# Are "essay mill" papers really this bad? **URL:** \ **Category:** In My Humble Opinion\ **Created:** [October 15, 2012, 2:59pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/are-essay-mill-papers-really-this-bad/637777 "2012-10-15T14:59:51Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 17\ **Page:** 2
**Author:** ![Hari\_Seldon](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/hari_seldon/32/5173_2.png) [@Hari\_Seldon](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Hari_Seldon)\ **Post date:** [October 15, 2012, 5:19pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/are-essay-mill-papers-really-this-bad/637777/21 "2012-10-15T17:19:37Z")
> [@Antigen](#): > > I’m guessing many people who choose to use these services have enough trouble with English that the quoted essay would be an improvement over what they could produce. Weaker students, students for whom English is a second or third language, and lazy bastards with spare cash. I just happened to read a doctoral dissertation written in English by someone whom I have difficulty conversing with because his English is so poor. The writing is brilliant compared with the sample in the OP. I could find a few things to criticize (but didn’t). I don’t know that his thesis advisor, whose English seems excellent, didn’t help him at all, but I have the distinct impression that people who think clearly will also write clearly. Oh, the might be an occasional grammatical error, but it is the turgidity of the OP that puts me off so. I think “lazy bastards with spare cash” is sufficient explanation. It reminds me of a spam from some language-teaching company that was offering to teach me English. It was incredibly badly written. But I suppose the poor bastards they were flogging their services to wouldn’t know the difference. Bad writing is ubiquitous! ---
**Author:** ![pseudotriton\_ruber\_ruber](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/p/a9a28c/32.png) [@pseudotriton\_ruber\_ruber](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/pseudotriton_ruber_ruber)\ **Post date:** [October 15, 2012, 5:24pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/are-essay-mill-papers-really-this-bad/637777/22 "2012-10-15T17:24:16Z")
It is very hard to hand in something that superficially resembles English and not receive a passing grade for that in college nowadays. People don’t think a college degree measures much anymore, but trust me, general confidence in the value of your average college diploma is vastly inflated. It’s a worthless piece of paper, and this is why. ---
**Author:** ![silenus](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/silenus/32/166_2.png) [@silenus](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/silenus)\ **Post date:** [October 15, 2012, 5:54pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/are-essay-mill-papers-really-this-bad/637777/23 "2012-10-15T17:54:18Z")
Hey, my degree isn’t **worthless**. It hangs right over the toilet, where it might be of use in an emergency. ---
**Author:** ![Simple\_Linctus](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/9f8e36/32.png) [@Simple\_Linctus](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Simple_Linctus)\ **Post date:** [October 15, 2012, 6:04pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/are-essay-mill-papers-really-this-bad/637777/24 "2012-10-15T18:04:14Z")
> [@pseudotriton\_ruber\_ruber](#): > > It is very hard to hand in something that superficially resembles English and not receive a passing grade for that in college nowadays. People don’t think a college degree measures much anymore, but trust me, general confidence in the value of your average college diploma is vastly inflated. It’s a worthless piece of paper, and this is why. I have made [an experiment](http://boards.straightdope.com/sdmb/showthread.php?t=668806) based on this and other posts that you may want to contribute to. ---
**Author:** ![Colophon](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/f05b48/32.png) [@Colophon](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Colophon)\ **Post date:** [October 15, 2012, 6:10pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/are-essay-mill-papers-really-this-bad/637777/25 "2012-10-15T18:10:38Z")
> [@Hari\_Seldon](#): > > Oh, the might be an occasional grammatical error Indeed. 😛 ---
**Author:** ![Lynn\_Bodoni](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/l/e47c2d/32.png) [@Lynn\_Bodoni](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Lynn_Bodoni)\ **Post date:** [October 15, 2012, 6:31pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/are-essay-mill-papers-really-this-bad/637777/26 "2012-10-15T18:31:44Z")
> [@Enterprise](#): > > I’ve got to say (as an instructor in American literature at a university in a non-English speaking country): this is by far not the worst sentence I’ve read, and I might consider giving this paper (which I’ve skimmed through…all fifteen pages…) a passing grade. There are some serious grammar problems (such as the definite article before the different leadership styles), and from my own position the most serious problem is that it doesn’t have anything like a thesis-driven scholarly argument, but there are, of course, more descriptively-writing disciplines than mine. > > And also from the vantage point of an instructor: this paper would ring no bells with me. I’d be perfectly content with letting it pass as a middling-low grade (perhaps better, if I cared to actually READ it; I mean, this one, I DO read the papers I’m given), which might be all the clever-but-lazy-or-incapable-of-writing student might want. It’s not a half-bad idea to write moderately badly if the guys you’re writing for are likely to be moderately bad… We occasionally have threads about students who hand in papers which are obviously written by someone else, and the teacher knows this because the writing is so much better than the student’s usual work. So if a mediocre student turns in a mediocre paper, the teacher is probably not going to go into alert mode. Thus, this essay mill is actually providing a more useful product that one which offered essays that are better written, because mediocre essays won’t get questioned as often as the better essays, so the student has a better chance of not getting caught. ---
