University versus Vocational Careers & Financial Outcomes

Interesting article from NPR US on how many high paying vocational or trade jobs are vacant due to deference towards higher education, college or university, but often uncertain employment outcomes and lower salaries from the latter?

Why? Too many middle class see university as a path to upward mobility, but may indicate that some occupations guarantee employment and high salaries whether vocational or university? 

Conversely, many university or college graduates struggle to find related employment and reasonable salaries versus many trade or vocational occupations, in demand.  Meanwhile many developed nations have unskilled and skilled worker shortages made worse by ageing and decline in the working age population that has passed the ‘demographic sweet spot’, but compounded further by many deferring to higher education.

From NPR National Public Radio:

High-paying jobs that don’t need a college degree? Thousands of them sit empty

Like most other American high school students, Garret Morgan had it drummed into him constantly: Go to college. Get a bachelor’s degree.

“All through my life it was, ‘If you don’t go to college you’re going to end up on the streets,’ ” Morgan said back in 2018. “Everybody’s so gung-ho about going to college.”

So he tried it for a while. Then he quit and started training as an ironworker, which is what he was doing on a weekday morning in a nondescript high-ceilinged building with a concrete floor in an industrial park near the Seattle-Tacoma International Airport.

Morgan and several other men and women were dressed in work boots and hard hats, clipped to safety harnesses with heavy wrenches hanging from their belts. They were being timed as they wrestled 600-pound I-beams into place.

Back then, the demand for ironworkers was rising – and it still is: the sector is growing 4% annually, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics. Ironworkers earn, on average, $27.48 per hour, or $57,160 per year. Morgan was already working on a job site when he wasn’t at the Pacific Northwest Ironworkers shop. At 20, he was earning $28.36 an hour, plus benefits.

Five years later, he’s on the job full time, working “six-10s” — industry lingo for 10 hours a day, six days a week. He helped build the Rainier Square Tower in Seattle and a data center for Microsoft. “I’m loving it every day,” he said. “It was absolutely the right choice.

As for his friends from high school? “Someday maybe they’ll make as much as me.”

Raising alarms

While a shortage of workers pushes wages higher in the skilled trades, the financial return from a bachelor’s degree is softening, even as the price, and the average debt into which it plunges students, remain high.

But high school graduates have been so effectively encouraged to get a bachelor’s that high-paid jobs requiring shorter and less expensive training are going unfilled. This affects those students and also poses a real threat to the economy.

“Parents want success for their kids,” Mike Clifton, who taught machining for more than two decades at the Lake Washington Institute of Technology before retiring, said in 2018. “They get stuck on [four-year bachelor’s degrees], and they’re not seeing the shortage there is in tradespeople until they hire a plumber and have to write a check.”

The Washington State Auditor found in 2017 that good jobs in the skilled trades were going begging because students are being almost universally steered to bachelor’s degrees. Recent labor statistics suggest that’s still the case – in Washington State and around the country.

President Biden, in his State of the Union address this month, spoke of “jobs paying an average of $130,000 a year, and many do not require a college degree.”

Among other things, the Washington auditor recommended that career guidance — including choices that require less than four years in college — start as early as the seventh grade.

“There is an emphasis on the four-year university track” in high schools, Chris Cortines, who co-authored the report, said after it was issued. Yet, nationwide, nearly three out of 10 high school grads who go to four-year public universities haven’t earned degrees within six years, the most recent figures from the National Student Clearinghouse show. At four-year private colleges, that number is nearly one in five.

“Being more aware of other types of options may be exactly what they need,” Cortines said. In spite of a perception that college “is the sole path for everybody,” he said, “when you look at the types of wages that apprenticeships and other career areas pay, and the fact that you do not pay four years of tuition and you’re paid while you learn, these other paths really need some additional consideration.”

And it’s not just in Washington state.

Today, nearly 90% of construction companies nationwide are having trouble finding qualified workers, according to the Associated General Contractors of America; in Washington, the proportion is 88%. Ironworkers remain in particularly short supply, along with drywall installers and sheet metal workers.

