Tuesday, November 16, 2010

What Type of College Education is This?

Recently, I’ve been doing some freelance writing for some online companies. This has grown out of the need for us to re-evaluate the way we are earning money, since my wife’s teaching contract didn’t get renewed.

So far, the freelancing I’ve been doing has been writing informative copy for business web sites. I work, as one of many writers, through an online company which seeks out and receives orders from clients, then posts them for the writers to complete. Writers who work with the company have the option of selecting and writing on any of the posted jobs that they are qualified for. All in all, it’s a pretty good system, and the little bit of writing that I have done for them has been very profitable.

I say “little bit of writing” because there hasn’t been enough work to really make much of a difference in our overall income. So, I got hunting around on the Internet for other similar companies to write for. All of them have an application process, and expect the writer to write something for evaluation.

Just the other day, I completed this process for a company that I had never heard of before. Their online application process was a little more complicated than others I had tried, but as they said that it was “educational writing” I wasn’t overly surprised.

Well, lo and behold they approved me as one of their writers. At first, I thought it would be much more interesting writing than the things that I had written for companies web sites. But once I looked at it, I ran head on into a real ethical dilemma (at least for a whole 30 seconds).

Every writing job I was able to find on this web site was posted by a student trying to get someone to write their homework assignments, term papers, essays, and even theses for them. That wasn’t exactly what I had expected to find; I had been expecting to see jobs posted by the professors and institutions, needing work written for them.
How can these people think that they are doing the right thing, to have someone else do their homework, so that they can get their degree? What kind of disasters are they going to be in the workplace?

Could you imagine going to a doctor who had paid others to write his term papers in college? He might not know the difference between a kidney and a liver. Or, how about hiring a lawyer to represent you who had depended upon the writing ability of others to get him through school? If he wrote a letter to a company, complaining about their treatment of their client (you) he’d probably get laughed at, instead of making the company feel threatened enough to take action on your behalf.

I don’t know about you, but I don’t think that someone who pays another to do their studying, research and writing deserves to receive a college degree. As a college professor, I would be insulted to have one of my students turn something like that in. If I could prove they did it, I’d have them booted out of school. If they don’t want to think, they shouldn’t be in college anyway.

There’s something deeper there than just academic education, it’s called integrity. Anyone who is that dishonest in their schooling is likely to be just as dishonest in the workplace. They’ll be the one who clocks out early, or steals something from the office, or charges the company for extra expenses on a trip. They’re also the ones who will refuse to accept the responsibility that is part and parcel of their job.

As a former employer (that’s read “boss” for those who aren’t sure), I see much of the hiring process as looking for the person who has the right character to be a responsible worker. Yes, technical ability is important, but it’s really not as important as character. There are a lot of people out there who have technical ability in whatever field. But, there are only a few who will go that extra mile for their employer.

When it comes down to it, the only thing a company has, that can make it stand out, is its employees. Excellent employees make for excellent companies; while mediocre employees can only produce a mediocre company. Anyone who expects others to do their work for them isn’t an asset to the company, but a liability. Good managers get rid of them quickly.

So, are these students helping themselves out, or are they setting themselves up for failure? To me, I’d have to say the latter; they might succeed for the moment, but in the larger picture, they will never make the grade.

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