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You are a poor and penniless music student, you average A - B+ grades and your peer who struggles with essays offers you $100 to write her essay. She is very busy with her studies since she is a performance major. You know it's wrong but would you do it?

(be honest)

No.

(This actually happened to me once. I said no.)

lol, don't you teach at a university Kreisler? Have you ever caught this crime? This is happening to me right now ... I am very naturally guilty, I've said no, offered to help for free, and I still get the same offer ...

some people are lazy.. why go to school if one is not committed to working? Perhaps she is committed but writing is a great way to learn.

I'd say no but would offer to clean or do laundry while she slaved away at the paper. I'd also offer to help her by editing or reading it as she progressed.

Whether you accept payment or not is irrelevant in one sense. Students must/should submit their own work, not someone else's, otherwise the reward they get is undeserved and sooner or later they will be found out! There is no question at all what the answer should be : NO!

Everything (everyone?) has its price. Whether or not you can be bought says as much about you as it does about the student who is willing to submit someone else's work as her own. It's your conscience - not our advice - that should be your guide. A person with integrity would not even ask this question.

Regards,

ABSOLUTELY not. And yes, that's an honest answer.

Aside from the obvious problem (it's wrong), it does not pass a risk/benefit analysis either. For $100 you're putting your integrity, your reputation, and all the work you've put in so far on the line. Once all that is gone, how long would the $100 last?

We caught all kinds of cheating. Unfortunately, unless it's obvious plagiarism, it's very difficult to prove, so most students get away with it.

My favorite case was when a student threatened to appeal his grade because he thought I was being unfair. (He didn't turn in half of the homework and still thought he deserved a C.) He told me that if he didn't get a C in the course, he'd lose his scholarship. I told him to go ahead and appeal and that I'd tell the appeal committee "students who don't turn in half their homework don't deserve scholarships." He backed down and never appealed the grade. Hopefully he learned his lesson and won't test that kind of unethical behavior when it actually matters in the real world.

The kind of person who cheats is usually going to get caught or discovered as a fraud eventually. Your friend may not think learning to write essays is important, but she'll wish she had at some point. Even as a performer, one often ends up having to write cover letters for job applications or grant proposals for recording projects. If your friend wants a career in the arts, she's going to have to learn to write. Tell her that if she ever wants to be a professional adult, she needs to suck it up and start acting like one.

lol, I'm not after advice, I'm just entertaining the idea ... to see how people's consciences work, to see if people would give in due to the forces of povety. I thought that this would be a more fun sort of discussion, thought I'd hear "well in my day I would have, lived so poor etc" instead this is all lecture-y sounding. I'm not going to do it, I mean as I said, I am a naturally guilty person - I don't brush my teeth, the next morning I feel guilty ... I've been nice enough to offer help in the past and this person has done well with some encouragement but apparently she can't write an essay in two weeks due to her schedule.

Did you really think that you'd get any other answers than the ones you have received? Did you really think that someone, in a public forum, would say : "Yes, I would do it; I need the money!" and thus mark him/herself as dishonest?

Everyone, publicly, is going to take the high road, hence the "lecture-y (sic!) sounding" replies.

Regards,

I would do it actually! I would also grab my android phone, record the student asking for it and find a way to grab video footage of me getting the money! Then I would post about it on the net and to the uni principal and everywhere else with the name of the student that asked me to do this! I would donate the money to an institute of some sort and then I would be hated for the rest of my life! (dark evil laughter): Bouahahahaha!

Offer tutoring instead.

Well, there's a non-lecture-y answer!

Yes, this is a pretty odd topic. Thanks, Nikolas, for injecting a bit of fun!

I have caught plagiarism as a teacher. Heck, I've helped catch plagiarism here at PW.

I'd like to think I have more integrity and spine than that. It's not worth any kind of money a student would be capable of offering me to compromise my own ethics and degree. How lame!

No. For a simple and self-serving reason:

I won't enter into a contract with a dishonest person. If she's enough of a liar to cheat by paying you $100 for an essay, she's enough of a liar to stiff you or pay you only $20 since "well, it only got a B- so I don't think I should pay you $100 ... " or whatever.

There's two arguments against this. There's the ethical argument that it's cheating, which is just plain wrong. But the above argument that it's also putting you in thrall to someone who has demonstrated that they are underhanded and untrustworthy. If she'll cheat the school, she'll cheat YOU, too. What about later, when you're busy and can't do it? What will she do then when you aren't at her beck and call? Rat YOU out for having done it? She might be vengeful enough to be willing to take her own punishment just to shaft you, too.

People who are not to be trusted are to be AVOIDED. By taking her money, you are putting yourself in her power.

Just to be clear, if I were offered $50,000 to write a 10-page essay on the history of the string quartet, I would TOTALLY DO IT.

How's that for honesty?

but for a bit more ......

Beware the Rick Perry syndrome. "I cannot be bought for $5,000." Give $100,000 and, well, maybe ....

What's "just plain wrong" about the ethical argument? I do agree with your second reason that it is unwise to accept this deal -- together with the "ethical argument".

At a lot of schools both the person who cheated and the person who facilitated the cheating would be punished. Your "friend" could decide not to pay you at all and get away with it, and you can't report her because you'd also be implicating yourself. Plus if word gets out, both your reputations/grades/potentially career would be compromised. Don't do it. Offer to tutor her for money instead, but make her do her own work.