and expects to do the same with her post grad. Has she approached the other members of the team and asked them the same thing? You might be tempted by the money but be very wary of the consequences. What happens if you accept and do all her work for these projects and the supervisor notices that there is a noticeable difference between her work in group projects and solo projects. If you are questioned about it will you admit that you did the work for payment? Will the other people on the project admit that she did nothing? What will she say?

I don't for a second think that she has no support. I understand that people for whom english isn't their first language find it a little bit more difficult to write a flawless essay but not to the point where they need someone else to write it for them. I'm in NUIG and there is a free service in the library that you can sign up to, to learn how to write essays. They are very helpful and while I've never had to avail of the service, I would assume that if someone is struggling, they would know of another service that could help them.

As for her lack of involvement dragging the overall mark of the team down, I think that you are using this to try and justify taking money to do her work. I have had team projects before and while the end result of the project was important, it didn't mean that everyone on the team got equal results. Supervisors look to see what contribution each team member made and base marks accordingly.

I would suggest sitting down with this person and having a chat. If you are as close as you think you are, then she won't have a problem with you saying that while you cannot do the work for her, you can help her with her English or suggest some avenues of support. I have a couple of non-native english speaking friends and I always check over their reports/essays for mistakes but they would never think of asking me to write the report/essay for them (and they would be insulted if I offered to). If she refuses to try and better her situation, then you may have no other choice than to go to your supervisor and let them know that there is a team mate who is not pulling their weight.

OP I can not tell you what to do but I would advise against doing another students work for money. This will only come back to bite you in the ass. You are at Phd level, which is the highest level you can get to. If you are found out to be cheating for money, it won't end well for you. As you said yourself, this girl doesn't seem to be making much of an effort. Why would you risk your Phd and reputation, just to carry her?

LegacyUser

Thanks for all your help

After a lot of thinking, I've decided not to do it. Now ive just got to figure out what to do next.

I'm really pissed off that I'm in this position. I don't want to see her with the same qualification as me if she did none of the work. But I'm stuck with her now. All of these assignments are 100% group work. Asking to leave groups now would be impossible and if I somehow managed to succeed it would treble my work load. I'm also a bit worried about her contribution to the projects now. I insisted that we use google docs for our work so there is evidence of all contributions made if things get messy.

Some of you guy mentioned going to a supervisor. I'm just concerned that It would be my word against hers. Also if the supervisor talks to the girl in question it would create conflict within the group.

SUSI: Reps team

Hi Brokestudent,

Brokestudent wrote: »

I'm really struggling at the moment. A mistake by susi meant that I had to pay 4000 of my grant fees. I can barely afford to pay bus fare in the mornings. Cash like this would be great before Christmas. I can't say that I'm not tempted but I don't think it's something I can do.

If you would like us to look into your application and assist you with any issues you are having, please forward a Private Message with the following details:

- W reference number
- D.O.B
- Mother's maiden name
- Home address

I hope this helps.

Kind regards,
Allanah,
SUSI HelpDesk.

Sleepy

Try and get the role of the person doing the final draft of the project: the one who collates everyone else's work and puts it all together. Insist that the rest of the group get their element of the project to you at least 48 hours before the submission date, use what you can of their work and fix the rest.

Ultimately, if you want the grade, you're going to have to bring her stuff up to scratch regardless. It's a group project and the reality is, it's good practice for the working world where you'll be working in teams of various skill levels. You'll be carrying people or others will be carrying you to some extent throughout your professional career. These projects are a good way of getting you to learn that and to deal with the politics of such situations.

Every group project in colllege I was involved with went the same way until my post-grad: I did the vast majority of the work. In my post-grad, a group of us managed to take on all of the group projects in the same group and then each chose the project we could guarantee a good result in (e.g. I did the programming one, a friend did the systems analysis one, another friend did the databases one). Once you'd done the project you sent it to the rest of the group, they gave any feedback, you tweaked it and submitted it. We again scored 90% or higher for each of these projects because we were able to play to our strengths but because we'd multiple projects, no-one got screwed in the same way we had been in our under grad groups.