The $1.2 trillion federal infrastructure plan – Biden’s signature legislation passed by Congress in 2021 – will create 1.5 million construction jobs per year for the next 10 years, the White House says, boosting the share of all jobs that are connected with rebuilding the nation’s infrastructure from 11% to 14%, according to the Georgetown University Center on Education and the Workforce. Median wages for construction jobs are higher than the median pay for all jobs, the Bureau of Labor Statistics reports.

“The economy is definitely pushing this issue to the forefront,” Amy Morrison Goings, president of the Lake Washington Institute of Technology, which educates students in these fields, said in 2018. “There isn’t a day that goes by that a business doesn’t contact the college and ask the faculty, ‘who’s ready to go to work?’ “

In all, some 30 million jobs in the United States that pay an average of $55,000 per year don’t require bachelor’s degrees, according to the Georgetown Center on Education and the Workforce.

Yet the march to bachelor’s degrees continues. And while people who get them are more likely to be employed and make more money than those who don’t, that premium appears to be softening; their inflation-adjusted median earnings were lower in 2018, the most recent year for which the figure is available, than in 2010.

“There’s that perception of the bachelor’s degree being the American dream, the best bang for your buck,” said Kate Blosveren Kreamer, deputy executive director of Advance CTE, an association of state officials who work in career and technical education. “The challenge is that in many cases it’s become the fallback. People are going to college without a plan, without a career in mind, because the mindset in high school is just, ‘Go to college.’ “

It’s not that finding a job in the trades, or even manufacturing, means needing no education after high school. Most regulators and employers require certificates, certifications or associate degrees. But those cost less and take less time than earning a bachelor’s degree.

Tuition and fees for in-state students to attend a community or technical college in Washington State, for example, came to less than half the cost last year of a four-year public university, and less than a fifth of the price of attending the cheapest private four-year college.

Washington is not the only state nudging students into education for the trades. At least 39 states have taken steps to encourage career and technical education, and many have increased funding for it, a 2017 Brookings Institution review found.

At the federal level, legislation introduced in Congress in January would make some short-term workforce programs eligible for federal Pell Grants. “For too long, the college-for-all mentality drove Americans toward expensive and often ineffective education pathways,” its sponsors said. “As our country stares down a historic worker shortage, fewer Americans are getting the skills they need to be successful.”

The branding issue

Money isn’t the only issue, advocates for career and technical education say. An even bigger challenge is convincing parents that it leads to good jobs.

“They remember ‘voc-ed’ from when they were in high school, which is not necessarily what they aspire to for their own kids,” Kreamer said. Added Kairie Pierce, apprenticeship and college director for the Washington State Labor Council of the AFL-CIO: “It sort of has this connotation of being a dirty job. ‘It’s hard work — I want something better for my son or daughter.’ “

The Lake Washington Institute of Technology, about 20 miles from Seattle, changed its name from Lake Washington Technical College, said Goings, its president, to avoid being stereotyped as a vocational school.

These perceptions fuel the worry that, if students are urged as early as the seventh grade to consider the trades, then low-income, first-generation students, and students of color will be channeled into blue-collar jobs while wealthier and white classmates are pushed by their parents to get bachelor’s degrees.

“When CTE was vocational education, part of the reason we had a real disinvestment from the system was because we were tracking low-income and minority kids into these pathways,” Kreamer said. “There is this tension between, do you want to focus on the people who would get the most benefit from these programs, and — is that tracking?”

In a quest for prestige and rankings, and to bolster real-estate values, high schools also like to emphasize the number of their graduates who go on to four-year colleges and universities.

Jessica Bruce enrolled in community college after high school for one main reason: because she was recruited to play fast-pitch softball. “I was still trying to figure out what I wanted to do with my life,” she said.

But she “couldn’t quite figure it out,” she says today. She was an apprentice ironworker in 2018, making $32.42 an hour, or more than $60,000 a year, while continuing her training. At 5-foot-2, “I can run with the big boys,” she said at the time, laughing.

Five years later, now 46, she’s starting a job installing 500 tons of rebar for a Boeing hangar near Seattle, working mostly outside, which she likes. She’s also back in school, of sorts, taking online courses to get her certification to become a fitness instructor as a side gig. And she’s bought a Harley.

Bruce says she has “absolutely no regrets,” herself. As for her own daughter, who’s 15, “if it’s college then it’s college,” she says. “I fully support that.” But students now in high school “are becoming maybe a little bit more aware” of the potential for making good money in the trades, she added. “I know my daughter is aware. I’ve told her there’s every kind of trade out there.”

