Ethics of the Plagiarism Industry
Friday, December 05, 2014
Buying and selling term papers online isn’t illegal, but professors of ethics from around the country say it’s wrong.
“It’s completely dishonest to buy papers. There is no ambiguity about that,” said Rachel Cohn, philosophy and ethics professor at University at Albany. "If you buy [a paper], you’re taking advantage of your classmates. Buying a paper is like using steroids in sports—it’s unjust to people who have to work hard for their grades.”
Cohn thinks the way education and technology has evolved makes it easier for students to justify plagiarism.
GET THE LATEST BREAKING NEWS HERE -- SIGN UP FOR GOLOCAL FREE DAILY EBLAST“People do bad things more readily if they think nobody knows,” Cohn said. “We’ve moved to an education systems with very large classes, students who don’t know their professors, and added anonymity because there are more options online [to buy papers].”
For websites selling the papers, the ethical lines are more blurred.
“We have many industries that cater to people with self-control problems, and students are one of those groups,” Hersh Shefrin, business ethics expert and a professor of behavioral finance at Santa Clara University, said.
Shefrin said essay mills are like businesses who offer payday loans at ridiculous rates or tobacco companies who advertise to children—they know exactly what they are doing and who they are targeting.
“They have to be stupid not to know what they’re doing,” Shefrin said. “If they don’t like what they see, then they won’t look in the mirror. People can rationalize all kinds of things.”
Regulating essay mills would be difficult and infective, Shefrin thought. Educational systems have the most influence in stopping students from buying papers online, but can only go so far to stop it, according to Shefrin.
“You’ll never eliminate it, you can just try to take a stand against it,” Shefrin said.
EDITOR'S NOTE: This story originally ran on GoLocalProv's sister site GoLocalPDX on 12/3/14.
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