Doing Western Students' Homework is Big Business in Kenya (pri.org) 148
An anonymous reader shares a report: It was 5 p.m. on a Thursday in Nairobi, Kenya, and the streets were crowded with people rushing to get home for dinner. But Philemon, a 25-year-old science researcher, was just getting ready for his second job as an academic writer. Philemon is part of the global industry of contract cheating in which students around the world use websites to commission their homework assignments. He asked that his full name not be used for privacy reasons due to the sensitive nature of his work. Service providers like Philemon don't like to call it "cheating" -- they prefer the terms 'academic writer' and 'online tutor.' "My clients have been coming from various regions in the world," Philemon said. "I have worked for a client in Australia, in the US. In Kenya? Very rare." Philemon began academic writing in 2017 when he was a university student seeking a flexible part-time job. Today, Philemon can make as much as $1,000 a month -- as long as he gets good grades for his clients.
"You have to make sure he gets an A, so that in the future he will refer his or her friends to you," Philemon said. In recent years, contract cheating has become a lucrative, albeit informal, business in Kenya, which has become one of the largest sources of academic writers in the industry. "If we look at where writers are based, Kenya is at the top of the list," said Thomas Lancaster, a professor at Imperial College London who studies the industry. "There are incredibly qualified people in Kenya. Very high levels of English. Very able to write essays quickly and when they want to, to a high standard," he continued. [...] By contracting original homework assignments, students could bypass the detection of anti-plagiarism software developed in the 1990s.
"You have to make sure he gets an A, so that in the future he will refer his or her friends to you," Philemon said. In recent years, contract cheating has become a lucrative, albeit informal, business in Kenya, which has become one of the largest sources of academic writers in the industry. "If we look at where writers are based, Kenya is at the top of the list," said Thomas Lancaster, a professor at Imperial College London who studies the industry. "There are incredibly qualified people in Kenya. Very high levels of English. Very able to write essays quickly and when they want to, to a high standard," he continued. [...] By contracting original homework assignments, students could bypass the detection of anti-plagiarism software developed in the 1990s.
What a shame (Score:5, Funny)
If it is so grueling that other do it for you... (Score:2)
... it is not good education.
"Good" child abuse, maybe.
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Yeah when I was a kid I had a paper route. I got paid. I guess that was "child abuse" huh? I mean, I had to get up early before school, I had to do exercise. I got wet when it rained, I got cold. I fell off my bike a couple times. Poor little abused me?
You know that kids are allowed to do some sorts of work and get paid for it, right? It's only wrong when you FORCE the kids to work (and usually don't pay them).
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Free - yes
Easy - no
and add...
Highly selective - yes
From the Kenyan perspective (Score:4, Insightful)
Free - yes
And our Kenyan ghost writer actually even gets *paid* while doing the exercices.
It's even better than Bernie's education (wink at poster 2 post above)
It's actually as good as European style education (where you can get paid to tutor class of student 1 or 2 years younger than your class - while still learning stuff on your tutoring job. I did work as an Anatomy tutor back during med school).
Easy - no
There's a reason why the rich cheaters are subcontracting their homework: they are lazy and school takes a lot of time their valuable tweet-storm/tumblr rant/4chan shitpost social activities.
The Keynan ghost writer gets to do hard exercices in their place.
He is going through the hard training.
Highly selective - yes
Guess what, a few years down the line when the stupid fat lazy idiot who paid for the subcontract cheating is going to need to apply for a real work, he is going to have a hard time presenting actual competences (unless he never got an education for the actual training, only went there to have a paper with a top school name on it, and the top school wasn't happy just straight selling the paper).
Meanwhile, guess who did learn to be a very good and competant scientific writer and could present himself brilliantly to get competent and well paid work?
Yup.
At some point, to keep cheating you need to pay such competent people, that they might as well come and get your highly paid job.
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who paid for the subcontract cheating
Sounds like a good candidate for a manager or outsourcing consultant.
