June 8, 1997
Internet Makes Term Papers Hotter Property Than Ever
By PETER APPLEBOME
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When Bill Clinton vowed that every 12-year-old in
America would be able to log onto the Internet, he
probably did not have in mind logging on to the Evil
House of Cheat or Cheater.com to download term papers on
"Hamlet," Crazy Horse or Mayan architecture.
Research Assistance 800-351-0222
But many educators are increasingly alarmed or furious
about the spread of dozens of Web sites offering such
illicit help. They include traditional term-paper mills
and guerrilla operations designed by college students in
their dormitories, all together offering tens of
thousands of term papers that can easily be downloaded
and turned in by students as their own work.
It is not clear how many students actually submit, under
their own names, papers that have been obtained from the
Internet. But the spread of the term-paper sites
highlights a problem that has many educators veering
between optimism about the Internet, seeing it as a
scholar's dream of access to unlimited information, and
concern that it has become a slacker's paradise of free
computer games, pornography and term papers.
"A lot of people download papers and just change the
names," said Samantha Brenner, a 17-year-old junior at
Stuyvesant High School in Manhattan. "There aren't a lot
of original papers that get written anymore. I just
think it's the latest way to be lazy."
Many students say that their peers are more likely to
use the papers for ideas than to submit them outright
and that the fear of getting caught makes the online
papers more a diversion than an invitation to wide-scale
plagiarism.
But the flood of information to be used or abused at
sites with hundreds of thousands of viewers explains the
ambivalence many educators feel these days toward the
ubiquity of the Internet in academic culture.
"Sometimes the Internet is the library and sometimes
it's the mall, and though I love big metaphors, I
haven't found one for the Web," said Tom Rocklin,
director of the Center for Teaching at the University of
Iowa, who has written a paper about the online
term-paper sites. "It seems to be too many things at
once to get into a metaphor.
"I know some faculty members think there's a real evil
genie out there. I don't see a reason to panic, but it's
definitely made something that's been out there in the
past much easier to do."
It does not take an Internet wizard to find term papers
on the net. Typing in "term papers" on any of the big
search engines immediately brings up long lists of sites
that sell or give away term papers or write them to
order.
Whether it is "Post-Modern Ethnography," "Aphasia and
the Acquisition of Syntax," "Theme and Image of Women in
Dante, Petrarch, Boccaccio and Rabelais" or "Prenatal
Care: A Cost-Benefit Analysis," papers on almost any
subject are available.
Sales of term papers are not new. Companies who do
research for firms and students have advertised on
campuses and in publications like Rolling Stone for
years. And every university has stories of
fraternity-house filing cabinets stuffed with term
papers.
What is new is the number of places where papers are
available, the ease with which they can be obtained and
the often brazen ways that do-it-yourself Internet sites
now flaunt the ability to cheat and plagiarize
electronically.
Most established for-profit sites include elaborate
disclaimers, saying that the information can be used for
research purposes but not submitted as a student's own
work, though purchasers often have other intentions. It
is illegal in most states to sell papers with the
expectation that they will be handed in as students'
work.
But many less professional sites are far less
circumspect.
"So what time is it?" the Cheat Factory site reads.
"When is that assignment due? When did you get the
assignment? Oh well, what can we say, check out our
files and take whatever you wish!"
Salvatore Ciampa, a 21-year-old student at York
University in Toronto, who set up his fledgling site and
does not charge for papers, said he did not have time to
put on his site all the papers coming his way and had no
problem with students' choosing to use the papers as
their own.
"I guess I just like the attention," said Ciampa. His
site has been on line since April 8. Visitors are
encouraged to send him their own papers and take
whatever is on line.
"People sign my guest book and say, 'Thanks, you really
helped me out,' " Ciampa said. "It's just the way the
Internet is. You take what's out there."
It is clear that at least some of the papers are finding
their ways into classrooms as original papers.
Anthony Krier, a reference librarian at Franklin Pierce
College in Rindge, N.H., said that he had received more
than 500 requests from teachers and deans, worried about
plagiarism, for a list he had put together identifying
about 50 sites on the Internet that offer term papers.
About 25 inquiries, he said, have come from teachers and
professors who had already caught students using online
papers under their own names. A handful of the requests
for his list, he said, came from students, apparently
seeking access to the sites for improper purposes.
"This seems to be snowballing," said Krier, who said
that he now finds twice as many sites as he did when he
first looked for them in January.
Often, the commercial sites charge from $6 to $10 a page
for the papers. Compounding the problem is the number of
papers that are posted on academic or personal home
pages.
Dorian Berger, who just finished his freshman year at
Harvard University, said he had posted a number of his
papers on the Internet so they could be read by more
people. He said it soon become clear that his site had
become a favorite of students trawling for good reports
to copy or lift material from.
"I am now getting e-mails from people from around the
world asking for papers on every conceivable topic,"
Berger said. "Just this past week, I got letters from
Russia, Korea, India and Lithuania. I feel that I am
some type of multinational cheating company when all I
wanted to do was offer my papers as research information
to people on the Internet."
While some educators are alarmed, many say that the
benefits of the Internet far outweigh the limitations.
Bruce Leland, an English professor who is director of
writing at Western Illinois University, said the sites
were a challenge to professors to do their jobs better.
He said teachers who tailored assignments to work done
in class, monitored the progress of students' work --
from outline to completion, rather than just seeing a
finished work -- and were alert to papers that were
radical departures from a student's past work were
unlikely to be fooled by Internet essays.
"I don't want this to be yet another reason for people
to say, 'Yes, the Internet is something evil that's
corrupting our youth,' " Leland said.
He added that many online papers were so bad that no one
was likely to benefit from them.
"Everyone who is mortal has at least one flaw," begins
one less-than-A-quality paper on "Macbeth." "Some are
more serious than others. For example, some people have
addictions to gambling, while other people can't
remember to put the milk away after they use it. After a
while though, a person's flaws come back to haunt them.
The tragedy 'Macbeth' is no exception to this."
Still, if the Internet is not an evil, the term-paper
sites are a reminder that it is far more of a mixed
blessing than it sometimes appears to politicians.
"If this is the information superhighway," Berger said,
"it's going through a lot of bad, bad neighborhoods."
Copyright 1997 The New York Times Company