The original 2018 version of this story was co-reported with Ashley Gross of KNKX.

For related blogs and articles on adult learning, career guidance, demography, economics, industry based training, VET vocational education & training and younger generations click through:

University Higher Education or VET Vocational Training?

Soft Skills for Work and Employment

Study Advice for Starting University

University Graduate Employment

Libertarian Curricula – Science and Culture Wars vs. University Maths Teacher Training

Recently in Australia, Alan Tudge, the Minister of Education in an embattled ruling LNP conservative coalition, approaching an election, proposed changes to maths teacher training at universities in Australia with an emphasis upon ‘explicit instruction’ versus the more contemporary ‘constructivist approach’ of building knowledge and self learning.

The report is quite unclear on what the evidence is for the need to introduce regressive steps for teaching methodology; based upon supposed correlations with headline test scores including PISA and text analysis of subject or course descriptions, to count how often key words e.g. constructivism occur, but not actual classroom observations?

In short, explicit instruction is teacher centred and directed while constructivist approach is learner centred allowing deep experiential understanding.  Nonetheless, both styles are acceptable depending upon the situation e.g. the UK RSA Cambridge TEFLA or CELTA, for the teaching of English as a foreign language, uses both, and more.  

This is exemplified in the PPPP model Preview, Present, Practice and Produce when used in a lesson starts teacher centred with explicit instruction (or direction), includes much student to student interaction, then moving towards more constructivist methods to finish with student centred production and formative ‘testing’ of individuals to judge outcome, or not.

However, support for changes comes from a report produced by the Sydney based CIS Centre for Independent Studies which is part of the Koch Network’s global Atlas Network of think tanks; another think tank in Melbourne, the IPA Institute of Public Affairs, informs often any climate science denying LNP government, and on libertarian socio-economic policies.

The CIS according to Sourcewatch is described as neoliberal and socially conservative, coincidentally was founded by a maths teacher to replicate, now another Koch linked economics think tank, the IEA in the UK which supported Brexit.  

As explained below the report writers have unclear higher qualifications to research, evaluate and propose methodological solutions to improve maths teaching and student outcomes; the report validity was questioned by various experts.

Anything Koch, IPA, CIS and LNP related generally includes strong antipathy towards universities and higher education, research, gender studies, LGBT, CRT, teaching, learning and science, especially climate science, and later the same networks were linked by DeSmog UK to Covid resistance to related science, vaccinations and measures to protect society.

This has been discussed previously in blog titled Climate Confusion, Astroturfing, Pseudo-Science, Population Movement and Radical Right Libertarians.  The aim appears to be neutralisation of competitive and other threats e.g. regulatory, round big business or large corporate entities, especially fossil fuels and related.

What are the outcomes of explicit teacher instruction?

Firstly it precludes peer to peer learning, like word of mouth is trusted, and is a valid way of learning, includes the ‘school of life’.

Secondly it suggests rote learning, and avoids the higher level skills according to Bloom’s Taxonomy beyond simply know, understand and apply, but higher level skills of analysis, evaluation and synthesis.

More deeply, the roots of radical right libertarian socio economic ideology, whether economics of Adam Smith, on population with Thomas Malthus, or Galton on eugenics, is to keep a major part of any society, especially voters, unenlightened on climate science, higher education and now Covid science to maintain 18th or 19th century power relationships favouring the more deserving ‘top people’ over less deserving society.

Final outcome would involve the ‘hidden curriculum’ that explicit instruction would encourage and condition i.e. a teacher is a figure of authority in imparting knowledge or facts while students are not required to apply higher level skills.

Encouraging a return to master serf relationships and not questioning authority.

From The Campus Morning Mail of Stephen Matchett:

‘Tudge warns teacher education faculties (again) November 29, 2021

For the second time in a month the Education Minister has warned education faculties the “Government will use the full leverage of the $760 million it provides” if they continue to use teaching methods he does not approve of.

Last week Mr Tudge criticised a “constructivist approach” in initial teacher education maths courses, as opposed to “explicit instruction,”(CMM November 26). In October, he warned that “ideological resistance” in teaching training limits the use of explicit instruction and phonics.