Re: From the Kenyan perspective (Score:2)
Its been my experience that plenty of those lazy incompetent people manage to bullshit their way into jobs. They often take credit for others work, and get the benefit of the doubt way too often by management. After 14mos they begin searching elsewhere, lest they get discovered. These elsewhere jobs often are a step up in pay/position over the last one they werent qualified to do. Im pretty good at sniffing out bullshitters and posers. It is amazing just how many there are and how much money they can make c
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But it only takes one Cyrano to puff up a whole horde of pretenders. He can't take all the jobs, and for everyone else, a slate of qualified-only-on-paper writers is going to get employed somewhere.
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This is the way business works. The tech job will go to the Nigerian immigrant ghostwriter, and the lazy bastard who slid through school on the essay writer's work will get the cushy executive position
makes you wonder what a degree is worth (Score:3, Insightful)
It's the age of corruption and cheating. With such extreme inequality, people are desperate to compete in an unfair race for economic well being. The natural outcome of a twisted system that displaces the value of co-operation with that of endless competition and conspicuous consumption. How's that greed thing working out? Not so good by the looks of it.
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I have bad news for you: the 10th rule of acquisition [fandom.com].
It's just the miraculous market at work... (Score:4, Insightful)
For years economists and those who pay them to publish pernicious nonsense have been telling us all that society and the economy need no planning, no supervision.
"The market" will automagically take care of everything, balance all interests, and make sure that everyone gets the best possible outcome.
In theory. Actually, of course, when most believe believe this rubbish, the rich and powerful gain greater advantages than ever - because no one even thinks of making them submit to rules (or even the law).
As a result, the USA and all countries that copy it have become free-for-alls in which money buys absolutely everything. Honour, duty, morality and conscience have been discarded as obsolete superstitions.
It has been obvious for decades that everything is for sale in Washington DC. You can buy members of Congress, Senators, members of the administration, judges, lawyers, bureaucrats, spooks... anyone you like, if the price is right.
Naturally enough, students are now following suit. They don't know - or don't believe - that education is meant to give you knowledge and understanding so that you have a better life. Instead, they see education as a meal ticket, or a lottery ticket to the glittering prizes. So qualifications that are sought for their monetary value are also purchased with money.
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Can you give a specific date when Americans were honorable, capitalists weren't greedy, and the government wasn't corrupt?
Thanks.
Re: It's just the miraculous market at work... (Score:4, Insightful)
The US is still one of the -least- corrupt countries on the planet. Was there somewhere you wanted to mention where there's less corruption?
The US is near the top, but there are countries that do better:
New Zealand
Denmark
Norway
Singapore
Canada
These countries are less corrupt than America whether measured by standards or by surveys of perceptions by their own people.
Corruption Perceptions Index [wikipedia.org]
By the same measure, the most corrupt countries are poor and authoritarian. Many Islamic countries cluster near the bottom of the index.
The index is mostly a measure of low-level corruption: Paying a bribe to a police officer to let you go after a traffic stop, or paying a city official to get a business permit. That rarely happens in America. What we have is high-level institutionalized influence peddling that isn't really "corruption" since it is legal.
Re: It's just the miraculous market at work... (Score:4, Informative)
Ah, the Corruption Perceptions Index, eh? Published by Transparency International. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org]
"In January 2017, the TI Secretariat confirmed that its International Board of Directors decided on 10 January 2017 to strip its US affiliate – Transparency International USA – of its accreditation as the National Chapter in the United States.[39] The stated basis for the dis-accreditation was the board's recognition of differences in philosophies, strategies, and priorities between the former chapter and the Transparency International Movement. Elsewhere, it was reported that TI-USA came to be seen in the United States as a corporate front group, funded by multinational corporations. TI-USA's funding was provided by Bechtel Corporation, Deloitte, Google, Pfizer ($50,000 or more), Citigroup, ExxonMobil, Fluor, General Electric, Lockheed Martin, Marsh & McLennan, PepsiCo, PricewaterhouseCoopers, Raytheon, Realogy, Tyco ($25,000–$49,999), and Freeport-McMoRan and Johnson & Johnson (up to $24,999).[40] TI-USA previously awarded an annual corporate leadership award to one of its big corporate funders. In 2016, this award went to Bechtel. In April 2015 the Secretariat defended the decision by TI-USA to give Hillary Clinton its Integrity Award in 2012.[41] TI's statement followed a report by National Public Radio that Bill and Chelsea Clinton were not factual regarding the transparency of the Clinton Foundation.[42]"
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org]
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Read this and say that again. (You can buy a copy from Amazon or elsewhere if you prefer).