Honestly, in your position I'd have taken the cash because, tbh, I think you'll end up doing the work regardless.+

Filibuster

Take the cash and ensure you get a good mark in the process. Just make sure you don't communicate on the deal by email etc.

It really wouldn't be worth it, especially if you get caught. I would imagine colleges would have very dim views on this kind of thing.

clairefontaine

Sleepy wrote: »

Try and get the role of the person doing the final draft of the project: the one who collates everyone else's work and puts it all together. Insist that the rest of the group get their element of the project to you at least 48 hours before the submission date, use what you can of their work and fix the rest.

Ultimately, if you want the grade, you're going to have to bring her stuff up to scratch regardless. It's a group project and the reality is, it's good practice for the working world where you'll be working in teams of various skill levels. You'll be carrying people or others will be carrying you to some extent throughout your professional career. These projects are a good way of getting you to learn that and to deal with the politics of such situations.

Every group project in colllege I was involved with went the same way until my post-grad: I did the vast majority of the work. In my post-grad, a group of us managed to take on all of the group projects in the same group and then each chose the project we could guarantee a good result in (e.g. I did the programming one, a friend did the systems analysis one, another friend did the databases one). Once you'd done the project you sent it to the rest of the group, they gave any feedback, you tweaked it and submitted it. We again scored 90% or higher for each of these projects because we were able to play to our strengths but because we'd multiple projects, no-one got screwed in the same way we had been in our under grad groups.

Honestly, in your position I'd have taken the cash because, tbh, I think you'll end up doing the work regardless.+

This is exactly what you should do OP.

Filibuster

Deleted User wrote: »

It really wouldn't be worth it, especially if you get caught. I would imagine colleges would have very dim views on this kind of thing.

The reality is if the OP dosn't help the girl out then they suffer with a bad grade.

Chucky the tree

Take cash OP. You'll either A) do the work anyway as sleepy pointed out or she'll get her room-mate to do it. It's easy money and chances are extremely slim you'll be caught.

amen

The reality is if the OP dosn't help the girl out then they suffer with a bad grade

Approach your tutor/supervisor and explain what is going on. Explain that you don't really want to take the cash but at the same time you don't want the group to get a bad grade.

Take cash OP.

This is really a moral judgement call. If I was a classmate of yours and I knew that A: you paid someone to write your essay or B:accepted cash to write someone's essay I would make sure to avoid you during my career as you would appear to be untrustworthy and lacking in judgement.

IvyTheTerrible

If you report the student to your tutor, then that will be taken into account in your mark.

Idle Passerby

Does the other team member know she made this proposal to you? Tell them and together decide what to do.

My own two cents is that the two of you should rat her out. She's bringing down the whole point of your course and making a mockery of the hard earned grades the rest of you are earning. She doesn't deserve the qualification she will recieve if this is allowed to continue and you will be in competition with her in the jobs market in future.

P.S. she's not your friend if shes asking you to do something you know is totally wrong, and also blackmailing you into by saying if you don't do it her housemate will.

LegacyUser

I am a lecturer and I would advise you to approach your tutor/lecturer about this. Under no circumstances should you do the work or take the money. That could get very messy if it ever got out. I could envisage a situation where you could end up getting 0 too if you participated in this. Just don’t do it please. Please go to your tutor/lecturer. You could just tell them someone in the group isn't prepared to do the work and show them your part of the project so they know you have your part done. Maybe you shouldn't explicitly say that she has paid for essays in the past just so as not to make things messy for you. Protect yourself. I expect she'll trip herself up eventually anyway on that front. I hope she does because I have no time for people who cheat and lie their way through college. It takes so much work to do very well so I can’t stand to see someone cheat their way through.