The ITE peak body did not respond to what could be a threat and might be a promise from the minister on math teacher training, with the Australian Council of Deans of Education declining to comment on Friday.

However, the Media Centre for Education Research did issue a statement, quoting Macquarie U maths education academics, Dũng Trần, Michael Cavanagh and Rebecca Bull commenting on the Centre for Independent Studies report which informed Mr Tudge’s new statement. They questioned some claims and suggested some of its evidence was not “robust,” adding “we would welcome a more comprehensive discussion about the intricacies of effective mathematics teaching.”

Summary of the report is here:

‘Policymakers have increasingly looked to improvements in Initial Teacher Education (ITE) as key to overcoming declining education outcomes.

The analysis in this paper validates this concern and places a specific lens on ITE for beginning mathematics teachers.

Despite clear evidence of the efficacy of explicit instruction, it is not practiced consistently and regularly in Australia’s mathematics classrooms. The analysis shows that high-performing countries more frequently apply the principles and priorities consistent with explicit instruction.

An analysis of ITE courses for beginning mathematics teachers finds a lack of emphasis on explicit instruction. This significantly contributes to insufficient implementation of evidence-based practice — particularly explicit instruction — in Australian schools.

For Australian students’ mathematics outcomes to improve, ITE must improve with it. For this reason, ITE providers require clear and unambiguous expectations for genuinely incorporating evidence-based practices into their mathematics ITE courses.

Some examples of practices that teachers should be able to demonstrate on completion of mathematics ITE include:

• Clear teacher demonstrations that recognise implications of cognitive load.
• Guided, scaffolded practice opportunities that allow students to students to verbalise.
• Immediate corrective feedback to clarify and confirm students’ progress.
• Spaced and interleaved practice to facilitate cumulative review of content.’

The full report ‘Failing to teach the teacher: An analysis of mathematics Initial Teacher Education’

Glenn Fahey, Jordan O’Sullivan, Jared Bussell   25 November 2021 | AP29

The writers of the report above have indirect expertise and unclear qualifications e.g. Fahey is economics, whilst the other two, Sullivan and Bussell are apparently teachers but have no qualifications listed, simply a general biography on the CIS website.

Related links of interest, articles and blogs:

Covid Misinformation – Gut Instinct & Beliefs vs. Science & Critical Thinking

Covid-19 Climate Science Vaccination Misinformation PR and Astro Turfing

Eco-System of Libertarian Think Tanks and White Nativism in the Anglosphere

Conspiracy of Denial – COVID-19 and Climate Science

Anglosphere – Radical Right Libertarian Socioeconomics and Authoritarianism

Think tanks’ call for ‘freedom’ really promises authoritarianism

International Student Academic Integrity System

International students studying at Australian universities and elsewhere are coming under scrutiny due to both real or perceived issues of academic integrity whether round IELTS and other English tests, students’ real English level, copying, ghost writing and assessment design to ensure quality cohorts.

In one’s experience the issue with academic integrity in universities is lack of awareness and/or willingness to address ghost writing, sub-optimal enrolment processes, heavy assessment loads for instructors, students lacking academic integrity flying under the radar, limits to how much TurnitIn can detect (duplication only), core tutoring/lecturing staff unable to manage the same and related assessment issues.

A simple process for commencing students, in addition to compulsory foundation communication subjects based upon English for Academic Purposes, follows:

Benchmark all new students from the start with a simple assessable written response to questions of academic integrity (compare this back to their English test scores), core unit instructors must be trained in detecting and/or resolving issues via regular academic integrity workshops, students must only use suggested sources (including library URLs), assessment rubrics must reflect academic integrity, suspect students must submit assessment drafts and/or present their ideas via a brief ‘viva’ and finally, avoid issue of students sitting and failing exams badly, that clearly show existing academic issues (after assessment items have already been successful due to ‘ghost writing’).

From Campus Morning Mail:

‘“Name and shame” students who cheat says den Hollander

Universities can’t stop all the cheats but they can make it harder for them

Former Deakin U VC Jane den Hollander urges universities to identify students who cheat.

“We should name and shame because that’s the best way to learn that there’s no fun in this and there’s no gain,” she told a conference on the new academic integrity law, convened last week by study-support provider (and CMM advertiser) Studiosity.