"History Of The Great American Fortunes" by Gustavus Myers, author Of "The History Of Tammany Hall," "History Of Public Franchises In New York City," etc.
https://www.gutenberg.org/file... [gutenberg.org]
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If you still have any appetite for corruption after reading Myers, try this:
"The Rich and the Super-Rich: A Study in the Power of Money Today" by Ferdinand Lundberg (1968).
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Here is one paragraph of Myers' book (from page 503 of the edition I read):
“Through all of these pages have we searched afar with infinitesimal scrutiny for a fortune acquired by honest means. Nor have the methods been measured by the test of a code of advanced ethics, but solely by the laws as they stood in the respective times. At no time has the discovery of an ‘honest fortune’ rewarded our determined quest. Often we thought that we had come across such a specimen, only to find distress
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The problem I see, is that schooling is sold to the public, as your gateway to a good career.
Once you get into College or University. They are stating, this isn't job training, it is just education.
I would expect at least 70% of the undergrads out there, are in College not for learning on their topic of great interest. But for that piece of paper saying they have a degree so they can show it to Human Resources and get a job.
Because of this disconnect between marketing of academic institutions and actual pra
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It's the age of corruption and cheating...
When someone majors in Sexual Diversity and expects a viable career after spending tens of thousands of dollars, we have much larger issues to deal with in the "education" system.
Fix stupid first. Then we can deal with the corruption and cheating.
Re: makes you wonder what a degree is worth (Score:2)
Tens thousands? My daughter is doing college tours right now and I have been seeing a lot of 30k - 50k per year tuition rates. Its likely to be hundred thousand or more by the time they graduate. Most in student loans they cannot repay.
But I agree with you that the universities should not be letting people crank out fucking basket weaving degrees.
Re: makes you wonder what a degree is worth (Score:2)
Did you mean to say conspicuous consumption or did you intend copious consumption? Copious seems more apt
Re:makes you wonder what a degree is worth (Score:4)
You go to school to learn. Tests are supposed to evaluate the knowledge you learned and your understanding of it.
Cheating makes those results meaningless, meaning you cannot hire anyone based on their academic certifications.
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Re:makes you wonder what a degree is worth (Score:4, Interesting)
On average, an academic certification will give you the most accurate first impression of whether a particular interviewee has any reasonable chance of having the skills you might be seeking before you've actually started shelling out money to pay them.
First impressions work best for fashion. Beyond that, you need to see someone demonstrate skills, not merely brag about them on paper. I met a lot of paper MCSEs back in the dot-bomb era, which I found out quickly that acronym actually meant Must Consult Someone Experienced. A degree from a university can prove to be just as worthless, so I'm sure as hell not going to assume anything when someone presents paper credentials.
Let's also not overlook the fact that we're here discussing the problem of rampant cheating, which is even more evidence of worthless graduates.
TL; DR - Trust, but Verify.
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Obviously, but until you are willing to actually pay them to do some work for you, all you may ever have to go on is a first impression.
If they are lying about it, it's still time wasted, but if you are just going to assume that someone would lie about their credentials in the first place, why would you want that person working for you at all?
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Obviously, but until you are willing to actually pay them to do some work for you, all you may ever have to go on is a first impression.
If they are lying about it, it's still time wasted, but if you are just going to assume that someone would lie about their credentials in the first place, why would you want that person working for you at all?
