[infogulch]

The problem with plagiarism isn't best characterized as some sort of power struggle between teachers and students via bullshit assignments.

The purpose of learning to write is to make yourself a formidable communicator. If you can independently analyze a new topic to learn something new and apply the results of those learnings towards a particular goal, you can be amazingly effective in everything you aim for. But if you plagiarize every assignment you rob yourself of your own training of this critically important competency.

Plagiarizing some work doesn't really hurt the work, it hurts you.

[khawkins]

This is under the assumption that you see college is a program of self-betterment and not busy work for receiving a degree that says you can have a middle-class job. It feels like even the universities themselves see it as the latter these days.

[knowuh]

The cynical anti-intellectualism in this thread is bracing.

All part of the zeitgeist I guess.

News is fake. Science is fake. Schools are barriers. Everything is subjective, objective reality is nonexistent.

How do we have productive disagreements going forward?

[RNCTX]

> News is fake. Science is fake. Schools are barriers. Everything is subjective, objective reality is nonexistent. How do we have productive disagreements going forward?

Funny you describe it that way. I'd argue that young people in STEM fields, including IS/CIS/CompSci undergrad programs, think everything can be objective when that clearly is not the case.

You don't need to go to college to press buttons, fill out spreadsheets, or input code until you get the output you seek. You need to go to college to make the subjective decisions, which don't have a clear right/wrong answer.

[SuoDuanDao]

I can't word this in a non-snarky way, but it's a genuine question:

Why do you believe that college can teach making subjective decisions?

[TheOtherHobbes]

Because moral philosophy and epistemology have been a thing for well over 4,000 years, and college could easily teach the basics.

[RNCTX]

This.

The humanities are glossed over at best in public high schools across the United States. I don't know of one that requires a PHIL intro course of students.

College is not vocational training (unless you're a law or medicine student), it's for learning how to think.

[SuoDuanDao]

I'm not sure what you mean by 'teach the basics'. Certainly, college can provide the texts and an environment where other people are interested in the same subjects. If that's all you mean I agree, though it's far from the only institution where that's possible.

The trouble, I think, is that making ethical judgements requires wrestling with ethical conundra oneself, and that is not something a professor with 300 undergrads to teach can provide any useful guidance to the majority of them for. The idea of accurately assessing performance is even more unrealistic. Maybe it's a function of the kind of university I attended, but the vast majority of my fellow students who were taking these 'subjective' courses were simply gaming a rubric in their writing. And this is true even of those who were genuinely interested in the subject matter, they saw it as a price of admission.

Which seems to me like an impediment to actually learning what was traditionally taught on more of an apprenticeship than an industrial model. If your own undergraduate experience was different, I'd be curious what your university did differently.

[derangedHorse]

Do you really think new college students absorb all that they hear in the entry-level classes? You're also operating under the assumption that all professors employed by a college are capable of effectively communicating the topic they're supposed to teach

[dennis_jeeves]

>I can't word this in a non-snarky way, but it's a genuine question:

>Why do you believe that college can teach making subjective decisions?

Lol, most people actually believe that common-sense can be taught to people. I don't.

[SuoDuanDao]

I agree. Developed is one thing, even building a space where it's easier to develop, but teaching? As a guy who's taught for both fun and profit, I don't buy it.

[mikecoles]

Anti-college is not anti-intellectualism. Quite the opposite. Higher education is no longer about education; it's about profit. Pieces of paper are pointless for anything other than wallpaper. Free-range education through meeting and collaborating with others is more beneficial to expanding your knowledge than handing over money to some college. Save those tens of thousands of dollars and years of your life. Spend that time and money being an apprentice, creating your own curriculum, or taking specific training.

[BossingAround]

> Anti-college is not anti-intellectualism. Quite the opposite. Higher education is no longer about education; it's about profit.

In the US, maybe. Do people take ridiculous loans for their degree outside of US? Some loans, sure, but loans that amount to 5-10x their future yearly income? I don't know...

[Junk_Collector]

While there are some truly staggering examples of US college loan debt, the average loan debt at the end of a 4 year degree in the US is $26k or about the price of a new mid range car. For the majority of people, their total college loan debt is below a single year of their first year annual income out of college and certainly not 5-10x.

[1]http://www.collegescholarships.org/loans/average-debt.htm

[Melting_Harps]

> In the US, maybe. Do people take ridiculous loans for their degree outside of US? Some loans, sure, but loans that amount to 5-10x their future yearly income? I don't know...

Yes. In the UK. I had a relationship with someone who specifically learned German in school, and went to Germany to tutor in a cross-education outreach program after she graduated to go scout for Universities she wanted to attend in order to avoid having to take out massive loans like her siblings did back home. Very smart girl.

She and I enrolled into online classes, I had already complete my Bsc but wanted to do this with her; but she felt she was missing on the 'campus life' part of the University experience and went into Pedagogy to the Masters level and now teaches back in the UK.

In a post Brexit World, that is just not possible.

The EU is still pretty favourable in terms of University costs being hidden and obfuscated via VAT for the students, but many Industries within it's local economy (PIIGS, Romania, Hungary, Slovenia in the Eurozone, and just about most of the periphery member nations) cannot provide adequate jobs let alone a career to its graduates within their sectors so they have to go to Germany, UK, Holland and as things have gotten worse France to a much lesser degree than when I was there.