Graduating students need to know, “that everyone around them who is graduating is just like them, they have worked really hard and they deserve what they are getting.

“The fear and the irritation that happens in communities when they know someone’s cheated to get that high distinction is one of the most corrosive things that we deal with in classrooms,” she warned.

Professor den Hollander also argued universities need to give staff  training, “to do assessment properly,” to make it harder for students and cheating services, “some of the simplistic ways we do our assessment are not going to withstand those people.”

But the task is suppression, not eradication, “I think making it harder for cheats rather than trying to catch the cheats is the way to go and bring those numbers down, because we need to operate for the 99 percent or the 95 percent who genuinely want to learn.”

As to the new law; “I don’t think legislation deters anyone if they genuinely are pressured or otherwise predisposed to be dishonest. But it does make it aware for everyone else how hard it is and perhaps stop some people doing it. We need to educate our students … to make it harder for them to go down the slippery path where it appears to be easy.”’

For more blogs and articles about academic integrity, assessment, copying, course design, CPD continuing professional development, curriculum, instructional design, international education, international student, student plagiarism and university teaching skills click through.

Detection of Student Plagiarism Ghost Writing Contract Cheating

Recent media news stories and documentaries have highlighted perceived issues of international student plagiarism, collusion, ghost writing and contract cheating.

Most institutions have systems and processes in place to deal with, or at least ameliorate the impact of sub-optimal academic integrity, including higher language requirements (and level testing at enrolment), Turnitin and other duplication detection software, in class assessments, assignment workshops, feedback and monitoring.

How to stop or limit ghost writing and contract cheating (image copyright Pexels)

However, like other sectors, education is prone to only lip service being paid by some commissioners, owners, shareholders, management, academia and related; rather than enforcement of minimum regulatory compliance it’s viewed as a voluntary code by some.

The following is summary of an article about the issue and how to deal with it, in an American context which has recently seen SAT and related corruption for entry to top universities.

Detecting and Deterring Ghostwritten Papers: A Guide to Best Practices (from The Best Schools website)

By David A. Tomar

1 Introduction For ten years, I made my living helping students cheat. I worked as a professional ghost writer, completing homework assignments, producing essays, and composing senior theses for alternately desperate, lazy, or disengaged college and graduate students.

I worked as an independent contractor affiliated with various online paper mills and, between 2000 and 2010, spent nearly every day of my life immersed in academic research and compositional writing. Writing as many as 5,000 typewritten pages a year, I earned as much as many professors.

In November of 2010, I announced my retirement in a tell-all article published in the Chronicle of Higher Education. Using the pseudonym Ed Dante, I covered what was, for many, a first glimpse into the shadowy underworld of academic ghostwriting.

 

2 The Ghostwriting Business. Before it is possible to prevent and police ghostwriting, one must understand the industry. Though many educators are well aware of ghostwriting, how it happens and that it most likely has occurred in their own classrooms, just as many others have a limited or non-existent sense of its impact.

Quite to the point, of the many reactions that greeted my original article in The Chronicle, doubt and skepticism were among the most common. Some truly dedicated, earnest, and otherwise astute educators refused to accept not only that wholesale cheating of this sort could be perpetrated but that it could be done so consistently and effectively without detection right under their noses.

 

2.1 Prevalence….. Still, we may be able to deduce a great deal just from the accessibility and ease-of-use of ghostwriting services. According to an article in the New York Times regarding rising rates of student cheating, “research has shown that a major factor in unethical behavior is simply how easy or hard it is.”

We can say with great certainty that it is easier than ever to employ an academic ghostwriting service. If a student has the money, he or she has the means.

The vast majority of students locate these services simply by doing a Google search for “Custom Paper Writing,” “essay help,” “term papers,” “homework services,” “essay writing services,’” or any number of other pertinent word combinations. Each of these terms will ultimately return dozens of pages of relevant search results.

From what is immediately apparent though, we can conclude two things about the prevalence of ghostwriting:

1. The inquiring student will find it easy to locate a desired service and begin using it; and
2. The enterprising freelancer will find it easy to locate an employment opportunity and begin earning income from it.

