[austinkyker]

I studied CS at Duke. If students in your program can ask the mentor questions about their problem sets, I highly doubt Duke CS department will allow this. Our program was hyperaware of cheating. Most problem sets were supposed to be done individually. They were using software to audit our submissions to catch cheating.

I think students would pay to get help on their problem sets. I knew many students that paid for Chegg. I don't know many students will pay for general tutoring.

Also, keep in mind, a lot of people try CS and don't end up liking it. Most people I know would not want to be a programmer even if they were guaranteed to get A+s in all their college CS classes. It takes a certain type of person to love staring at code on a computer screen 8 hours a day. It's not for everyone.

[throwawayjava]

> If students in your program can ask the mentor questions about their problem sets, I highly doubt Duke CS department will allow this.

Came to write this. Homework help services were specifically called out in our course policies as a form of academic dishonesty. Getting outside help on a problem set would get you kicked out of the major. It would take a lot of care to design a tutoring program that was specific to our courses and didn't run afoul of our academic integrity rules.

OP: this is a nice service for universities that allow this sort of thing, but you should be sure you're not running afoul of programs with stricter academic integrity rules (which, AFAIK, includes most top programs).

[soule]

I would like to echo the concerns about academic integrity. For example, at Cornell, it is not permitted to get help from anyone but course staff on assignments in the intro CS class (and many others): https://www.cs.cornell.edu/courses/cs1110/2020sp/policies/cs...

I guess this could still be useful for help with concepts/exam prep, but not sure how much traction that would gain as people tend to be busy with the projects.

[thaumasiotes]

> Most people I know would not want to be a programmer even if they were guaranteed to get A+s in all their college CS classes. It takes a certain type of person to love staring at code on a computer screen 8 hours a day. It's not for everyone.

I had a friend who graduated with a degree in "design" and got a job as a web designer. She'd tell me how the pay was good, but she just couldn't stand sitting at a computer all day.

She quit pretty soon afterward to be a teacher in an extracurricular enrichment program for very young children. The new company didn't even reliably make payroll... but she preferred it.

[nulptr]

Out of curiosity, what software were they using to catch cheating?

Was it MOSS (https://theory.stanford.edu/~aiken/moss/)?

[Der_Einzige]

You know, it's really easy to get around MOSS. You can just run it on your own code and figure out when it gives a result that appears to be "not cheating". That number will depend on how much starter code your assignment involves.

Like seriously, MOSS just filters out the kids who are bad at cheating from the ones who are good at it.

[asselinpaul]

Penn uses MOSS