Has anyone here ever sold their old school assignments (research papers) online?

December 21, 2005 7:29 PM

MoneyFilter: Has anyone here ever sold their old school assignments (research papers) online?

I've done some minor searching, but only turned up one poorly designed website from the UK. Thus, I'm not convinced. I mean is there really a market for this stuff. If so, well, where is it? And yeah the point of this post is that I would like to sell my old assignments somewhere. Again, does such a (reputable) place exist? Links and success stories please.

posted by sjvilla79 to work & money (21 comments total)

I think http://schoolsucks.com/ used to be a popular one. Not sure about now.
posted by cellphone at 7:34 PM on December 21, 2005

No, there is no reputable site, because the whole process is so unethical as to be....well, I don't fully have words. The only purpose of said sites is so that people can buy your work and pass it off as their own.

This will almost always result in getting the the student kicked out of school when they are caught.

Just don't do it.
posted by griffey at 7:41 PM on December 21, 2005

Put them on a website with google ads. If you rank high on google (hopefully through the merit of your paper...) you should get pretty good revenue from that, almost certainly more than selling them.
posted by phrontist at 7:55 PM on December 21, 2005

I've sold papers on Academon.com and MyEssays.net (or .com?) and made, so far, roughly $70-$100 in the last 2-3 years, so unless you're a prolific writer and aggressive self-marketer, keep your day job. :) You get paid when someone buys the paper; not when you upload the paper. And I've uploaded roughly 10-15 papers online.

Sure it's unethical, assumedly. These websites really tout that "These papers are for READING ONLY and we HIGHLY DISCOURAGE any plagiarism!!!" on their sites, but... for one, I'm not sure if plagiarism is a legal issue when your material isn't copyrighted, and two, it is possible they may not be using the entirety of the paper, but mainly using it for ideas or reference. When I was in high school, I partied a lot and hated reading these long old classic books and found reader review comments from people online and reworded them along with my own comments to form a paper, and... well, I feel no remorse whatsoever for it. :) And it would be ridiculous to say something like "That kind of behavior just sets the immoral tone and leads to further immoral behavior -- it's the gateway drug of immoral behaviors!!" because once I got to college I started caring more and now make straight A's without any "unethical" help from the Internet...

Many instructors I've had warn students that they have special programs just for instructors that allow them to search the net for the purpose of catching someone they suspect is plagiarizing. I'm not sure if they can view papers on Academon and whatnot as they can only be viewed by users who pay money to download them. Also, instructors frequently mention they can tell if it's in your wording or not.. some are better than others at picking that up. (This is all assuming you are concerned with getting someone in trouble.)

I'd assume that mostly high school and young college kids are buying these papers and seriously, I doubt anyone out there is literally BUYING their way through college or anything. Without getting blasted for "attempting to rationalize unethical behavior".. as far as I'm concerned... if some 18-22 year old kid out there partied too much and didn't finish a paper and buys one once or twice in their lives, does it really matter? IMHO, our own president and a few select senators and congressman are teaching "the kids of today" far worse ethics than Academon.com ever will.
posted by mojabunni at 8:53 PM on December 21, 2005

I am starting to have chest pains reading this...

"Sure it's unethical, assumedly"
"I'm not sure if plagiarism is a legal issue when your material isn't copyrighted"
"it is possible they may not be using the entirety of the paper, but mainly using it for ideas or reference"

Seriously, mojabunni? Not to pick on your forthrightness, but to the OP I say: here is your audience.

So to your original question, sjvilla79, there is certainly a market for it -- evidently people who want to get drunk instead of writing a paper -- but I am confused as to your desire to find a "reputable" site that acts as a clearinghouse for large-scale egregious acts of plagiarism and academic dishonesty.

Sorry if I seem a little outraged, but what kind of answers did you expect? (Also, my apologies if I did not properly communicate my outrage)
posted by misterbrandt at 9:16 PM on December 21, 2005

This thread will not go well. Mainly because of what griffey said: yes, there is a market, and it primarily consists of other students who will buy the papers and pass them off as their own. It's a little like asking how you would go about selling these nifty fake IDs that you can make on your colour printer. For novelty purposes only, of course, wink wink.

In the end, it's your work, and you're free to do what you want with it. Just know that there are many people (myself included) that really, really feel that you shouldn't do this.
posted by Johnny Assay at 9:17 PM on December 21, 2005

phrontist and mojabunni, thanks for your comments. Misterbrandt and Johnny Assay, I understand where you're coming from. I'm not determined to sell my assignments online. I am however interested in the processes and all that goes with it (my disclaimer is curiosity). I think mojabunni's reply was most insightful though (yes, bits of it). It answers what I wanted to know (as so kindly pointed out above).
posted by sjvilla79 at 9:28 PM on December 21, 2005

I'm not sure if plagiarism is a legal issue when your material isn't copyrighted ...

Well, first off - anything you make is automatically copyrighted. That's how copyright works. Secondly, plagiarism doesn't have anything to do with copyright. Plagiarism only requires that you pass someone elses' work off as your own. You could pass of Beethoven's music as yours, and you'd still be plagiarising it, even though it's in the public domain.
posted by odinsdream at 9:30 PM on December 21, 2005

As far as copyright goes, worrying about selling papers is silly. The whole point of copyright is to facilitate the sale of your your intellectual property.

