Questionable online homework resource raises in popularity at SU

When college student Adam Richman found himself and his peers overwhelmed with work, he turned to entrepreneurship for help.

Richman helped create a site, cheaphomework.com, that provides a staff to complete a student's homework in exchange for money. Syracuse University ranked as one of the top three users, Richman said.

"We just heard a lot of people complain that they didn't want to do their homework anymore, that they'd prefer to go out, enjoy their night," Richman said. "We always saw on people's Facebook statuses, 'Hey, I'd pay someone $20 to do my math homework,' 'I'd really like to go out tonight, does anyone know someone who could write me an essay?' And we thought we should probably capitalize on this."

Richman named Arizona State University, University of Central Florida and the University of Massachusetts as other big users.

More than 500 assignments have been completed since the site began about a month ago, and between 50 and 100 of those are from SU, said Richman, a college student at an undisclosed university. He said he does not know how the site became so popular among SU students.

The site operates with a staff of about 10 college-educated people, mostly graduate students, located throughout the United States, Richman said.

"They're located all over the United States, so if an assignment comes in at 3 a.m., we have someone on the West Coast that can complete it, we have someone on the East Coast who can complete the assignments during the day," Richman said. "The person who does our math just graduated from Stanford."

Richman reviews every assignment for quality and neatness, spending five to 10 minutes checking that it matches the student's requirements.

"We do everything from papers to all questions on quizzes to essays and book reports to science projects to math homework," Richman said.

There's no set price per assignment, but factors like the length, amount of research and time affect the costs. Students include an estimate of how much they'd like to pay, but they can't use a school e-mail address for privacy reasons.

Richman uses the service himself and said it was nice to know he is not the only student overwhelmed with work. He said he recognized the site was morally wrong, but without federal laws forbidding plagiarism, Richman saw nothing wrong with operating the business.

"I don't really see how there are no state or federal laws that relate back to doing someone's homework," Richman said. "Obviously, there are going to be professors that aren't too happy about it. What we're doing is morally wrong, but I donÕt think there is anything illegal about it."

Richman described the company as a tutoring service and said it is up to the student to decide how to use the service. A disclaimer on the website states the business is a tutoring service and students decide how to use it within the guidelines of their high school, college or university.

SU's Academic Integrity Policy considers papers downloaded from the Internet or obtained from a paper mill to be plagiarism. Richman recognized students would likely get in trouble for using the site but did not consider the business to be a particularly bad moral offense in the long run.

"There are a lot of things that are morally wrong, but if you're an entrepreneur and you run a company, money comes first, I guess," Richman said.

Gary Pavela, director of SU's Office of Academic Integrity, said that the university has been encouraging faculty members to discuss and respond to homework in class in an effort to curb plagiarizing.

"We are reminding students that solid research shows that those who fail to do their own home or lab work are significantly disadvantaged in subsequent examinations, including national examinations for graduate and professional schools," Pavela said. "Using these services isn't only unethical - it's stupid. A waste of hard-earned tuition money."

Pavela said the number of students using the site might be questionable, given the source.

"Promoting honesty doesn't seem to be their highest priority," Pavela said.

Students should be careful of the decisions they make regarding academics because of potential issues later in life, Pavela said. He called attention to the advertising slogan the site uses: "Party now and pay later."

"More than ever, in this economy, students need to know what their transcript says they know. Prospective employers are screening with extraordinary care," Pavela said.

Ben Bradley, professor of ethics at SU, said he has encountered several issues with plagiarism in the past, all of which originated from online sources. One semester, Bradley found four to five papers out of 20 that were plagiarized, he said. After noticing a change in a student's writing style, Bradley said, he would look on Google for the original source.

"There's lots of stuff that's morally wrong that's not legally wrong, such as just lying to people," Bradley said. "But you shouldn't do it."

In response to problems, Bradley said he has assigned fewer papers and relied on in-class exams. He said it was a shame he could not allow students the extra time to learn how to write a paper. Ultimately, Bradley said the issue was with students, not the operators of online sites.

"Should we do anything about this guy who is doing people's homework for them and getting them to pay him? I guess I don't really view our beef as being with him so much as with our students," Bradley said.

Shakira Smith, a freshman information management and technology major, said she uses the online study resource StudyBlue, an operation that pays students for uploading notes from classes. She said she has been using the site for the past semester and that it helps her study and interact with other students in her class.