**Author:** ![eschereal](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/eschereal/32/18939_2.png) [@eschereal](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/eschereal)\ **Post date:** [October 15, 2012, 7:13pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/are-essay-mill-papers-really-this-bad/637777/27 "2012-10-15T19:13:07Z")
> [@Colophon](#): > > The language on the [home page](http://customresearchpaper.net/) is similar. It seems oddly familar, too - I can’t quite put my finger on it, but the style of language seems to be the same as that seen in that the vast majority of spam comments on blogs, link farms etc. Where does it come from, I wonder? I say Pakistan, because there is probably still a large English-speaking contingent there, and, for whatever my linguist knowledge is worth, the sample on “the Islam religion and nature” seemed to have some Arabic/Urdu hallmarks (“the Allah”). WAG, really. But, in a way, this could become a form of instruction. They provide you with some semi-coherent content and you, theoretically go over the text and clean it up. In the process, you would absorb the content and, just maybe, learn something. If you are just lazy and throw it in the box unaltered, the result would depend on whether the teacher feels compelled to look at your work and properly grade it. ---
**Author:** ![stpauler](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/9d8465/32.png) [@stpauler](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/stpauler)\ **Post date:** [October 15, 2012, 7:17pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/are-essay-mill-papers-really-this-bad/637777/28 "2012-10-15T19:17:57Z")
_Leadership style has been classified into many different ways in the research field. In the recent years two forms of leadership style have been coalesced which are the transformational leadership and transactional leadership, **or as the Indians call it: maize.** _ ---
**Author:** ![FlyByNight512](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/f/82dd89/32.png) [@FlyByNight512](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/FlyByNight512)\ **Post date:** [October 15, 2012, 7:55pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/are-essay-mill-papers-really-this-bad/637777/29 "2012-10-15T19:55:34Z")
I had some exceptionally lazy business professors who would have skimmed that paper, noticed all the right buzzwords, and given it a B or a low A. I suspect I could rewrite each sentence to deal with grammar issues in less than an hour and get a B or an A from my professors that \*did \*pay attention. Honestly I think y’all are underestimating the importance of BS in this branch of academia. Form and presentation heavily outweighed content in almost all my business classes. The actual business world tends to run the same way, though, so in that regard it was still a useful education. ---
**Author:** ![tellyworth](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/977dab/32.png) [@tellyworth](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/tellyworth)\ **Post date:** [October 15, 2012, 10:01pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/are-essay-mill-papers-really-this-bad/637777/30 "2012-10-15T22:01:00Z")
> [@Colophon](#): > > We’ve all heard of those sites that supposedly produce essays or term papers etc for cash. Out of curiosity I was looking at a couple of these sites and noticed how badly their web pages are written - seemingly by someone for whom English is a third language, or by a text-generating bot. Surely the “product” they churn out couldn’t be as bad as that, could it? I used a service like that to write a presentation for me. (The presentation was about content writing services, so it was a legitimate use, honest). It cost about $2 per 100 words. It was similarly bad: the sentences were more or less grammatically correct, and it was about the topics I had selected, but it was evasive and devoid of any real argument. There was something robotic and disjointed about it, like it was assembled from pre-written sentences and phrases. And it read very much like an essay written at the last minute by someone who had no interest in it: almost all padding, with a few key phrases thrown in here and there. Exactly the kind of essay written by those kids at school who would do the barest minimum to pass. I’m not entirely sure how it’s done. Certainly it’s written by piece workers in the Philippines and the like, but I’d be very surprised if there wasn’t some automation involved, like auto text insertion, search and replace, libraries of pre-written sentences. What I do know is that the site you linked to is a front. The same owner runs at least 8 sites with different names and templates. And there are any number of other people doing the same thing. They all outsource the writing, presumably to wholesale providers. ---
**Author:** ![Fretful\_Porpentine](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/fretful_porpentine/32/2873_2.png) [@Fretful\_Porpentine](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Fretful_Porpentine)\ **Post date:** [October 15, 2012, 10:45pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/are-essay-mill-papers-really-this-bad/637777/31 "2012-10-15T22:45:23Z")
It’s very bad, but that level of writing is about what I _expect_ from business majors, and it’s coherent enough to earn a gentleman’s C in one of my comp classes if it met the other requirements for the assignment and if I didn’t spot the plagiarism. (Students’ writing skills usually fall apart when they hit their first major research paper; it’s normal, and I tend not to penalize them too hard if they’re doing an acceptable job with the research and documentation side of things.) That said, I think I almost certainly _would_ catch the plagiarism on this one; the British spellings would raise an instant red flag for me, and so would the inclusion of weird, uncited details like “An extremely amiable character without good physique due to rheumatoid arthritis he had for well over 10 years” (bwuh? That’s where I would definitely start Googling for the source.) ---
