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It had come up on Pharyngula the other day. Reading the whole piece made for thoroughly depressing reading. Maybe I was boringly honest and studious as a student, but how on FSMs green earth is someone who gets his/her degree that way going to meet the expectations that that raises from them. It does nothing for ones trust in human nature.

I often wondered where some of these 'academic' papers on theology etc, which are so oft quoted as current thinking or espousing the light of christ or latest from University of {fill your own university of choice here} come from.

Now I know, they are written by someone for money and intended to feed the prejudices of the person marking them. Dishonestly submitted nonsense inappropriately, ignorantly or disingenuously pushed as truth by sponges who seem to believe anything written by a christian in an acedemic situation is automatically true.

No wonder this stuff doesn't ever stand up in court.

I know not all, in fact probably only a minority of christians are so gullible, but Sarah Palin and Sheila Dawson get their nonsense from somewhere so it is not an insignificant (in terms of influence) minority and how much of this stuff ends up on christian websites used to bash minorities.

Maybe this is how the bible came about, ghostwriters, but ones paid to write scriptures not holy ones.

Dave, you know, you're full of it.

Do you realise how stupid this makes you look, trying to use this story to attack Sarah Palin?

"Do you realise how stupid this makes you look..."

Breathtaking!

I find it highly amusing, and not a little ironic, that a professional ghost-writer gives an interview but remains anonymous.

I've no fault with the writer, he's found a lucrative market and is exploiting it. I've also got no technical fault with those who use his services, they're showing an admittedly dishonest, but practical and resourceful manner to obtain what they want. In business, this form of plagarism is rife and considered fair game to get ahead, so long as you don't get caught.

As an academic, however, I recoil in horror. I dislike testing as a method of determining proficiency ,any fool can memorise data to reguritate on demand The more in-depth and complex techniques used in longer assignments is a better judge of a students ability to learn, research and comprehend the information. With people doing things like this, though, it leaves the examination as the only method available to determine if a student knows the subject matter, albiet in a strictly controlled and unrealistic environment.

So was it Ok for Matthew and Luke to substantially plagiarise Mark? ;-)

It is funny when anything comes up it seems to be fair sport to bash the old Christians again. I have copied 'not plagiarised' some of the material out of Dante's article below. Theology and Eastern Religion get a mention in the long list but there is no mileage in bashing a postmodern architect.

"I've worked on bachelor's degrees in hospitality, business administration, and accounting. I've written for courses in history, cinema, labor relations, pharmacology, theology, sports management, maritime security, airline services, sustainability, municipal budgeting, marketing, philosophy, ethics, Eastern religion, postmodern architecture, anthropology, literature, and public administration. I've attended three dozen online universities. I've completed 12 graduate theses of 50 pages or more. All for someone else." by Ed Dante 'The Shadow Scholar'.

I have made my own way up the academic ladder and condemn such practices. But I have worked in and with HR and CV's are open to such malpractice as well. The trouble is in these days we are too afraid to sack such people if found out when appointed or even to look for them in case we infringe some of their 'rights'.

Dante seems an appropriate name for this ghostwriter. Some of these folk may get closer to his inferno than they intend.

Yes indeed, Luxie, now we see the violence inherent in the system. It's not plagiarism when you don't try to pass something off as your own work. Natman, I don't have a problem with testing; it's not clear to me that "everyone has won and all shall have prizes" [(c) Lewis Carroll] is a useful way to proceed if we're not going to end up wallowing in a mire of mediocrity. I kinda think postmodernism really does represent something inferior...

Coursework is obviously so open to fraud and yet so essential to test a student's skills that the only way around it is to ensure other means of testing are part of the mix.

If the marks were weighted towards the assignment, but an overall module pass was still conditional on passing both an oral and a written examination, wouldn't that provide the best way of weeding out cheaters whilst retaining the value of coursework?

This is a man who could continue to make a lucrative living on the method he has found of milking the system. Instead he has followed his conscience and has attempted to atone for his ways by making it absolutely clear what it is about the system that makes his scam possible. He's well aware that demand will be supplied whether or not he acts as supplier, so he has done his best to explain in detail the problem inherent in the system structurally.

We need to be aware of this because there seems to be an issue with the way the funding structure operates, and the UK's funding model does seem to be moving closer to that of the USA.

There's also a serious issue raised by many posters of comments after the article who claim to be university level educators, which is lack of face to face time with students. They also claim that failing students that do not merit the aware is severely discouraged by structurally inherent incentive factors. In effect, the award of the qualifications they teach is devalued.

Why not use an option like providing the student with a number of textbooks and related articles and giving them time to produce their 'Answer' from this material under controlled conditions.

This would mean that all the candidates would have the same building bricks and could sort the Frank Lloyd Wrights from the Nissen huts. Additional material from the students own studies would mean extra points.

But maybe it's as my Mum used to say. 'You can't put brains where God put sawdust.'