The ideal being landing a job in the US or China where they can make obscene amounts of money in certain fields like Tech or Medicine with little to no debt, and subsidized advance degrees. Which still opens it up to the work visa lottery, and uprooting your life during some the most critical years of your entire Life (late 20s to early 30s) in the hopes it pans out.

The best thing that can happen is to disrupt it entirely and level the playing field and re-structure it in such a way that its both affordable and accessible to all motivated to want to go in and meet its requirements. And incentivize them to stay in their home towns a build a solid community and tie it to the needs of its actual needed labor force: hopefully doing away with the notion of studying Civil Engineering for Oil Rig drilling if you're from Iceland kind of thing. As it makes no sense, and doesn't reflect the value system or the job prospects of your community let alone the job prospects of a Nation that is entirely dependent on renewable geo-thermal.

How exactly the Lab portion of STEM gets solved is still a mystery.

I propose the building auxiliary wet-labs in Libraries within their communities. The net benefit here being that students should be required to teach children and adults of their community the topic or subject they are studying as a graded portion of their grade for the privilege of having such a model and build community in the process. Or perhaps that should be the only real on-campus (at both Universities and Community Colleges) component to what is an otherwise entirely Online system?

Just look at this example, which having to attend my midterm and practicals during one of the largest fires in San Diego History (I was literately trapped in my car on my way back home to OC for 7 hours after they closed campus when we were sitting down for the exam as the classroom filled with smoke) and during my finals during the H1N1 swine flu pandemic, I can understand this from both sides:

https://ktla.com/news/local-news/ucla-professor-suspended-af...

That hot button issue could be entirely mitigated, whether you're pro or against the BLM protests is irrelevant. On just a practical and logistical matter you could just overcome this with the current technology that we have and avoid the certain backlash to the professor, department because of it from the irate student body and opportunistic Media.

I saw a rant from a UCLA professor pretty much lining out how he, and his entire profession have not seen a single decrease in pay since he left University in the late 80s as a TA and saw how the CSU/UC extortion system was being assembled in what was once the envy of the entire US' university system--which followed the EU's model pretty well, and was low to no cost if you were local, but had the ability to employ its graduates as the California Economy could support it. Which was a net benefit that significantly contributed to CA becoming the 8th largest economy in the World.

I can't seem to find it and really wish I had saved it as the very employees in the system are to the point where they know it went too far. And are perhaps even afraid of what may happen at what an angry mob can do these days.

[quacked]

I agree with you, but the primary issue is signalling via degrees. For the elite non-college educated who already have a working portfolio of projects to reference, landing a "white-collar" job may be a possibility. For the rest of them, a non-degree holder, even if objectively competitive with a degree-holder, will be immediately discounted by a hiring manager who's looking at 250 resumes.

[SuoDuanDao]

Productive disagreement? I think to begin, we need to vet people we might have disagreements with. I don't think productive dialogue can be commodditized. Maybe it can after the fact via podcasts etc, but dialogues themselves are, I think, inherently analogue and highly personal. I think, given the realities of the attention economy, that we need to be much more selective about whom we let in to a conversation that might change our own mind. And this needs to be on a case-by-case basis, with everyone setting and updating their own standards on whom they'll let into dialogue.

I think people like the one you're responding to would agree and increasingly think that association with institutions of higher learning send a strong signal to avoid dialogue. It doesn't necessarily look like anti-intellectualism to me, any more than filtering out people who didn't graduate high school is necessarily elitism. I could see myself rationalizing either, depending on the kind of conversation I wanted to have.

[dart600]

Could you please define anti intellectualism by your standards? To me, anti intellectual notions would be just if the initial intentions of a discussion were based on a very rich topic and were dissolved in some manner. I beg a brief and graceful peer review for the poor submissions that likely seek solace in the isolation of a virus infected planet.

And at end. In my intention to post, I was solely being altruistic, informing whomever reading that if they were to read this article and consider getting a degree from U of the P that they should consider the risk. Just a gesture. However, I think my writing style might have been misunderstood as some semblance of pseudo intellectual attempt or such. Do know, for the record,that as the 1st to reply to the post, my intention was to inform.

But I am intrigued and inspired. How about we both try to post an article that invites our versions of intellectualism! Ready set go.

[zo1]

>"How do we have productive disagreements going forward?"

We are barely having any of those right now in the greater society. As long as we can't argue facts, objective-reality and do so without feelings, we'll continue descending into anarchy and divisiveness.

[tripzilch]

US is "the greater society" now??

[zo1]

I'm not from or residing in the US. My comment was aimed as commentary on what I can see happening globally.

[kerkeslager]

Your post lacks nuance.

Some news is fake, some isn't.

Some science is fake, some isn't.

Schools are barriers, but for many elements of a school, the fact that it's a barrier is a good thing--we don't want ignorant people performing in roles that where knowledge is required. The problem is that many elements of schools are barriers which are poor at achieving their purpose, or are directly counterproductive to their purpose.

> How do we have productive disagreements going forward?

