Moral-Ethical Questions and The Like

In my search for some extra spending money, I've been approached by a friend to write an essay for a 3rd year university student at UBC. Now, obviously, this isn't some groundbreaking moral dilemma, however I found it does raise some interesting questions.

Firstly, this kind of cheating has a class-dimension. Unlike your regular peeping-tom style which any hack can do, especially those of with long necks and laser-eye surgery or doing some cut-and-copy off the Internet, this method provides a brand new original essay tailored to the course and material for a decent fee ($15 / page). With the increasing surveillance of students' works through enterprising profit-driven startups like www.turnitin.com the tailor-made approach can (counting on the integrity of the writer) help the 'client' slip by undetected, and with top marks. In fact, one of the factors that have made software like turnitin.com a supposed necessity is the fact that professors can no longer personally tend to their students - learning their strengths, weaknesses and style. The ambuigity of large class sizes and the incorporation of accurate yet mechanistic forms of counter-plagarism anticipates this more costly form of cheating. In the end, as usual, the rich find a way to get by while the poor will likely get nabbed.

Of course, $150 for a ten-page paper isn't exactly a staggering sum, considering the cost of tuition fees these days at universities such as UBC. I'm sure that as most of the poorer students are already being weeded out at the gate the classist aspects of cheating and counter-plagiarism strategies isn't exactly a priority for them. Nevertheless, interesting: high tuition bars access to education; low funding increases class sizes, decreasing quality; university administrations flame the fires of the "growing crisis" of plagiarism (which has always existed and only been exasperated by the quality and access issues mentioned above) and advocate for cracking down on students through mandatory electronic surveillance of their works by a for-profit company that, as part of its service retains indefinitely the students' work to increase its database and thus further its accuracy (and future profitability). The wealthy students turn to poor but smart graduates who have the ability but not the connections (or lack of morals?) to be successful. The wealthy students make it through, often times at the expense of smarter but poorer students who spend time too much time working to pay their tuition fees and living costs to make it through the course. The wealthy students find jobs made available by the connections money makes in the first place (and credentials bought-and-paid-for for appearances sake!).

Now, whether or not to accept it. I'm not someone that would consider himself a moral person - at least not in any strict sense. Not only do I do immoral things, I advocate on their behalf. But aiding some, obviously wealthy, kid stroll through university does affect a certain sense of pride and integrity (see my previous rant). Do I really want to grad more idiots into this world? Analogies abound but I'll let them pass, I'm being too wordy as is. Regardless, it seems the consequence of this action is more intruiging to me than its inherent immorality.

So I've tentatively accepted the assignment. If only to experience how it will feel to create something that is my own and have it consensually usurped from me like a labourer's surplus value. Maybe I'll provide an update. In the meantime that $120 will go to something good, perhaps a new camera in order to start adding some art to all this surplus truth!

technorati tags: moral, ethical, plagiarism, cheating, class, university, education, tuition