Inversely, why would you automatically assume every person is telling the truth? Any human is capable of lying. The concept of Trust, but Verify doesn't mean you automatically assume they're a liar. You merely validate their story, and hopefully before you waste any more of your time and effort. Technical interviews hold value.
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Without a compelling reason to doubt them, that is the default assumption. You can of course still be proven wrong in this assumption, but to assume otherwise and strictly come to an evaluation based solely on what your personal experiences tell you, simply because the potential always exists for somebody else to convey misinformation, is to subvert the entire reason of why a species would have ever evolved the ability to commu
Re: makes you wonder what a degree is worth (Score:2)
A degree only shows you can be trained. You are supposed to be highly trainable. The actual content of your study usually has little to do with the specifics of most positions you are applying for. There are very few fields in which what you study is not outdated or antiquated by current measures. It teaches you how to think. Engineering is a great example of this. All the physics, thermodynamics, fluid theory, thats great fundamentals. Its not exactly what youre going to be doing if you find yourself apply
Testing vs Learning (Score:5, Interesting)
In this case, it is the homework being cheated-on, which wouldn't be a problem in a sane world.
Anywhere after middle school, there is zero reason why one's homework assignments should have any impact on one's grade. Further, there is zero reason why one's teacher should have any say over one's grade.
Law has it right. The bar exam is administered by a completely different authority than the educators. That is exactly how all education should work from highschool upwards.
Allowing teachers to grade their own students directly creates grade inflation (since they are also grading their own performance as teachers, obviously), and it creates opportunities for precisely the kind of cheating covered in this article.
Educators should only educate, and should produce stats on how many of their students managed to pass the relevant exams (as a means of drawing students). Examiners should only produce and administer the exams, and should have no affiliation with the educators. This will keep things objective and a lot more honest.
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I have been advocating for that in my university for years!
Probably not going to happen for a whole range of bad reasons...
Re:Testing vs Learning (Score:4, Interesting)
This is exactly how the system should work.
Furthermore, the exams should be standardized and the same at different universities. Then it is your score that counts and not that you got your degree from Harvard. This removes the false scarcity of placement at "prestige" institutions that drive up the cost of education.
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teachers teaching the test rather than the subject.
If teaching to the test doesn't teach the subject, then redesign the test.
My son is in high school and taking several AP classes. The entire point of these classes is to prepare him for the standardized AP tests, administered by a 3rd party at the end of the year.
He is taking AP-Calculus-BC, AP-Chemistry, AP-CS, and AP-World-History.
According to your "teaching-to-the-test-is-bad" theory, AP classes should be the worst courses. They are not. They are the BEST. He is learning a ton of information and skil
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https://matheducators.stackexchange.com/questions/14781/difference-between-high-school-and-college-calculus-courses
https://phys.org/news/2015-11-calculus-bad-students-futures-stem.html
Re: The flip side of that is... (Score:2)
Teaching to the test creates a situation where you only know a small fraction of what youre expected to know. A test of any sort is a spot check, a sampling, to ensure you know the material. It cannot be so lengthy that it covers _everything_ you are expected to know. This is relevant in some subjects more than others. Take world history for example.
Lets say that for the unit on WW2 the end of year test inly asks 5 questions about WW2. Yet you are expected to know more than just a couple details of perl har
Re: The flip side of that is... (Score:2)
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if every class grade after leaving elementary school is based solely on a final exam: did you learn it or not, a LOT of students end up flunking it. Lower-stakes testing in interim between the start of a course and a final exam helps students understand the learning curve...
The school system in the UK I went through was exactly like that. Your grade was based on a final exam and there was zero-stake testing in the interim, or at least the only stakes were being embarassed if you screwed up. It seemed to work very well for a lot of us and despite the fact that today a lot of educators throw their hands up in horror at the "stress" we must have been under with all the marks resting on one important, final exam there were far, far fewer mental health issues than there are today.
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In this case, it is the homework being cheated-on, which wouldn't be a problem in a sane world.