**Author:** ![pseudotriton\_ruber\_ruber](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/p/a9a28c/32.png) [@pseudotriton\_ruber\_ruber](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/pseudotriton_ruber_ruber)\ **Post date:** [October 15, 2012, 11:41pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/are-essay-mill-papers-really-this-bad/637777/32 "2012-10-15T23:41:22Z")
My reasoning is as follows: if a conscientious professor were to conclude that this was plagiarized, he could just fail it. Well, he could in the 1960s and the 1970s and the 1980s, when I was in school. Today, he gives it an “F” and the student files a complaint. So the prof spends several hours Googling the text of the paper, but nothing shows up. So the professor must take the paper and highlight the most egregious passages, and probably take some of the student’s previous work into a hearing, and try to persuade a board of students and faculty that these disparities consititute plagiarism. But before this happens, the student will appeal the paper to the professor’s chairperson, who might just side with the student, particularly if he or she (the chair) has had the student in a class previously or simply likes the students’ story (I have served as a departmental chair and understand how tempting “giving the student another chance” can be from an efficiency perspective–it take hours to review the paper, hear the professor, suggest methods of putting together a lock-solid case, especially when you lack a source, as you do in this case.) If the prof is an adjunct, he or she is very badly underpaid, and all of this is extra work over and above his normal fee for teaching the course. The student can–and probably will file a report with anonymous “Rate Your Professor” websites, and get his/her friends to file sympathetic report making claims that this prof is a harsh grader, is rude to students, etc. which will have an effect on the professor’s getting rehired next semester, so this is a whoreson waste of time that may or may not actually result in the “F” sticking. Very likely, some dean or other administrative bozo will attempt work out a “compromise”: your syllabus may say you will fail students for plaigiarism, but the admin bozo, who’s thinking about losing tuition if this student drops out, will suggest that you let the student re-write the paper, or accept a failing grade on the paper but not to count it so much in the final grade, or some such. ---
**Author:** ![tellyworth](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/977dab/32.png) [@tellyworth](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/tellyworth)\ **Post date:** [October 16, 2012, 9:10pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/are-essay-mill-papers-really-this-bad/637777/34 "2012-10-16T21:10:58Z")
Timely: > **[Confessions of a university ghost writer](https://www.theage.com.au/education/confessions-of-a-university-ghost-writer-20121016-27pch.html)** > > Mary has written extended essays on commerce but she is no business student. She has completed assignments on Chinese Tang dynasty poetry and Asian history but she is no lover of humanities. That’s a much higher quality service than the one linked to in the OP. ---
**Author:** ![drewtwo99](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/d07c76/32.png) [@drewtwo99](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/drewtwo99)\ **Post date:** [October 16, 2012, 9:31pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/are-essay-mill-papers-really-this-bad/637777/35 "2012-10-16T21:31:06Z")
pseudotriton, your post pretty eloquently explains not only why we have grade inflation in college, but also in high schools, and is the main reason why I quit after teaching high school physics for only 2 years; I essentially wasn’t “allowed” to give grades that students deserved. ---
**Author:** ![tapu](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/49beb7/32.png) [@tapu](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/tapu)\ **Post date:** [October 16, 2012, 9:55pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/are-essay-mill-papers-really-this-bad/637777/36 "2012-10-16T21:55:58Z")
And these are the people in our society that call themselves “writers.” See what I have to put up with!? – editor, or as I like to spell it, editer ---
**Author:** ![Kent\_Clark](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/kent_clark/32/105_2.png) [@Kent\_Clark](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Kent_Clark)\ **Post date:** [October 16, 2012, 10:22pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/are-essay-mill-papers-really-this-bad/637777/37 "2012-10-16T22:22:26Z")
I guess I look at the paper from a different perspective. If I submitted that in a class, I would have gotten no higher than a D. 1. Terms like “transformational” and “transactional” must immeditely be defined, and not simply described as one of these things is not like the other. 2. “In recent years” Which years would those be? The last two? Last decade? Last half of the 20th century? 3. “It has been proved” No it hasn’t, unless you tell me who exactly proved it. 4. “Therefore leadership is defined” Again, by whom? By the writer? Jack Welch? Merriam-Webster? That’s four hand slaps in one paragraph. After that, they’d get into ripping apart the actual writing. ---
**Author:** ![slaphead](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/e9bcb4/32.png) [@slaphead](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/slaphead)\ **Post date:** [October 17, 2012, 1:37pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/are-essay-mill-papers-really-this-bad/637777/38 "2012-10-17T13:37:16Z")
> [@black\_rabbit](#): > > I just finished a graduate degree in a business program that’s heavy on the international students. > > Based on what I read of the output produced by my fellow students for group essay work, the OP’s sample would probably get a solid B. Pffft. I’ve read course texts that had writing exactly like that. The reason it’s oddly familiar is because it’s just generic bland business-speak bullshit trying to condense complex concepts down into [QUOTE=Multinational profits for dummies made easy] actionable insights facilitating results optimization in a diverse international context [/QUOTE] for ‘leaders’ who are above-average busy but not above-average intelligent. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/are-essay-mill-papers-really-this-bad/637777.md?page=1)