Using someone else's term paper and claiming it as your own is not new for
college students. Before the advent of the Internet, papers were locally
produced and sold. Then posters advertised term paper services on real cork and
wood bulletin boards. When 800 phone numbers appeared, the term paper business
could expand across the country. But it wasn't until the Internet got under way
that the term paper business really took off.
Today
Now hundreds of sites offer term papers and even masters and doctoral
dissertations. The student can get a paper on almost any subject and get it for
immediate download. Papers can be downloaded for free, or for exchanging one of
yours for one of theirs (one imagines a plagiarized paper endlessly cycling
through the Internet), or so much per page for custom work, typically around
$10 a page. Many states have outlawed this practice but sites get around the
law by stating that they offer papers for research purposes only and they
require the student to sign a waver stating that she won't submit the paper as
her own.
What's wrong with any of this?
The faculty feels that many students think that ideals like honesty and
integrity have little to do with the "real" world or their reasons
for going to college. Teachers are concerned that students who plagiarize don't
develop their abilities to analyze or synthesize information and present it
clearly and effectively.