Plagiarism is not against the law, but copyright violation is. If you hire a writer, or license a work for yourself you're not breaking the law at all. That doesn't mean you won't fail your class or get kicked out if you get caught.

What a person does after they buy it from you is up to them, and none of your concern.

It's like the difference between pirating music with napster, vs. paying a local indie band for their CD.

However, if you're still in school you could probably get in trouble for selling old papers. It could also prevent you from going to school again in the future.
posted by delmoi at 9:39 PM on December 21, 2005

I'd assume that mostly high school and young college kids are buying these papers and seriously, I doubt anyone out there is literally BUYING their way through college or anything

One of the Walton daughters got busted straight-up paying someone $20k/year to do all her classwork. It was in the news.
posted by delmoi at 9:41 PM on December 21, 2005

Jeez. It's his work, he can do whatever the hell he wants with it, he's not assuming priveleges that don't rightly belong to him (unlike, say, the buyers). Get some perspective.
posted by Firas at 10:24 PM on December 21, 2005

However, if you're still in school you could probably get in trouble for selling old papers. It could also prevent you from going to school again in the future.

Actually, my old high school had a fairly strict honor code for its magnet program. IIRC, the code (based on some major university ones) did permit the resale of papers that the teacher had returned to you -- basically, if it's handed back, it belongs to you and you can sell it or whatever. Of course, the buyer would be in deep academic poo. Plus, it might engender a good deal of resentment from the teachers, especially in HS or a small college setting. That's a big part of why I never did it -- didn't want a bullseye on me. But as far as "real" trouble... it depends.
posted by SuperNova at 10:38 PM on December 21, 2005

These things don't always work out well.
posted by caddis at 10:49 PM on December 21, 2005

I don't think you're going to find a reputable clearinghouse for papers for two reasons. First, as mentioned above, the whole point of these fly-by-night paper sellers is to give rich college students the option to take a shortcut and use someone else's work as their own. Legitimacy isn't what the buyer desires; secrecy is. On the flipside, you've got universities and colleges increasingly worried about internet plagiarism, and there are indeed websites that allow professors to check the validity of a student's work. In fact, some campuses require that students submit their paper to a third-party validation service (a move that a lot of students, not fond of being treated like criminals, have resisted). If you're a schoolwork vendor and your site is easy to find, universities will find it easier to blacklist papers on your site. So any business related to selling papers is going to be under the table and shady.

Second, you've got the issue of who's going to write the papers. Most academics wouldn't touch this with a fifty-foot pole. The rest of us either have decent jobs, hate schoolwork, don't remember enough on a subject to write a decent paper, or never went to college in the first place. This limits the number of people likely to write papers; they're probably not overly concerned with the reputation of the site selling their papers, and far more concerned about getting paid.

Other reasons why this sort of thing isn't done more often: curriculums change. Very likely the assignments you have tucked away in the attic aren't valid anymore. Why? In addition to advances in current thinking (your 1960s economics paper is probably going to be seen as rubbish now), lots of profs change course materials on a fairly regular basis to prevent their students from copying work from last year. After all, why bother buying a paper from the internet when the guy down the hall, who took the class last year, already has a paper written up and ready to go? This sort of thing has been around long before the internet, and professors aren't stupid. This is why a lot of sites that sell papers advertise a custom-writing service, and did so even before universities figured out the internet could be used for plagiarism.
posted by chrominance at 10:50 PM on December 21, 2005

Can someone suggest one of these third-party verification websites? I'd be interested in either the kind where students directly upload their work OR where the professor can verify against a certain number of papers from these online sources.
posted by fionab at 11:22 PM on December 21, 2005

turnitin.com
posted by Firas at 11:35 PM on December 21, 2005

Fantastic thread. Information wants to be cheap.
posted by Wolof at 3:32 AM on December 22, 2005

this is extremely depressing to me. And the "sellers aren't at fault, only buyers" thing is total bullshit. Yes, intellectual property can be sold under certain conditions, i.e., ghost writing, etc. But selling to students is not one of those conditions. This is analogical to a doctor selling pain killers or uppers for recreational use. It makes you a total shmuck.
posted by mdn at 8:17 AM on December 22, 2005

Yeah, please don't do this.
posted by epugachev at 12:20 PM on December 22, 2005

I flunk students all the time for using these services. Very easy to catch.
posted by LarryC at 9:15 PM on December 22, 2005

"I flunk students all the time for using these services. Very easy to catch."

Ditto. In most classes, it's pretty easy to spot plagiarized work: A student submits remedial-level or mediocre work, but then the formal papers are much better. I hit turnitin or just google, and discover the paper the student submitted isn't really theirs.

This isn't really a question of legality, as several others have mentioned. Our president (and many before him) give speeches all the time that are written by someone else (his speechwriters); no one calls him out on it since that's become the norm. (Unfortunately.) Look at it from this perspective: as a student, you're contracting with a school for two things: (a) to teach you, and (b) to validate that teaching (to employers, to grad schools, etc.). If you turn in work that's not your own, but claim it's your own, you're short-circuiting the second aspect.

Most schools (high schools and universities) have formal plagiarism policies that make plagiarism (basically) a breach of contract, punishable in ways ranging from a zero on the assignment to expulsion (depending on the importance of the assignment plagiarized and the student's previous offenses).
posted by johndan at 3:20 PM on December 27, 2005