Computer Science Students Outsource Homework

Carl Bialik from the WSJ writes "'If U.S. companies can go online to outsource their programming, why can't U.S. computer students outsource their homework--which, after all, often involves writing sample programs?' Wall Street Journal colummnist Lee Gomes asks. 'Scruples aside, no reason at all. Search for "homework" in the data base of Rent A Coder projects, and you get 1,000 hits. (An impressive number, but still a tiny fraction of all computer students, the vast majority of whom are no doubt an honest and hardworking lot.)' Some of the Rent a Coder users appear to be outsourcing their way through school, at low costs--probably less than $100 per assignment. The posting are, of course, anonymous, but Gomes traces one to a student at the New Jersey Institute of Technology, where an instructor tells him that Rent a Coder contributed to a problem of plagiarism last semester."

Why bother?

Why even bother getting the degree in something if you don't want to do the work anyway? Isn't that shooting yourself in the foot? Besides the fact that you won't have a clue what you're doing since you'll never have learned anything, if you don't have any desire to do it in the first place, why are you in the field?

Re:Why bother?

They're aiming for middle management.

good experience

Outsourcing your homework is good experience for middle management. That way, when they get their job, they have experience in outsourcing programming and getting poor quality code back.

Re:good experience

Outsourcing a coding assignment should be a requirement of any MIS / MBA program, in order to give students some real-world applicable experience.

Re:Why bother?

Why even bother getting the degree in something if you don't want to do the work anyway?

Because Universities have become the 13th grade, a prerequisite for even unskilled labor. A bachelors degree is worth about the same as a a high school diploma was worth 50 years ago.

Re:Why bother?

I think you're confusing "computer science" with "software engineering". In either case, neither is as easy as you seem to think.

Being a double major in compsci and psychology, having started in mechanical engineering, sampled electrical engineering and physics and philosophy and math, I'm comfortable (and qualified) to say that computer science, when taught at a reputable university, is very nearly as challenging and demanding as major disciplines in engineering, and quite a bit more demanding than the vast majority of liberal arts disciplines.

What you're probably bemoaning, however, is the lack of software engineering principles in corporate software development. That's a whole different animal than what classes you take in college (considering that a majority of professional developers today don't have college degrees in either computer science or software engeering, or indeed any relevant field).

Re:Why bother?

Besides the fact that you won't have a clue what you're doing since you'll never have learned anything, if you don't have any desire to do it in the first place, why are you in the field?

The types of people who cheat in their CS courses are likely the types of people who'd cheat regardless of their chosen field. My wife teaches history (on the high school level, though), and there's just been an explosion of plagiarism in the last few years or so - it's just tremendously easy and tempting to CTRL-C CTRL-V some website into your paper.

Of course, what these knuckleheads don't realize is that the same developments that make it easy for them to cheat also make tremendously easy to catch cheaters - there have been course sections where literally half the class has gotten caught with a hand in the cookie jar, and it really, really makes me wonder what the fuck these kids are thinking. Forget about not learning the tools for your career - some of them are bound and determined not to learn a goddamn thing, period.

Re:Why bother?

Cheaters are everywhere, that's for sure. I was a teacher's assistant several years ago. I graded all the programs and quizes. My personal policy was to report every cheater. Generally we had them put on academic probation and removed from the class. I've caught 4-5. I only had 30 assignments to grade normally, so I had a pretty good memory of what someone did. I caught two because they had the exact same comments for their program, and upon closer inspection, had nearly the same program. The professor was a bit gunshy, and didn't have them removed from class. However, after I caught one of the students cheating with another, I at least got one removed from the class.

You have to a zero tolerance policy, otherwise students will think that they can get away with it.

Teach your children ....

with both my kids around about age 9-10 I discovered some paper they were going to hand in that was copied from the web .... sat them down, typed 3 words of vocab that so obviously wasn't written by them into google and lo and behold the web page they copied it from .... long discusion ensued - about how to write a paper, paraphrase a source (or quote it correctly) and an explanation about how their teachers could do the google trick just as well as I could

It's a great age to learn this - probably Jr High teachers should do that demo to each new incoming class - "I can catch you out - it's this easy"

Re:Why bother?

Easier than that... Just call them up randomly to walk the class through their code, and explain what the code that they ostensibly wrote does.

-jcr

Re:Why bother?

That seems to be the official policy just about everywhere, but it is often not enforced quite that stringently. Not that the university really wants anyone to know this, but they often allow the cheater to drop out without anything going on their record. They might have to take an F in the class they cheated on, or at least on the particular assignment, but then they get to repeat the process somewhere else until they graduate. There are far more diploma holders that have cheated and been caught then most people would imagine.

Bigger Fish to Fry...

The obvious answer to the question is Hell NO! Students need to do their own work so that the University granting $StudentX with a degree doesn't loose credibility by certifying that "$GraduateX is now Capable of doing the job" when he really doesn't know his ass from a hole in the ground.