That's a complicated question, but oversimplifying the opinions of people we disagree with and then labeling it ("cynical anti-intellectualism") isn't the answer.

[antepodius]

Or: Objective reality might exist, but it's not necessarily present in the universities, which are mostly there as an IQ test by proxy with a filter for the most lazy, with some social indoctrination thrown in. Any science or truth exists only at the whims of the social order of the day.

[zarathustreal]

>Any science or truth exists only at the whims of the social order of the day.

This is not objectively true but I understand what you're trying to say. I'm sad to hear that your experience of science and truth has been only that which society has given you, or at the least that you feel that others are only experiencing it in that way

[antepodius]

Sorry, I should have worded that more clearly: Only that science or truth that is doesn't contravene the current social order is allowed air, allowed to be talked about without reprisal and shunning. The degree to which this is true is a canary for how totalitarian and neurotic your micro-society is. The micro-society of universities generally seems to be becoming more, rather than less, rabid and paranoid.

A lot of it is like Bostrom's idea of the decentralized electroshock dystopia: even though a significant proportion of people are witches, everyone's afraid of reprisal for not actively hunting witches, so the witches-in-hiding hunt their own when they're unmasked.

But this is the way of things; this wave will pass, eventually, as well. And like the soviet scientists who kept their heads down and mouthed the party line, the secret iconoclasts will survive till the current order is replaced by the next, with its own peculiar tabboos.

[zepto]

This is a crucial argument. Do you have a link to something that supports your statement that “this is not objectively true”? I think it would help a lot in these debates.

[tripzilch]

Yeah it's called "The Barstool Experiment". Look it up :-)

The short summary is: Two people sitting in a bar, discussing how there is no objective truth, or that "science or truth exists only at the whims of the social order" and stuff like that, all day long. And then a third person comes along and smashes their brains with a barstool. In some variations, the first two people are a scientist and a priest. But the third person is just some dude with a barstool.

[AnimalMuppet]

But if you can't do the middle-class job because you can't write, the piece of paper will only get you so far. It may get you an entry-level job, but you probably won't get much in the way of promotions. So even from that perspective, plagiarism isn't helpful.

[BeetleB]

> But if you can't do the middle-class job because you can't write, the piece of paper will only get you so far. It may get you an entry-level job, but you probably won't get much in the way of promotions. So even from that perspective, plagiarism isn't helpful.

Where do these mythical jobs exist where being able to write well is a requirement for career growth? Certainly not at engineering companies.

I wish what you said were true, but in my experience, "being able to write and communicate well is critical in the workplace" is one of the top lies taught to me when I was at university. We had to take a regular writing class, and a technical writing class to graduate with an engineering degree. And when I get to industry, I see no signs of people practicing what they're taught, and it doesn't hold anyone back.

Edit: I should say my experience is more about writing than communicating as a whole. People do need to be good speakers/presenters. But writing? Not really.

[brobdingnagians]

Yes, writing is important. I have coworkers who struggle at writing, and it takes mental overhead to try to understand them. It hurts their ability to communicate clearly, think clearly, and to be taken seriously. I have clients who struggle to write well; I was just barely looking at a legally binding document that is incomprehensible in places and would have serious repercussions on those using it. That is bad. Society is better when we are truly educated to think and to communicate. We can be enriched by each other when we understand each other. Writing coherently helps us think coherently. That improves our lives more than a degree certificate ever will.

[azinman2]

Writing and communication skills are absolutely necessary for career growth. The power of persuasion is directly linked to the ability to communicate your ideas well.

[usrusr]

Careers can be grown in many ways. In terms of career advancement, good writing will be outperformed by ruthless opportunism nine out of ten times. Cheating in education is identifying a metric and optimizing for that instead of the quality themetric is intended to measure and that strategy won't stop being effective upon getting a degree. Implication: no, "they are only hurting themselves" isn't a valid excuse.

[BeetleB]

> Writing and communication skills are absolutely necessary for career growth. The power of persuasion is directly linked to the ability to communicate your ideas well.

I've updated my original comment to reflect that I was referring to writing and not general communications in general (although I wrote it more broadly).

I've seen people really value presentation skills and PPT. Persuasion on 1:1 and via presentations is definitely valued.

But via writing? No. They're atrocious when writing emails. And they rarely write docs/briefs. If they do the latter, it's really meant to be a teaser to get someone interested, and then that person will go talk 1:1 to get the details or ask for a presentation.

My experience at work: Writing anything longer than 1-2 pages is a good way to ensure no one will read it. And again, if I have a good enough "lead", what will happen is the senior person will read the lead, stop reading, and schedule something to talk to me in person so he can understand in detail. At some level, I understand why he would do that - it can be an interactive conversation where he can interrupt, ask for clarification, etc. Whereas if he read the thing, he would have to write up a response, or even worse, make notes to ask me the next time he sees me.

I almost never get anything as well written as a typical HN comment. Even (internal) documentation/manuals/Wikis are poorly written.

[novok]

At large tech co that pays well, writing is very important for career progression:

1. You often have to write design docs to communicate what you are making and gather feedback. These documents if badly written won't be as well received.