I never did my homework anyway. Fancy that, and I'm a doctor now :)
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Anywhere after middle school, there is zero reason why one's homework assignments should have any impact on one's grade.
I completely agree. This seems to be a North American phenomena - my homework grades never mattered at school or university back in the UK and the exams which counted were never set by your own teachers or professors. However, when I taught my first course here in Canada - which was a grad course - I followed that pattern setting assignments with zero grade weight and the students completely failed to actually do the work.
Now I set a token amount, usually about 5% of the weight, which has almost no effe
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Anywhere after middle school, there is zero reason why one's homework assignments should have any impact on one's grade.
I cannot disagree more. Anywhere after middle school homework assignments should be the only things determining your grade. You life will be based around your ability to have lots of time to plan and execute careful tasks, it is a much better judge of your abilities than to answer questions in silence under immense time pressure and without the ability to research what you are working on.
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Law has it right. The bar exam is administered by a completely different authority than the educators.
No, the law doesn't have it right (at least by your criteria). The vast majority of state bars require candidates to have a degree from an accredited institution, or they're not allowed to take the test.
In any event, law schools don't award professional certifications, they award degrees. And to do so, they must test their students knowledge - or lose their accreditation.
tests that you can cram for and past don't test re (Score:2)
tests that you can cram for and past don't test real skills.
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tests that you can cram for and past don't test real skills.
Tests test real skills better than homework done by someone else.
Re: tests that you can cram for and past don't tes (Score:2)
Unless its a test on your ability to quickly absorb and regurgitate information.
That skill comes in handy every thursday night trivia. When the topic is something with a narrow scope, such as a particular movie, etc, its very easy to cram for and get a gift card to cover all the drinking :-)
Easy to spot and work around (Score:2)
Cheating makes those results meaningless
Cheating means that we have switched almost all the weight to exams with assignments getting a token amount because of this. It's usually quite easy to see who cheats - those are the ones with close to 100% on the 5% of the course mark for assignments and about 10-30% on the midterm and final exams which are worth a combined 70-95% of the course (any remainder is labs). Those who do the work tend to get somewhat lower assignment grades and vastly higher exam marks. Guess which group of students pass the co
Re: Easy to spot and work around (Score:2)
Some degrees require submission of a research paper or thesis. Thats a bit more weighted than something labeled homework.
Wet-turcs? (Score:2)
Or what's this called?
Lots and lots of cheating (Score:3)
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And how do they keep their jobs after they get hired? Do they also push their daily work to third-world workers?
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And now you know why the US so so bedraggled. (Score:2)
Only a few competent people left over.
And soon, only incompetent people left to do the work.
The rest merely consumes. Until they can't afford it anymore.
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How much of your education do you really need to do your job day in and day out? I do EE work without having set foot in a college. Like the old saying goes fake it til you make it.
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I'm sorry to hear this. Having to get around in a wheelchair is annoying.
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student athletes don't have the time for class so (Score:2)
student athletes don't have the time for class so they cheat and at some schools they have people that help them with that.
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There is significant pressure on instructors (that fundamentally comes from states and that trickle through administration of public universities, though they may not recognize that) to have good enrollment numbers and good graduation rates. So departments tend to relax their standard over time, sometimes explicitly, sometimes with good intentions.
For instance, some students are notorious bad test takers. So there have been a movement to put more weight on weekly assignments and term projects. Often saying
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I'm an undergrad at a major US public research university, and cheating is rampant.
I did postgrad research so I was paid to mark undergrads assignments and exams part time. The good news is in many cases this cheating is incredibly obvious and students are regularly punished for it.
I don't understand how these same people pass their exams if they don't do so much of the work.
I did an undergrad course once with a known incredibly difficult exam. While standing outside the exam room one of my assignment teammates shows up stoned out of her mind. I asked her what she was thinking smoking right before the exam and the answer was "I just checked and we're sitting on 44% for the course.
that's quite telling (Score:4, Insightful)
This country is able to educate to a university level but is unable to offer commensurate jobs to its citizens with degrees.