What really needs to be done is for instructors to wake up and realize that most people don't even need to outsource in order to complete thier projects. After all, who needs to pay a "Rent-A-Coder" when so many instructors provide obvious shortcuts via working examples of the projects right along the assignment, i.e., Java classes, etc... Why "outsource" when you can decompile Jad, change a few variable names and viola! Project Complete. [kpdus.com]

To really combat plagarism, instructors should focus more on theory, algorithms, deisgn patterns, etc.., and less on the actual solution to a particular problem in $programmingLanguage. If you really must assign projects, insert subtle flaws or traps in the assignment that would make the project all but impossible w/out direct interaction with the Professor to clarify requirments, etc... This would expose the weak students, the obvious cheats. and give a clearer picture of what's really going on in the classroom. Problem is there are too many instructors out there who just don't care, and aren't in it for the right reasons. In other words, they just don't care!

Let them do it.

Go ahead and outsource your homework. When you graduate and get a job, your company will realize you don't know anything and outsource your job to the same people. I've seen it happen.

http://religiousfreaks.com/ [religiousfreaks.com]

Re:Let them do it.

Or, you can become a consultant and bid out jobs locally, then have Indians do it for next to nothing. After four years of doing this at school, you would be pretty good at managing such projects.

I know a few consultants in my area that don't do any programming anymore. They have a team in Asia and a team in Eastern Europe working on their projects 24/7. It's not a complete retirement, because you do have to negotiate cultural barriers (such as what "I need it tomorrow" means), and you are not within ass-kicking distance of the people you are relying on.

If that's your approach...

...why not be a buisness major instead? I mean, if you're not really passionate the work, why not pick an occupation that a) pays more and b) is easier to fake your way through?

Disgusting!

Why in the old days we had to post the problems on USENET and hope not to get *plonked*! Kids today are sooo spoiled.

Cheating

Well, cheating is cheating, whether you get to use the work from a classmate or from someone in another part of the world. And if someone is really determined to take the easy way out, there is not a whole lot you can do to stop them; I doubt the majority of cheaters in college ever get caught (but allow for the fact that stupidity probably is a major factor in the need to cheat to begin with so that by itself increases the capture rate).

But what happens afterwards, when they're looking for a job and blow every interview since, well, they don't actually know what they're talking about? My guess, they blame the outsorcing trend for their failures...

great idea!

I want to become a really great guitarist. Maybe I can hire someone else to practice all those tedious scales, arpeggios, and chords. When they're done, I'll be able to play like Steve Vai!

Saw this on Elance too

I saw an Elance posting once for an obvious CS student project. Funny thing was that I recognized the professor's name as being from my alma mater, so I sent him an email with the project link.

Th better part was that the student also used his real name in the listing.

Wrong Major, obviously

It's fairly clear that particular person should've majored in Business Administration, not Computer Science.

Re:Likely not a problem overall

The times are gone when most people in CS are geeks.

Many, many, *many* are in it for the money, or because people keep telling them computers are the place to be. I'm in computer engineering myself, but I've had to take up through jr level comp sci courses, and in each and every one I see people who fail to exhibit basic programming knowledge, or only a middling skill level in using the computer in general.

Re:Likely not a problem overall

Many, many, *many* are in it for the money, or because people keep telling them computers are the place to be. I'm in computer engineering myself, but I've had to take up through jr level comp sci courses, and in each and every one I see people who fail to exhibit basic programming knowledge, or only a middling skill level in using the computer in general.

And a lot of them are just mildly ok at math and figure you have to major in SOMETHING. I mean a lot of them wouldn't feel passionate about anything, but you have to pick a major, so why not computer science? Why does everyone here think that computer science is a field of study so noble, so exalted, that it and only it should escape the mediocre masses that muddle along in any other field? I mean, plenty of those English majors don't read books outside of school, and plenty of those engineering majors never even looked at a schematic they weren't assigned in class, and plenty of those astronomy majors don't even own telescopes. Just have to learn to deal with the mediocre people instead of urging them to go infest another field.

Re:Likely not a problem overall

If you aren't passionate, or competant enough to participate in any course offered at a tertiary education institution without cheating - don't go through tertiary education. Try apprenticing in a trade instead. You can get good money as a tradesman, and they don't have the same intellectual focus as a university/college degree.

If you aren't passionate or competant enough in any field offered anywhere, well, you're better served getting started on your french-frying career, because if you can't pull it together enough to get a degree or trade certificate, you're not going to be able to do it for a living.

Re:You're only cheating yourself

The problem is that you don't learn anything, and you don't get any practice reinforcing what you've learned by doing the projects. That's your own loss, not anyone else's.

No. It's everybody's loss. These losers devalue the degree of Computer Science. Employers are starting to realize that a lot of these dolts don't really have any clue at all, and this alters their perceptions of CS graduates in general. I put in the long hours and hard work to really earn my degree, but many do not. Employers are not blind -- they realize that a lot of CS "grads" are total nitwits. This might lead them to believe that I am as well.

"You're only cheating yourself" might be true in high school but certainly not at the collegiate level. These sorts of people piss me off.

Re:Not a major concern

I had a teacher that let you decide your own groups, but with the understanding that along with the final paper/presentation/whatever, you would 'grade' your fellow group members.

You had 100 points to split up between everyone in the group and he'd add up the seperate 'grades' for each student and then multiply the final grade by that number.

So if the group paper was worth a 74% and your group 'grade' was a 94%... you'd get a 70%

It gave you the opportunity to penalize the asshats who weren't pulling their weight. And the people who did outstanding work could get a grade higher than 100%.