 

2.2 Pricing and Structure Most companies operate using a similar pricing spectrum, charging between $10 and $50 per page depending on proximity of the deadline. For instance, Mypaperwriter.com prices its custom writing services between $17.55 and $45.85 per page. This is in line with the pricing spectrum and structure of the industry’s more lucrative companies.

The variance is usually determined by deadline. This is the measure used most frequently to dene an assignment’s price. Papers due in a week or more are typically bound to the low end of the pricing spectrum. For anything due in less than a week, the cost per page will go up as the number of days goes down. A paper due in less than 24 hours will fall on the highest end of the cost-per-page spectrum.

 

2.3 Clientele The ghostwriting industry enjoys a customer base comprised of three primary demographics. These are the likeliest perpetrators of ghostwritten plagiarism:

2.3.1 English Language Learners: International students often arrive at American universities without a background or meaningful support in English composition.

2.3.2 Composition/Research deficient students: A startling number American students—for whom English is a native language—will actually suffer from many of these exact same deceits

2.3.3 Lazy students: Some ghostwriting clients simply lack the motivation and interest to complete their own work, a condition that Farnese et al. (2011) call “academic moral disengagement.”[7] In many cases, a perfectly capable student will utilize an academic ghostwriting service as a way to cut down effort or improve his or her chances of receiving a better grade.

 

3 The Ghostwriting Conundrum…… However, the web has proliferated and simplified cheating, dramatically expanding the accessibility, visibility, and ease with which students can lift, recycle or otherwise claim authorship of work that is not their own. Consequently, the growth of this industry helped to provoke the growth of the plagiarism-detection industry of which Turnitin is a leading example.

Other notable sites include Viper, Plagscan, Plagtracker, Grammarly, Small SEO Tools, and Plagiarism Checker.

Turnitin represents the gold standard in plagiarism detection. Even so, given the limitations inherent in plagiarism detection, even Turnitin has no way to bring its extensive empirical data to bear on ghostwriting.

With these conditions in mind, we point to a handful of detection and deterrence challenges that are unique to ghostwriting:

3.1 Original, non-plagiarized content: Most ghostwriting companies are faithful to this service guarantee and will terminate independent contractors for failure to comply.

3.2 Low likelihood of raising suspicion: Ghostwriting places the onus on the educator to have initial cause for suspicion. This requires the individual grading a written assignment to sense a disconnect between the student and the assignment, which of course requires some initial familiarity with the student in question.

3.3 Difficulty of translating suspicion into proof: Cheating is, of course, a serious allegation and students have a lot riding on the completion of their education. So obviously, the average student will go to great lengths to deny any such allegations. Students are not afraid to get litigious if need be. The point is, as an educator, one must be very careful about levying the accusation without hard evidence.

 

4 The Four D’s of Ghostbusting

4.1 Design Design refers to the way a professor constructs assignments, course materials, tests, classroom time and the semester-long curriculum. This is an area in education where quality control runs the gamut from excellence to criminal incompetence. There are plenty of professors who work tirelessly to tailor assignments, materials and examinations to remain in-step with constantly evolving subject matter, student culture and best practices. But there are also plenty of professors who recycle old materials without scrutiny and who depend wholly on text-based content which most students could acquire without professor mediation.

4.2 Deterrence Deterrence refers to ways of diminishing the inclination, motive, or desire to purchase a ghostwritten paper…..That is, students at least believe that they are cheating out of ease, normalcy, or necessity. The study finds that the onus falls on instructors to live up to certain student expectations regarding clarity and engagement of course content. The study identities this as the best route to deterring the rationalized impulse to use a ghostwriting service.

Practical Strategies

4.2.1 Individualization: Individualization of the educational experience can instill in the student a greater sense of commitment to course materials and to the knowledge and career opportunities thereby implied. Large lecture halls and online courses can create a sense of anonymity for the would-be cheater.

4.2.2 Conferencing: One thing that large universities and online courses have in common is that, if one desires, one can go an entire semester without ever once personally meeting a professor. There is comfort in this anonymity. Removing this comfort creates a deterrent that does not otherwise exist.

4.2.3 Emphasis on in-class participation: Mandatory class participation heightens the imperative for students to become familiar with course content. Mandating contributions to class discussions gives students a strong incentive to establish a consistent voice and perspective on course subjects.

