To want to pay someone to do my uni work

[Paid30307]

I know deep down it’s a bad idea but it feels like the best option.

My dd hasn’t done a home exam since 2021/2022 year at university. They have all been in person since then.

Comes the day you get a job linked to your degree and you have no idea what to do because you cheated on your degree, will you pay someone to do it. It’s not an option is it

As I thought, @scottishgirl69 , the only prohibitions in the Academic Conduct policy concern using assistance for assessed work.

The policy even specifies that you are allowed to have assessed work proofread by software or by another person; did you know that? However if a person does the proofreading they are not allowed to correct any mistakes for you.

What course is it, OP?

Yes I did know that. I believe people are allowed assistance with grammar on essays - but that's it. Some people use Grammarly. I personally don't

And now you know that I could not find any regulation against working with a private tutor, except on assessed work, in the academic conduct regulations. This contradicts your repeated assertions.

Thoughts?

My assertions came from someone asking in the ou large Facebook group if they could hire an outside tutor and were told no by Ou staff on there. I said this previously. If you have an issue - take it up with them.

My only issue is with someone asserting with great certainty something that doesn’t appear to be correct

Well this one was I don’t know why it’s a debate about something that happened in my life.

I'm sure you'll get over it

The ou do home exams on lots of modules

Good tutors do not participate on coursework

It was ment as a 😃 joke.

What's that got to do with my post about home exams?

Kindly, if you can’t do the work yourself, you shouldn’t get a qualification that implies you did. Nor will you have the knowledge necessary as you won’t have done the assignments yourself.

Assignments can be tough, ask for support. Don’t cheat.

I’m surprised you’re willing to shell out for an essay when everyone uses chat GPT or similar for free to be frank.

Look, I’m a lecturer within the humanities. I’ve noticed a huge shift in essay quality since 2022 for obvious reasons. It’s still blindingly obvious when someone gets a LLM to write the whole thing. For starters, lots of the references are entirely made up but there’s also a formulaic structure to the language that just gives it away. I had one student write about Miss Lonelyhearts and refer to the protagonist as a female throughout. I don’t dob the students in for academic misconduct, I just either fail them as in the case of Miss Lonelyhearts or I give them a really terrible grade.

Some students use it to restructure, reword, make it sound better and that’s also a bit obvious but equally I don’t chastise it as much. Reason being, I can tell they’ve put some time and effort in and they’ve at least read the core texts and done the research. They know what they’re talking about and use proper references which I appreciate.

It’s now increasingly rarer to find a student I don’t believe has used it even a little bit. The only way to get around LLM usage is in person handwritten exams but they’re seriously unpopular. To be honest as well, they don’t really work within the humanities beyond a level. You can’t get the full depth without external references.

What I would say is, if you can’t be arsed with the course to the extent you don’t want to put any remote effort in and would rather risk getting caught for cheating then your heart probably isn’t in it. Why are you doing the degree? Do you love the subject or are you just doing it because you feel it’s expected?

The reason so many students cheat is because they are unlikely to be caught. One of the students I dealt with recently basically said they all know the lecturers are unlikely to report them so it's worth the risk.

I'm currently on a campaign to get lecturers to report as if they start to believe they will be caught, there will be less blatant cheating.

I'm not saying use of GenAI is always wrong. It's not but they should be using it as an aid to learning, not as a replacement for learning.

I am one who does report.

We 'viva' students whose work has been referred to investigation; asking them, for instance, how they came to thread together two or three complex philosophical ideas (usually unreferenced and seemingly arbitrarily connected) in response to the assessment brief. Needless to say, the students don't see the questions they are going to be asked beforehand.

If they are the genuine author, they should be able to explain exactly how they a) discovered those links - which sources they were referenced in and why they remained without citation, in which case (at a serious push) this could be flagged as a study skills issue. Or. b)., they should be able to explain exactly how they arrived at those ideas and made the links between them independently. They should also be able to tell us exacly how such ideas fit in with the central thesis of the essay. If they can't do that - and in an AI generated essay it's unlikely that they'll be able to - they will be referred to a disciplinary panel.

It's lengthy work and it's time-consuming, and we have gluts of material to mark and I well understand why some colleagues lack the time and the heart to go through this process. In some senses I can't say I blame them; it does feel we are fighting a losing battle.

However, the alternative is 'degree by bot'. This is essential work which we have a responsibility to do. The HE system is already going to hell in a handcart without being aided and abetted by us.

It's safe to say that this job is losing its hold. All this is profoundly depressing and British universities are certainly not what they were. I did not complete a PhD to expend my time and professional energies in this way.

Do you really think that that many student cheat

Yes

It's never the best option.
Being awarded a degree you didn't earn sounds crap. Certainly wouldn't make me feel like I'd achieved anything.

Yes.

I am currently working part time between a couple of universities. As part of my job I have to do the mandatory training on AI
I can tell you I was SHOCKED when the formal training said it was ok for lecturers to use AI to generate their course content provided they acknowledged they had used it. Then SHOCKED again later in the training when it said it was ok for students to use AI in generating their course work providing they acknowledged it.
Why don't we just plug 2 laptops together with a USB and let them get on with it.
What happened to being interested in a subject?

@Paid30307 At lot of universities are moving away from exams because it is rife

I know someone who has just been caught in her final year.

She was never clever enough for uni, she got marked up due to covid.

She's used AI throughout and got caught on her dissertation.

Got her mum to write a letter to the uni saying she had been heavily involved in looking after a grandparent with severe dementia. Complete fabrication, she had never lifted a finger.

Now her much cleverer sibling is rewriting her dissertation for her

And she's aiming to work in a healthcare field, something she will be absolutely unqualified to do but her potential employers won't know she's a cheating scumbag.