2. At many companies, you have a million things to work on, so in a way, you get to choose who you work with at some level. If someone communicates badly to the point of annoyance, it will take something special for you to decide to work with them or not.

3. To convince execs and managers to approve your project ideas, you often have to write a document explaining your idea. If it's badly written, the exec isn't going to be as interested in it.

4. To get fame as an engineer, you often should write compelling blog articles. Badly written blogs tend not to be read.

5. Good docs make popular libraries, popular libraries get attention.

Which leads to:

6. Promotion is often done by a committee of people who don't know your work, and all they are going to do is review what you wrote. And promo is often based on leadership of projects. And how do you become the leader of projects? You write compelling documents.

Bad writing is not a good sign. It's like saying, at my company, we don't write tests and we don't have alerting & monitoring on our servers.

[cosmodisk]

I work for a small(about 50) company. The ability to write well is absolutely huge.I've seen people being refused salary increases(indirectly),not given more important tasks,and simply struggle on daily basis when they can't put in writing what they need.I wouldn't be able to count how many times I had calls from partner level supplies telling me they can't understand what the email they received from my colleague means. It's so bad sometimes I'm honestly thinking of introducing writing test for the next hires.

[rockinghigh]

I’ve seen many engineers stuck in their careers in part because their writing skills were lacking. Articulating your ideas in a written form is a very effective way to influence others and share your vision. It shows others how you approach a problem and what you value.

[mavhc]

Now imagine how bad it would be if we let in the people who are worse at writing than the current set of people.

[chrisweekly]

"longer than 1-2 pages"

^ not to be confused with strong writing skills!

Brevity is crucial. Learning to compress ideas, eg limiting emails to 5 clear sentences, is part of this rare and important skill. Sorry you haven't (yet?) experienced a work env where there's good writing. Such places do exist!

[jimmaswell]

> "being able to write and communicate well is critical in the workplace" is one of the top lies taught to me when I was at university

Definitely. Communication full of casual txtspeak and/or broken English all over. I suspected my first job's recruitment emails to possibly be some kind of scam at first because they were made in 3 different fonts in the same email with random words capitalized or colored various colors for emphasis, of course full of broken English - and I'm not talking about just terms like "do the needful" which are valid Indian English, that's fine, but even evaluating as that language so much of the communication is just terrible and nobody seems to care. I guess it works out fine and ultimately doesn't matter much but it still feels unprofessional.

[chrisweekly]

I strongly disagree.

Communication skills -- especially in writing -- are increasingly important, rare, and valuable.

I've been doing software-related work for a living since 1998. The trend toward remote and async collab -- which has only ever increased in that 22-year span -- strengthens my conviction.

[jonfw]

You are seriously limited in your ability to move past being an individual contributor if you aren't able to write well. Especially in this industry where remote work, even across time zones, is so common.

I see some really brilliant problem solvers in my company, for instance, that are definitely being held back by their inability to communicate well. Communication allows you to scale your impact several times over.

[nopinsight]

Which field(s) of engineering do you talk about? What are the highest level(s) of promotion the persons who don't write well reach and continue to work in?

I would think that writing well is at least a requirement for promotion into a technical leadership role (above senior individual contributors).

By writing well, I don't mean in the style of journalists or novelists. Rather, writing clearly and concisely to effectively convey one's points and reasoning should be very valuable in engineering.

[BeetleB]

> Which field(s) of engineering do you talk about? What are the highest level(s) of promotion the persons who don't write well reach and continue to work in?

Electrical, computer, and SW.

I'm not saying communicating well is not needed. I'm saying writing well is not needed. What I've seen: A good presentation (including PPT skills) is much more valued than writing. Decisions are usually made because of them, not because someone wrote a good brief outlining positives/negatives. Emails longer than a few lines tend not to be read, so people don't focus on it. Documents are usually not read by many except those beneath them, etc. I almost never see a senior management write anything of substance unless it is required by Legal/HR - they'll always get an underling to write them (and no, writing them is not how underlings become senior management).

I'm not saying I like the state of affairs, but it is how I've seen it.

[jabits]

You must be joking, or else work with very low caliber people. I don’t consider people for positions who cannot write well, and certainly know that most successful people do write well. Really, can you take a poorly written engineering spec or RFP seriously?

Just in case you are serious, counterpoint for others who may not know, all forms of communication are very important to succeed and move up.

[jimmaswell]

I've gotten lots of emails from bosses and bosses' bosses like "i semt the file,pls confirm." Few seem to care about writing well in the workplace. With psychological things like how talking like someone makes them like you more, I wouldn't be surprised if "proper" writing was a hinderance to career advancement in such a scenario.

[blacksmith_tb]

That may not be a counter-argument, it's quite possible that upper-level management doesn't feel the need to impress 'the little people', and only sweats over documents that will be read by their peers.

[TedDoesntTalk]

I can only believe you are trolling.

[jerry1979]

You write well. Maybe you have a blind spot because of that.

[brooklyn_ashey]

Wait...does anybody care about writing skills anymore? ——outside—or even inside—journalism? I wish they did. Writing seems to be treated like a 20th century skill of the uber-affluent layabout these days. I jump for joy when I stumble upon some great writing on the internet.

