The Man Who Writes Your Children's Academic Papers: Chronicle Of Higher Education

HT John Lott.

In the 'I-Just-Can't-Make-This-Stuff-Up' Hall of Fame, OldSouth proudly presents this offering from a gent who has spent the first part of his career creating academic work for student clients, who turn his work in under their own names. Kid's who can't write, research, or think in a linear fashion to save their lives, mysteriously generate the kind of academic work that allows them to graduate from prestigious institutions.
Does no one notice? Or do many just look the other way?

He is understandably cynical, and wicked funny.

It was difficult to cherry-pick the best paragraphs, because the writing is just so good! 

So, here's a sample:

I have become a master of the admissions essay. I have written these for undergraduate, master's, and doctoral programs, some at elite universities. I can explain exactly why you're Brown material, why the Wharton M.B.A. program would benefit from your presence, how certain life experiences have prepared you for the rigors of your chosen course of study. I do not mean to be insensitive, but I can't tell you how many times I've been paid to write about somebody helping a loved one battle cancer. I've written essays that could be adapted into Meryl Streep movies.

I do a lot of work for seminary students. I like seminary students. They seem so blissfully unaware of the inherent contradiction in paying somebody to help them cheat in courses that are largely about walking in the light of God and providing an ethical model for others to follow. I have been commissioned to write many a passionate condemnation of America's moral decay as exemplified by abortion, gay marriage, or the teaching of evolution. All in all, we may presume that clerical authorities see these as a greater threat than the plagiarism committed by the future frocked.

With respect to America's nurses, fear not. Our lives are in capable hands­—just hands that can't write a lick. Nursing students account for one of my company's biggest customer bases. I've written case-management plans, reports on nursing ethics, and essays on why nurse practitioners are lighting the way to the future of medicine. I've even written pharmaceutical-treatment courses, for patients who I hope were hypothetical.

This would be funnier, were it fictional. It isn't. It appears this man exists, and his work is circulating in academia. The scary part to OS is that those JD's become judges, and those MD's treat patients. OS knows of one physician now practicing, who as a coed at a top-twenty school managed to make it through on 'the horizontal plan', trading her favors for passing work product. OS suspects the dean may have been involved in some 'transactional academia' for all four years as well. It would be more humorous, were there not the lives of patients involved.

OS suspects this author is beginning to go public, with his literary agent at his side, with a view to a movie script deal. This is the stuff of movies, after all. Too fantastical not to be true. Lights-camera-action, ya'll.

This essay does begin to answer why OS keeps running into people with advanced degrees from reputable schools who can't seem to put two coherent clauses of English together.

There is a partial solution, called pen-and-paper. Student sits in a room, under the eye of the exam monitor, is handed a paper with relevant questions, and in the course of two hours, must create cogent responses from the content of his mind. The professor grades them, and compares usage of English between papers submitted and live essay completed.

Enough. OS has a deadline. Writing. Under his own name.