Sean Reiser

So, today while looking through the computer gigs section of craigslist I cam across this post.

i need someone to write me a thesis paper for high school about 5 pages with a bibliography, il send you more info if you are interested im willing to pay 150 for anyone who does this for me thnk you

Where I can appreciate the ingenuity and can see how this can helps prepare someone for outsourcing in a global economy I found it surprising. I realize that a number of "rent-a-coder" type sites have a homework section as well.

I'm not naive enough to believe that this is a new problem. Students have been cheating on their homework for as long as teachers have been assigning it. It's a well known fact that Xenophon often copied Plato's math homework. In the past this was always done with quiet whispers, now it's announced on the internet.

Today, this seems to have changed. This post isn't the first request for homework I've seen, just the most brazen. A quick search for "homework" on rent-a-coder shows over 1000 projects outstanding, and as there are many similar sites on the web, one assumes that each of them has about as many homework projects outstanding. A young friend who's in college has told me that this is the only way for a student to meet all his homework requirements in light of his other obligations.

As a businessman I have paid someone else to do work on more then one occasion. There is a difference here, homework is there to benefit you, when I outsource work and take something off the top everybody wins.

So, what in society has changed? Is it the perceived anonymity of the internet or do we just not care?