I find it unnerving that this practice is so rampant. Those who feel this is a relatively isolated problem that will in all likelihood have no bearing on their lives should reconsider. It is precisely this culture that has facilitated the current economic crisis. Spoiled children with no sense of accountability become greedy adults in powerful positions--precisely because people were willing to earn their degrees for them for a fee--who make poor decisions that affect us all.
To those struggling, academically gifted current students and graduates I say YOU are part of the problem. Just because you can do something does not mean that you should. Here in Taiwan, I once visited a study abroad company during my job-hunt. Once I deduced that the company wanted me to "help" students by doing their application essays for them I swiftly declined its advances. I could have made money that way, but what would that have meant for deserving candidates in the States or other countries who were submitting their own work for consideration. Why should a good and diligent candidate lose a spot to someone who is unqualified, underserving and very possibly lazy? Should we really enable these over-indulged, petulant people to succeed academically so they can use their connections to rise in the business world and tank their businesses and the economy along with them?
'TUTORING' RICH KIDS COST ME MY DREAMS
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For three years, I was an academic prostitute. I ruined the curve for the honest and ensured that the wealthiest, and often stupidest, students earned the highest marks. I was a professional paper-writer.
It all started when I quit my journalism job in order to pursue my dream of being a singer-songwriter. I snagged a job tutoring inner-city foster children, but it didn't pay the bills. One day, I found a tutors wanted flier on the UCLA campus. A small tutoring agency that serviced affluent families hired me.
"Just sit at her computer and type for her," my boss advised me with my first client, a private-high-school student. But as I typed her name at the top right corner of the screen, she slithered onto her bed to watch "Are You Hot?" I asked her what she remembered about Huxley's "Brave New World."
"She's a slut," my client said with a sigh, referring either to the character of Lenina or the woman on TV. After a handful of three-word responses like that, I realized she didn't care. I was hired to do the thinking. The parents knew it. So did my boss.
Welcome to the world of professional paper-writing, the dirty secret of the tutoring business. It's facilitated by avaricious agencies, perpetuated by accountability-free parents and made possible by self-loathing nerds like me. For three-hour workdays, the ability to sleep in and the opportunity to get paid to learn, I tackled subjects like Dostoevsky while spoiled jerks smoked pot, took naps, surfed the Internet and had sex. Though some offered me chateaubriand and the occasional illicit drug, most treated me like the help. I put up with it because I feared working in an office for $12 an hour again.
Six months into the job, my boss sent me on a problem-solving mission for $10 more per hour than I was already making. He had earned C's and D's on papers for Evan (not his real name), a USC freshman my boss described as a "typical surfer retard." Evan's parents had hired "tutors" to compose their son's papers since he was 12 because he "wasn't going to be a writer anyway." They were furious.
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