Seems to be a bit of a disconnect here.
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This country is able to educate to a university level but is unable to offer commensurate jobs to its citizens with degrees.
Seems to be a bit of a disconnect here.
But what is the underlying problem? Is it the production of degrees or the production of jobs? In an economic system with perfect observability of present and future job openings, the production of degrees would adjust to fill all openings. However, the economic system is broken because (1) students choose degrees known to have low probabilities of finding a relevant job, (2) universities offer and push degrees that have low probabilities of finding a relevant job, (3) the economy refuses to create jobs
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There is blame both for individual students who make bad educational choices and for governments who set up educational systems that don't respond to job openings in the economy.
I'm sorry, I thought we were talking about education. You seem to be talking about vocational training.
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There is blame both for individual students who make bad educational choices and for governments who set up educational systems that don't respond to job openings in the economy.
I'm sorry, I thought we were talking about education. You seem to be talking about vocational training.
Yes, and that is a huge part of the problem in the US educational system, i.e., the artificial separation of college training versus non-college training. Other countries recognize the need to match education with jobs with structural and financial support for non-university education at both high school and post-secondary levels. This used to be the case in the US, when vocational programs in high schools used to be more common.
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Yes, and that is a huge part of the problem in the US educational system, i.e., the artificial separation of college training versus non-college training.
I'm pretty sure we're agreeing. I think we completely undervalue vocational training, which is why we force everyone who wants to "get ahead" into the college track. We should support vocational training for those who want/need it, and not view it as less valuable than college.
college for all at the cost of vocational training (Score:2)
college for all at the cost of vocational training is bad.
And in some places they even make people who take 2 years community college retake classes at the 4 year school.
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This country is able to educate to a university level
No, it's able to charge tuition at a university level. The actual education part though is doubtful.
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Colleges and Uni's will produce what makes them $$ and not what is needed in the real world. Which is what the USA Federal Government approved "education" has become.
When we reduce content of the courses, as has happened in the last 60 years, there is no longer a "university level" education.
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In other words that piece of paper means nothing.
Some Degrees Have No Jobs (Score:2)
I'm sorry the Mango Chutney Studies degree field doesn't have many job opportunities, except as a Starbucks barista.
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Education is diluted (Score:2)
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Even if we accept that most billionaires were dropouts, that doesn't mean that dropping out is a viable path to becoming wealthy. Some of those billionaires might have had rich parents (so dropping out just meant you got rich off of mom/dad). Also, what percentage of dropouts become wealthy versus the percentage that are poor? If 0.1% of dropouts become billionaires and 99% make close to minimum wage (or are unemployed), then "most billionaires were dropouts" lo
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Quick googling led me to a business insider report that states 1 in 8 billionaires was a college dropout.
Most went to prestigious colleges before dropping out which either means they were very intelligent, wealthy, and/or connected to begin with.
If you are any of those things, then sure education isn't everything. But pointing to someone who has those benefits and saying that their success justifies cheating in college or more importantly grade-school is not a tenable argument.
Perhaps more import than the
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Remember that most billionaires were dropouts.
A decent education would have told you the important thing for deciding what you should do is the reverse of that statement.
Homework has been show to be detrimental (Score:3)
to education as a whole. Since the 80s. Because it overtaxes kids, especiay when they are already tired. And it acts like a punishment (aka act of violence), because it comes after you're supposedly already "finished" with school that day. Ruining the joy of finally being free for the day.
Fun fact.
But hey, our whole educational system has been designed with cramming, bulemic memorizing and testing via reciting that, and that is should be hard and not fun, in mind. Almost as if it was deliberately designed by someone with sadistic tendencies.
When we have known for anlong time, that fun is nature's indicator for good learning.
(Usless games are fun anyway because the brain doesn't care if it is real or for real-world usage. Only that it is good learning.)
We desperately need an educational system that is more like a game. (To avoid the poisoned term "gamification", that is already associated with countless half-assed, misled and misunderstood abmominations).