freshpopcorn

It's a very hard call OP.
I had the same problem in college with a two foreign girls.
I was a class rep.
One girl had bad English and I often helped her with her work/assignments. She wanted to learn and we worked together most of the time but sometimes I felt she was using me.
Another time I had to do a major assignment and I was grouped with a foreign girl because I was seen as a nice guy by the lecturers. At the begin she asked me to lead the project so I said okay because she was a little shy and I would be more confident than her. Which I understand. We had a couple of weeks to do it and I had the opinion that we'd get it done but we'd need to meet up every so often just to discuss what we had done and what we needed to do and to see were we having any problems so we could help one another out.
I got the feeling that she wasn't doing the work because she would never meet me and she always had her work left at home. This went on for weeks and the head of our course said to me How are ye getting on? I just said okay but I say she is finding the language difficult. This was his response. Just do it for her. So basically I ended up doing it for her. I was talking to a few other people from different courses and they have all had the similar experience .

Chucky the tree

amen wrote: »

This is really a moral judgement call. If I was a classmate of yours and I knew that A: you paid someone to write your essay or B:accepted cash to write someone's essay I would make sure to avoid you during my career as you would appear to be untrustworthy and lacking in judgement.

Don't tell your classmates, problem solved.

Is it against the rules of your course to proofread other students' work? As a freelance proofreader, I regularly proofread essays and dissertations for university students. Sometimes I have to go quite far to improve the quality (if you can read between the lines here), but the ideas are all theirs, and afaik many universities are fine with foreign students having their work proofread. I did French and we were encouraged to swap essays with native French speakers to check the language use was accurate.

Could you not get the girl to give you something, however badly written, and then charge her to correct it? You could clear this with your Head of Dept to prevent any 'why is her English suddenly so good?' comments. Keep it all above board.

I've found that spoiled, lazy, rich foreign students are a fact of life in most universities. They always end up getting their degree in one way or another, even if it means endless repeats or relying on others to do the work. I just found that I could get angry about it, let them pull the group down and end up even more stressed and annoyed or get on with it and correct their work.

In my experience, most course heads don't want to know about group problems. The one time I did complain about a Russian girl who used to sit filing her nails instead of doing any work, I was made to feel like a petty tattletale and ended up being the one to get the bad reputation among the lecturers for being difficult and uncooperative, even though everyone on the course was moaning about her. Remember that foreign students bring in much-needed cash for the university, so lecturers, unless they are particularly ethical, try not to rock the boat, and consciously or unconsciously make the local students feel like second-class citizens. You can see on here that several posters were told by lecturers to just 'do the work' for their lazy classmates. You think that would ever happen with an Irish student? Of course not. But that's life.

Cunning Stunt

OP think about the other scenario if you did do her work -- if she has been as bad as you say up until now, would the lecturers not get suspicious if this girls work and specifically English skills suddenly drastically improved overnight?

I would not take any chances - I would tell your lecturer about the offer and while you are at it, you should tell the lecturer that it's unfair to put someone with bad English skills into the group, if they are being judged on a whole.

gandalf

I'm currently doing a Level 8 course at the moment that involves an awful lot of group projects. People have different competencies and you mould and divide the group work towards everyones strengths. We've been lucky we all are doing the work assigned to us and bar a few disagreements we are working well together. I would never consider doing something like this in college or in the real world, if found out your reputation will be tarnished and the work you have done at undergraduate level and in this course will be thrown on the scrapheap.

You need to approach your lecturer or course director. The college should have ensured that this persons level of English was sufficient to make sure they could cope with the workload expected. If this person does get away with this then it reduces the validity of the qualification you are trying to attain and again if they are found out it will boomerang back to you.

In this country we do not like saying things that will get others in trouble but I think in this case it is the only way forward. This person should not have been allowed on this course if they are not capable of doing the work off their own back and it is unfair on you and the others in your team to carry them and even worse to contemplate endangering your future to do their work for them in this manner.