4.2.4 Student engagement: This one is really and truly up to each individual educator. It is within every educator’s power to be as creative, energetic, inspiring, original, unpredictable, and engaging as he or she wants to be….Many students feel no remorse about cheating in a course from which there is a feeling of disengagement. Uninspired lectures, standard texts, and generic assignments serve as great ammunition for a student who wishes to rationalize his or her detachment.

4.2.5 Miscellaneous strategies of deterrence: Course discussions where students are invited to share research experience and knowledge Professor lectures based on and attributed to content drawn from student assignments A requirement for students to occasionally present research findings or other written work to the class or professor.

 

4.3 Detection Detection is both a manual process driven by professorial experience and a technology driven process with continued room for growth and improvement.

Practical Strategies

4.3.1 Assignment exit interviews: Standardizing one-on-one conferencing with each student following assignment submission requires each student to defend his or her writing.

4.3.2 Manual literary fingerprinting: Of the many strategies outlined in this account, this may well be the most readily adaptable to any context where writing forms a portion of the coursework. Here, the orientation process for any writing intensive course will begin with an in-class writing assignment.

4.3.3 File properties: One way to improve the chances of detecting ghostwritten work is to simply be a savvier user of technology than the average cheating student. It’s easier than one might think.

4.3.4 Computational literary fingerprinting: Based on the effectiveness and value of Turnitin.com as a strategy for plagiarism detection of the non-ghostwritten variety, this strategy may best predict the future of ghostwriting detection.

 

4.4 Dedication Detection is all well and good, but let’s face it, people good at detection are more likely to join a police force than a teachers union. Teachers are in the classroom to teach. This is where the fourth “D” comes into play. The instructor must be dedicated to the education of his or her students, not just to punching an academic time card.

Practical Strategy

4.4.1 Identify struggling students and see that they get help: These are the students who are by far the most likely to employ a ghostwriter. In order to reduce the presence of the ghostwriter in the classroom, educators must take pre-emptive steps to identify those who are most likely to need his services.

 

For more blogs and articles about international students, academic integrity and international education click through.

Essay Mills Ghost Writers and University Students

Academic integrity, copying, plagiarism, collusion, ‘ghost writing’ and essay factories have become a fact of life in university or higher education, internationally.  This article endeavours to explain how or why is it an issue but at same time, short on what are the solutions?

While western democracies, and the developing world, have politicians, business and public leaders openly flouting ethical standards through egregious corruption and related unethical behaviour, is it any wonder?

Some solutions are precluded by universities’ corporate or financial needs e.g. rather than (barely modified) assessments that are more efficient to grade (or worse more multiple choice), there maybe a need for a return to in class open book and variety of assessments?

Academic Integrity at University (Image copyright Pexels).

From The Guardian, Chris Husbands:

‘Essay mills prey on vulnerable students – let’s stamp them out

Universities alone can’t stop the rise of essay mills. We need support from the government and tech firms to defeat them

In the 1990s, there was enormous optimism around how the internet would connect people and make knowledge available to all. Fast forward twenty years, and identity theft, cybercrime, online bullying and appalling sexual exploitation have become everyday news stories. Increasingly, it’s the perversions of the internet which dominate our thinking.

The business model is simple. You have an essay to write, you are time poor, you pay a fee for the essay to be written. The fee these crooks charge depends on the length, the standard you are looking for, and the deadline you are facing….

For universities, the digital world’s most concerning development is the spread of essay mills. They’re not new: it’s always been tempting for some students to pay someone to do their work for them. But the internet has vastly eased the relationship between customers and suppliers, fuelling the growth of these essay mills….

….Learning is based on integrity and scholarship: showing that students have read, understood and been influenced by the work of others, and can explain how their thinking is new or different. Education is not about getting grades, it’s about being an active participant in learning opportunities. If some of that is difficult, well, difficulty is the point….

….The Secretary of State for Education’s announcement that tech firms should block payments to essay mills and students should report on their peers is a step in the right direction. We need to work together to preserve the integrity of the UK higher education system from these unscrupulous companies, and the way they prey on vulnerable students who don’t fully understand the implications of their actions.’

Chris Husbands is the vice-chancellor of Sheffield Hallam University

For more articles and blogs about academic integrity, copying and student plagiarism click through.