A system that is so much fun, that kids *beg* their parents to play it. That you have to tell them to stop or they won't. And that they will fantasize about in bed anyway.
Frankly, otherwise we failed as a society.
No that is not impossible. Come on, good game designers do that every day.
Hell, a friend of mine does that every (work) *day* with the kids.
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I did nearly zero homework throughout my engineering degree, only portion of mandatory assignments and still managed to graduate fine.
Then either:
1. Your intellect is in one of highest percentiles such that you could instantly grasp every concept that was presented to you (but you are totally missing self awareness of your capabilities, and that other people are not like you)
2. The course you took was so dumbed down that the concepts that were presented to you were so simple that even a child could understand them (and you are un-aware that there are scales of academic rigor and that you attended a school on the lower end)
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I'm in college. I'd literally fail my classes without homework.
Sorry to be blunt, but you are not smart enough to be in your program.
The homework is supposed to be meticulously calibrated for exactly what he described: useful learning experiences that demonstrate relevant concepts or simulate real world use cases.
Gifted (Score:2)
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And since you're posting on /. in the middle of the work day, we know which camp you fall into.
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Practice also makes athletes suck at what they do.
Rehearsal makes band sound worse.
Repetition means the chef cooks terribly.
I mean, if you're shown something once, there's no need to do it - and some variations thereof - on your own. Mastery just comes from a single exposure, after all!
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to education as a whole. Since the 80s. Because it overtaxes kids, especiay when they are already tired. And it acts like a punishment (aka act of violence), because it comes after you're supposedly already "finished" with school that day.
Homework is now violence too? Get a grip...
Ruining the joy of finally being free for the day. Fun fact.
But hey, our whole educational system has been designed with cramming, bulemic memorizing and testing via reciting that, and that is should be hard and not fun, in mind.
Some things must be memorized. Swapping to disk every time you need to multiply two numbers won't serve you well in the real world.
Almost as if it was deliberately designed by someone with sadistic tendencies.
When we have known for anlong time, that fun is nature's indicator for good learning.
Useful and meaningful things in life are quite often not fun while you're doing them and take perseverance, effort and delayed gratification in order to accomplish.
We desperately need an educational system that is more like a game.
Life is not a game.
In case I ever run for President (Score:2)
I'd like to note here that all my long-form homework certificates show my homework was done in the USA -- by me.
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If you lend credence to that, the US is doomed in competition with China. China has 4x the population and enjoys a 6 point average IQ lead over us. But if you look at how IQ tests are actually *developed*, things aren't so bleak for us.
The way you validate any new measuring tool is that it gives you the results you *expect*. A ruler which told you that average height of your Olympic female gymnastics team was higher than that of your basketball team would obviously be no good.
So what did we validate IQ tes
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I wouldn't pay too much attention to what cultures *think* they're good at. In my experience, necessity is the mother of invention. Sitting around trying to be creative for creativity's sake is a waste of time.
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History is replete with this lesson. It has been blamed for the fall of many great empires. And it all happened before online social media.
Technology may change but people do not change.
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Witness Jimmy Kimmel's quiz on the street thing. The average person today really doesn't have a sense of history that us older folks take for granted.
Rhetorical question: How many interviews of people on the street where the protagonist could easily answer the questions made it on-screen:
Sarcastic answer: The interviews were edited/filtered to prove the premise that people sounding dumb make for a good laugh on a comedy show.
But that doesn't mean I don't laugh at this sort of stuff: The Chasers War On Everything - Australia Landmarks [youtu.be]
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Wikipedia's entry on the Western World [wikipedia.org] gives a good explanation of what it means. Basically, it's the portion of Europe which was in the control of the Roman Catholic Church (as compared to the Eastern Orthodox) following the schism and the areas which they colonized and took over as the dominant culture (as compared to places which they might have colonized, but didn't replace the native culture). By itself, it's not a racist term as it's primarily about cultural similarity rather than racial, but there