[bitexploder]

Yes. Try consulting. Information security consulting to be precise our work product is a written report. We have to communicate nuanced and complex topics to a variety of audiences. Writing well, even technical writing, is hard and it’s not as obvious as code when it is not quite right. We care deeply about it. Writing clean proposals, white papers, blog posts etc. It all matters to us. Sure your average coding job doesn’t require it, but plenty of work does. And I do believe having communication skills at a high level in a written form is a competitive advantage. It’s hard to see, but in the long run people who can eloquently write their ideas have an advantage on the less articulate.

[glenstein]

The number of people in this thread breezily dismissing the value of effective writing is taking my breath away. I don't think these confident declarations we're getting in this thread paint a remotely accurate portrayal of skills that actually help career advancement. I think everyone's kind of playing a game where it's treated as a trick question and they're looking to emphasize the exceptions as much as possible.

Any sort of work, in say, nonprofits, or public relations, or marketing, or consulting, or any institution where you're at a level of management where your job is to present plans and preside over their progress while being accountable to oversight, and these are examples of the top of my head where I have at least some sort of familiarity, are places where strong writing is an asset. And I'm sure I'm just pointing to a small slice that I know from my own experience. These aren't special exceptions. These are the norm. The counterexamples make me wonder what, if any, actual career experience people are actually drawing from to claim otherwise, or whether they have the perspective to understand how representative those counter-examples actually are.

[brooklyn_ashey]

Throughout grad school, I worked as a writing tutor to support my humanities habit. Each new class of high school seniors was less skilled —and even less interested— in writing than the last. These were kids with 3.9 GPAs who went to Dalton, Horace Mann, Brearly, Choate and similar. I think great writing is a valuable life skill. I wish I could see more real-life evidence that employers care about it in the real world. (hiring and advancement)

[renewiltord]

To be honest, I arrived at university fully capable of my first job out. I think most people do. The selection process has you write essays and do math and all that shit.

Work is hard, but like most things you learn best doing the thing. Not saying SICP was shit. Just that I could have done that in high school and accelerated my time to money (and through it, contentment).

Maybe I'll let my kids do something like that if they feel the mildest desire to.

[derwiki]

Kudos to you— having started coding QBasic in fifth grade, I definitely needed 3-4 years of undergrad to be ready for my first professional SWE job.

[renewiltord]

That's really funny. We first did Logo and then BASIC at that age (~10 years). Good times, eh? Back in the day? Everything was new and fresh.

[derwiki]

I was _thrilled_ that I could program with something already on my PC. This was before the internet, and I was under the impression a C compiler was several hundred dollars that we couldn’t afford. Eventually, I even wrote “production” QBasic: my boss at the ISP would manually move spam to a spam folder in Thunderbird, export it periodically and kick it over to tech support. We used to manually look at IPs and enter them into the Cisco blocklist, until I wrote a super janky QBasic script to extracts IPs.

Two years later, I learned about regular expressions.

[bryanrasmussen]

If you have the skills to get the degree with 8 hours of work per day or to get the degree with 2 hours of work per day, getting the degree with the 2 hours of work does not mean you will not be able to do the job which will require you to do the 8 hours of work when you graduate.

[WJW]

There seems to be a sizable group where any job (especially an entry-level middle class job with the associated health insurance benefits and salary) would be a massive step up in income and social status. Cheating on a test to escape a life of poverty in the slums is not much of a dilemma IMO.

[imtringued]

It's actually the opposite. First generation migrants try their best because they know what happens if they fail. Cheating is easier if you can bribe authorities.

[Broken_Hippo]

Most of the jobs don't require you to be able to write well at all - especially not university level writing. Really, all most folks need is the ability to communicate effectively in person or over email. You might - just might - be required to write a letter. Of course, these skills are ones that a store manager at any random retail or dining establishment needs too, and some of these 'middle class' jobs require nothing much at all (if it is a factory that pays well enough).

Besides, plagiarism isn't really about writing. You can lump it into two categories: Cheating, which isn't most folks' intention, and more importantly, giving someone credit for an idea. This last one is something folks need to do in some professions. Don't take an employee's idea and call it your own, same for something your boss has you pass along. Don't pretend something is your own idea when it was implemented at a job you had years ago. This version of plagiarism is vastly more important than writing skills (which can be taught without needing to address plagiarism).

[tripzilch]

> This is under the assumption that you see college is a program of self-betterment and not busy work for receiving a degree that says you can have a middle-class job.

That's not really up for discussion though.

The degree itself will become utterly meaningless extremely quickly if we would actually generally accept that kind of reasoning.

The whole reason the degree is worth something is because it's perceived as a token of you having done the work and self-betterment etc.

It's not an empty token that allows you to have a middle class job. In practice it might be, but as soon as you openly accept that is just what it is, and only what it is, then you only get cheaters.

[nine_k]

To have a middle-class job, you need knowledge, not a degree. (Disclaimer: my son does not have a degree but has a pretty demanding middle-class engineering job.)

If you spend time in a university to just get a diploma and maybe some connections, you likely are wasting your time and significant money (remember, a student loan cannot be got rid of by a bankruptcy).

[leereeves]

Even if you only care about obtaining the degree, rampant plagarism also diminishes the value of that degree.

