There is a revealing article in the May, 2011 issue of Reader’s Digest by Ed Dante (a pseudonym) about the cheating epidemic on college campuses. Dante is a ghostwriter who writes papers for college students for a steep fee. He makes some $66,000 per year, earning as much as $2,000 for a 75-page essay.
One of the biggest categories of students who seek Dante’s services are those that he calls “lazy rich kids.” He says that Colleges are a perfect launching ground for them, because our educational institutions are built to reward the rich and to forgive them their laziness. The successful among us are not always the best, the brightest, or the most ethical. The lazy rich kid is “poised for a life of paying others and telling them what to do. Indeed, he is acquiring all the skills he needs to stay on top.”
As for English-as-a-Second Language students and the hopelessly deficient students, our colleges are utterly failing them, primarily due to the focus on evaluation rather than education.
Nursing students account for one of Dante’s biggest customer bases–reports on nursing ethics, and essays on why nurse-practitioners are light the way to the future of medicine; and even pharmaceutical-treatment courses for patients.
Dante says that seminary students are among the biggest cheaters. He says that they “seem so blissfully unaware of the inherent contradiction in paying somebody to help them cheat in courses that are largely about walking in the light of God and providing an ethical model for others to follow. I have been commissioned to write many a passionate condemnation of America’s moral decay as exemplified by abortion, gay marriage, or the teaching of evolution. All in all, we may presume that clerical authorities see these as a greater threat than the plagiarism committed by the future frocked.”