Thomas D

Do it.The colleges are absolutely complicit in this. They want foreign students coming over paying full fees. They know they can't speak english and they know that they pay post grads to their essays. It's a massive elephant in the room but it's rampant.
The college gets their money. The poor students have a nice revenue stream. The foreign student goes back home where they live in a world of family connections and backhanders and nearly every one has "bought" their degree.

Legs.Eleven

Thomas D wrote: »

Do it.The colleges are absolutely complicit in this. They want foreign students coming over paying full fees. They know they can't speak english and they know that they pay post grads to their essays. It's a massive elephant in the room but it's rampant.
The college gets their money. The poor students have a nice revenue stream. The foreign student goes back home where they live in a world of family connections and backhanders and nearly every one has "bought" their degree.

To me that's morally wrong on so many levels. Even if this was the done thing, I wouldn't be complicit in it. She should earn her degree like everyone else and if she can't, she should go home and try in her own country.

Chucky the tree

Cunning Stunt wrote: »

OP think about the other scenario if you did do her work -- if she has been as bad as you say up until now, would the lecturers not get suspicious if this girls work and specifically English skills suddenly drastically improved overnight?

He basically already done that. At least this time he's getting paid for it. From the OP...

Brokestudent wrote: »

As luck would have it, we were placed in three separate group projects together. Our first essay together was an experience. It was badly written with little focus. I had to do a lot of work to make it readable. As she was a non native English speaker I was expecting some errors but nothing on this scale.

pow wow

It's really a personal choice OP, whatever the morality of it. From a similar personal experience I'd be cautious when assuming the university would look sympathetically on the rest of the group whose marks may suffer, as the reality is as another poster said that the university is complicit to a degree in all of this. In my own case (provable plagiarism by one group member) the university was quite clear that either the rest of us re-wrote the project or we would all be given a zero and bought to disciplinary, despite the issue being attributable to one person alone. The guilty party was then accepted onto a postgrad in the same department at the same uni, despite what he had done.

My point here is that what's right and fair won't necessarily matter to the university, and you should be looking after yourself in this situation. If that means you have to write the foreign student's part of the project (paid or otherwise) then that's ultimately your call.

Sala

People who cheat devalue everyone else's qualification. Imagine a company hiring a person with what appeared to be a first class honours from a top university only to find they don't know anything? They'll be less quick to hire someone from the same course.

That said, I think you need to talk to someone to get guidance on the group work thing. It may be the case that you have to put in the extra work to protect your own grade and this is probably ok, unless everyone has specific roles in the team.

If you want the money maybe clarify with a tutor what type of assistance or "grinds" you could provide to the girl that wouldn't contravene the regulations

dellas1979

Sleepy wrote: »

Ultimately, if you want the grade, you're going to have to bring her stuff up to scratch regardless. It's a group project and the reality is, it's good practice for the working world where you'll be working in teams of various skill levels. You'll be carrying people or others will be carrying you to some extent throughout your professional career. These projects are a good way of getting you to learn that and to deal with the politics of such situations.

Hi sleepy - I some what disagree with what you wrote above.

A group assignment in college is in no way near reality.

If someone cant do their job and continually needs to be carried, then they shouldnt be in that job. Thats what managers/bosses are for. You are costing money/time/quality. Id help someone, of course, but no way jose would I carry them. Not a hope in hell. If someone cant do the job, they shouldnt be there.

OP - definitely do not put yourself in the firing line for a lazy team member. Or for money reasons.

There is more than one way to skin a cat!

I would simply ask the college lecturer (by email) what to do about someone who isnt contributing (leave aside her paying for essays before-thats nothing to do with you). You are concerned they'll drag the grade down. And leave him deal with it. And if you are worried about her falling out with you, so be it. She was cheeky enough to ask you in the first place!

Sleepy

dellas1979, I guess it depends on your role. I work in a role that involves a lot of consultancy where I'm working with project teams that are often made up of one or two of our company and a dozen or so of our clients staff so there's often no option to have incompetent team members replaced. It's often quite common for the most incompetent person on the project to be the most senior... particularly when dealing with organisations where seniority is based on length of service rather than merit.