[a-nikolaev]

I think, plagiarism also harms the character. If instead of doing things right and put effort, you cheat, eventually you learn that doing things right does not worth it. And then it becomes a personal trait, so to speak.

[Melting_Harps]

> I think, plagiarism also harms the character. If instead of doing things right and put effort, you cheat, eventually you learn that doing things right does not worth it. And then it becomes a personal trait, so to speak.

Welcome to the underlying systemic problem with some of Society's more critical institutions.

Fraud and corruption have become institutionalized, and lying and cheating are just the name of the game.

Explain to me how Banks got away with what they have if not fir this very root issue; blow up the economy because of reckless, risky investments: Bonus, bailouts, and golden parachutes for all.

Default on your student loans, utility bill or car payment? We'll ruin your credit for all of your miserable existence, while you slave away anyway because the former cannot be expunged.

I'm so glad I borrowed from family and friends instead of banks or the State. It was hard paying them back, but if I had to choose a creditor of last resort I think I made the right choice.

[VLM]

Not necessarily hurt you, but doesn't help as much as it could.

From talking to people further along the plagiarism spectrum than myself, they see it as developing good taste or almost coaching.

Yeah yeah in a writing class its hard to justify not learning to write. But in any other class...

Lets hypothetically say we're in a computer science class and our assignment is to write an essay on the supremacy of the C++ language. There's all these English department goals of becoming a better writer that would be met by my pitiful attempt to glorify polymorphism. But the C++ goal of learning to be a better C++ programmer would be best met by extensive reading and research to find the best Stroustrup quote. If I were involved in the academic scene of converting papers into salary via cooperation with other researchers, I need to quote my coworkers accurately to share the revenue appropriately. However what if I don't have the goal of playing that game? In a learning environment in casual verbal conversation I might tell my C++ instructor that C++ main() returns an int. Yet if I write that down as I just did, I'm committing the academic sin of plagiarism by not properly footnoting Stroustrup, that's a direct quote from him. But I'm not trying to play the academic game, I'm trying to learn to program, and develop good taste by copying the right people. It seems a little unfair to grade students based on playing a different game than they signed up for. Even if the institutional goal is to produce little academics, in practice almost none of the kids will become academics.

That's a very authoritarian example of copying a guy at the top; but it also applies to lower level copying.

They're not necessarily wrong or self destructive, just kids on a different path with different priorities.

[cutemonster]

I was going to write sth similar -- that if a writing assignment seems pointless from a student's point of view, and s/he thinks the study time is better spent in other ways, maybe coding a software program instead,

Then to some extent I could sympathize with those who plagiarize. ... If it's to save time for something more on topic they think.

But if it's a writing class, then, no! Or writing about history or society etc

[themodelplumber]

> Power struggle between teachers and students via...

Uh, did I say that, or were you intuiting? Not exactly a learner's approach :D

> Plagiarizing some work doesn't really hurt the work, it hurts you.

Except when it benefits you? This is the subjective perception I was talking about. That their mindset differs does not instantly make them wrong, especially when you can throw a dime out the window and hit an educated professional who falls short of the best (heaven forbid the "perfect") ethical standard.

Ethics is, and should be, hard. If you put words into my mouth, is your position ethical? This stuff requires the ability to stick around, listen, learn, and stay in the game, moreso if you plan to claim the high ground.

[infogulch]

This isn't a subjective ethics problem. It's a competence problem. If you can't formulate your own thoughts into a coherent statement (the purpose of learning to write) then you'll be useless to anyone that needs new coherent arguments.

[themodelplumber]

That's a bit of an overreach, isn't it, calling my writing incoherent and incompetent? (Edit: Parent clarified that "you" is meant to mean a hypothetical student, not me.) If more information is needed, as was the case here, we can ask questions. That's got nothing to do with author competence. It's not an essay contest. And why assume we know it all, filling in the gaps like that? In a discussion of ethics, this is a qualitative issue to say the least.

The concept of competence as you describe it is also very much a vague, subjective concern out of which you've just attempted to carve a covert competence contract. This leaves your blind spot unguarded because you are unknowingly making the discussion focus on you and your own competence level.

And this is a big part of why "hyper ethical" subjective ethics people struggle--they assume their view is right and don't ask questions of others.

[infogulch]

I haven't said anything about your writing at all. Maybe it wasn't clear enough that I meant "you" as in "someone" or "one". I'm sorry it was possible to misunderstand my general statement as a personal attack.

This doesn't have to do with me either -- the market will determine whether any one person is valuable enough to employ (or promote). My only claims are that being able to write makes one more valuable, and that plagiarizing assignments at school fails to teach one to write.

[themodelplumber]

Ah, I see what you mean, that it was not meant to refer to my level of competence. :) I did indeed read the "you" wrong. Thank you for the clarification.

[jariel]

His statement was very matter of fact.

If students don't bother to do the work, they won't develop any competence in the discipline.

It would be like sending someone for Scala training, only to have them skip all of the work, buy the answers to the quiz, get the accreditation.

University is about much more than 'skill acquisition' but there is a lot of that. Cheating is almost universally pointless.

[zepto]

‘Cheating is almost universally pointless’

Except that it clearly isn’t. There are all kinds of people in positions of power who are clearly incompetent in many of the skills we would want them to be expert in.

Often cheating enabled them to pass the gatekeepers and attain their position.

[themodelplumber]

(Edit: Thanks for the clarification on the other comment--I had read the "you" wrong)

Sure, that example absolutely works. One reason why you wouldn't cheat is that you know that a specific outcome you want requires something of you that you must learn. I found it striking just how rare this was, though. We can fault students for not having made up their minds, but I found that many of them are just really open to new directions, and this can help to enable part of the plagiarism equation, but it's also something of a gift...

Anyway, talking to my students I discovered that the discipline is really often completely up in the air. So while the rhetorical / imaginary student's path for the purposes of argument might be be "study math -> work in applied math," quite often it's "study phil -> work in I don't know what" or similar.

The students who plagiarize with this mindset are really quite something. It's nuanced--they're smart about it, leaving no final question on which points against them can rest. For example, the student submits a first prospective paper in which they quote-paste for pages on end and then plagiarize not by direct-copy, but by reading and then re-hashing someone else's conclusion from a book or another paper, and they get a C+. Well, if a B- is all they need in the class, they are good to go. Then they take a reactive / tactical stance and only change this approach in the future if they absolutely have to.

This pattern happens over and over. If you attempt to pin the student down on qualitative issues, they have a number of tools to use here. You have to be ready for extreme negotiation. They _may not be able_ to learn about quality, ethics, etc. Shocking sometimes but it's a struggle for many. One of the most common negotiation techniques is, "I just...I don't understand. I'm really not that smart" and then they start crying or leave the room in a rage. This can instantly shut down a professor with average or greater levels of sympathy. The student converted the negotiating professor's original value proposition into a risky interpersonal issue. If further negotiations occur, they will find ways to illustrate why things are unfair to them. What is the prof going to do about that? Do they even have time for it at all?

Then you can go back to students who are in the "study math -> work in applied math" group. You look outside of the math classes and you can see the same pattern. They know wasted effort when they see it, or think they do. And again--some, not all. Savvy employers also weed out some of these people but then other employers hire them because they desire tactical cleverness in their organization, and they recognize it when they see it. Maybe it's how they got the boss job in the first place.

[austincheney]

It’s not an overreach. The competence is a product of originality and independence.

> And this is a big part of why "hyper ethical" subjective ethics people struggle--they assume their view is right and don't ask questions of others.

That is itself quite the assumption.

[themodelplumber]

Not an assumption at all. That's from my subjective past experience, from having conducted qualitative research experiences in this area as I interviewed and taught students. I shared that experience in my original reply and would love for anyone else to do the same, referring us to their past experiences even anecdotally, rather than forecasting woe via subjective intuition.

[austincheney]

My real world experience has taught me many developers cannot write (code or prose) and would rather jump in front of a bus than write their own original code. The next time I am tasked with candidate selection I will use an essay assignment as the first round of filtering.

[renewiltord]

> Uh, did I say that, or were you intuiting?

What is it with this everywhere on HN these days where people assume every response someone makes is a refutation? It's a conversation, dude. People will take it places. Sometimes people will build on ideas you mention. Other times people will take an incident and draw their own conclusions. Other times people will draw on a similar incident or talk about a related concept.

I'll accept my off-topic downvotes since that is fair but this is so frustrating.

[themodelplumber]

Hmm, I think it's only fair that we zoom in a bit from "everyone on HN complaints" to the details in question. Otherwise it makes it appear that you want to avoid discussing details in question which directly flow into the qualitative nature of this discussion.

I just re-read what you wrote. If you're saying your response was not a refutation, given that you wrote "is not best characterized as," I think it's pretty clear as to why that could be misunderstood, to say the least. It seems clear to me that you were replying in direct disagreement and also projecting words I never said right into your reasoning. And further, it now seems as if you're claiming that I'm being assumptive. This is just compounding, not helping.

I think specifics are important here because it's unfortunately common for people to attempt to sweep pesky details under their subjective-ethical rug in the name of [hand wave]. Since this is an ethics discussion some due concern to communicating ethically seems reasonable to expect. If that's frustrating, maybe you can at least see the frustration on both sides.

[andrewxdiamond]

I wonder if a similar principle is at play when people throw links at each other in place of a debate

[StupidPeople]

> Plagiarizing some work doesn't really hurt the work, it hurts you

Except learning isn't really the reason most go. It's to get a well paid job at the end of it.

[andykx]

I returned to college after 10 years in the insurance industry. I’ve always viewed programming as a hobby, but decided to take the leap and pursue a career that I might actually enjoy.

Anyway, I notice a lot of younger students have this attitude and it frankly causes them to produce really crappy work. As long as they pass the class, they don’t really care to absorb the material.

I can’t help but wonder what kind of job they’re hoping to get when they leave school. What will happen when they get a technical interview? I can’t imagine them doing anything beyond answering phones at a company’s IT Help Desk.

I dunno. I listen to every word the professors say as if they’re telling me the secret to eternal life while half the class is dozing off.

[freeone3000]

The one class I took in college that was relevant to my job, at all, was the AI course on structured vector machines, which were irrelevant after two years. For most programs, correctness is a nice-to-have, forget speed or responsiveness or data structure choice.. and in production code, non-technical and constant factors override theoretical solutions. University computer science courses, on the whole, are quickly obsolete or obsolete to begin with, incompatible with software development as it's practiced, and are best reviewed in the week before seeking a new job to score well on leetcode. The best skills you're going to learn are the metacognition you're picking up in university, the ability to learn new languages and adapt to new environments and solve new problems, not anything that's actually taught.

[AnIdiotOnTheNet]

> What will happen when they get a technical interview? I can’t imagine them doing anything beyond answering phones at a company’s IT Help Desk.

My experience says you'd be very surprised. As in most fields, networking, charisma, and ability to bullshit play a substantial role in IT hiring.

[TedDoesntTalk]

> I listen to every word the professors say as if they’re telling me the secret to eternal life while half the class is dozing off.

This is absolutely brilliant.

[austincheney]

As a software developer my education has nothing to do with a job or my salary.

[tripzilch]

> > Plagiarizing some work doesn't really hurt the work, it hurts you

> Except learning isn't really the reason most go. It's to get a well paid job at the end of it.

There's no contradiction here.

[throwgeorge]

>Plagiarizing some work doesn't really hurt the work, it hurts you.

and a job well done is its own reward right? i think it's very pretentious to say that to a person who's attending school in order to improve their lot in life (because credentials count for so much); that what's more important than the credential is some abstract notion of improvement. you might as well cast it in terms of sin and salvation.

[coffeecat]

But isn't this abstract notion of improvement supposed to be the entire point of education? It feels to me like education's purpose is undermined by its role as a prerequisite for a middle-class career. "When a measure becomes a target, it ceases to be a good measure."

[themodelplumber]

Abstract or not, it's completely qualitative / subjective. Easy to argue. Very easy. Try it: Pick a specific, abstract notion, name the institution, and talk to the students.

[infogulch]

> and a job well done is its own reward right?

Sure, if the life you want is to be at a desk for 8 hours a day regurgitating your superior's existing biases back at them, go ahead. I find employers much prefer someone that can attack a real problem and think critically about potential solutions from multiple levels of analysis. If all you're good at is chewing someone else's cud and spitting it out with a slightly different word order then you're useless to people that actually want to solve problems.

And, sorry to say, credentials are counting for less and less every year. If employers have to take a year to train you to think critically, then what use does a credential serve as a filter? I wonder why that's happening...

[HenryBemis]

(for work) I have both "plaigiarised" a policy that I found on the internet, AND written one using as source the ToC of 2-3 other policies, but did the fill-ups all by myself. I learned nothing from copy&paste, I gained plenty from typing it up from scratch myself (even added points that the ToC's were missing).

The clients got the same value (they wanted a v1 policy, and they got one). I became better by doing the work, so next time I had a discussion on the matter I felt that I controlled the discussion instead of pitching in.

Faking it till you make it has the risk that you fake it forever and you become the paradigm of the Peter Principle.

Walking the walk takes more time but always benefits in the long run.

I have met plenty of people though that take the risk to never grow/evolve and stay in their comfort zone because they just want the base salary to fund their hobbies and they get no sense of accomplishment through their work (for many reasons)(I am not getting into this discussion).

Edit: Ps: I now work like this (when asked to develop a policy for a new client): spend some time thinking of key points (technology changes fast enough in some areas), drop a couple of examples for each bullet point, and then "plagiarise" from previously made work. This way I have prepared part of the downstream Procedures. You would think that a Policy is high (enough) level so it shouldn't need frequent changes, but different clients want different things.

[tripzilch]

> a person who's attending school in order to improve their lot in life (because credentials count for so much)

If every person at the school had this reasoning, the credentials wouldn't count for anything.

The credentials only count for something if enough of the people graduating are actually fulfilling this promise of self improvement in the subject of their studies.

The cheaters are literally freeloading off the prestige of the credentials produced by the people who do put in the effort. If that group of people did not exist, the credentials would be useless to the cheaters as well.

[airstrike]

> in order to improve their lot in life (because credentials count for so much);

Those credentials only matter insofar as they describe the likely caliber of the alumni that come from that particular school. Being a terrible student isn't going to help the value of your degree a whole lot...

[xelxebar]

> Plagiarizing some work doesn't really hurt the work, it hurts you.

Funny enough, this idea is almost certainly one you are plagairising. Perhaps you could find nuance, depth, and understanding by turning those words on themself?

Somehow I feel like most of the debate here centers on these words:

> The purpose of <foo> is <bar>.

That little word "the" there at the beginning seems a bit myopic to me. I mean, clearly, something like writing functions in more ways than one. Here are some other potential purposes of writing, off the top of my head:

* Deconstruct your personal ontology,

* Intrinsic artistic value,

* Emotional expression,

* Elucidation of unconscious grammatical habits,

* Social signaling.

Any of those are perfectly functional operations of the writing act, and a few of them actually benefit by plagiarising (Identifying these is left as an exercise for the reader). Of course, saying that "university should allow students to operate under any possible goal framework" is a different matter, but hopefully that at least points toward one way of thinking with more nuance about plagiarism.