Re:Rent-a-coder hilarity (2008)
by twistedpair on Monday May 06, 2013 @10:11AM
(#5662479)
Once I was looking through rent-a-coder and the pdf spec attached was a homework assignment with the class and professor's name on it. Emailed it to the prof as my good deed for the day.
I once read of a prof that was on a rent-a-coder site, did a student's assignment, and then failed him.
I guess most of the people posting these one-off coding jobs on bidding sites are probably too flaky to ever need a version 0.00002, they will abandon the business as soon as they realize they aren't getting any hits.
Interesting that you're mentioning the "outsourcing" of academic projects.
While this seemingly has been "popular" in Europe for PhDs / doctoral theses for quite some time (in Germany e.g. some ministers recently lost their posts for that or similar activities), it has become an even larger issue in countries like India across all levels of academic studies - see https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4610739 for more info on that.
For many Indians, a degree is just a path to a cushy job. That is probably true for many other parts of the world too.
Rentacoder used to have a disclaimer (they may still, I haven't looked in years) that the site could not be used for any thesis or "final senior project"-type project that would determine whether or not someone received a degree.
I always found that oddly specific - they clearly acknowledge that people will use the site to pay someone to do class projects, and get better grades by doing so, and they very much don't care so long as it doesn't determine whether the buyer graduates.
There's a Hollywood movie trope rolled out every 2.8433 years where a rich guy goes back to university and tries to buy his way past projects and tests. I always kind of imagine some rich kid in "Web Programing 317 section 7" contracting out his final project. Now that tuition is so expensive, $5K for a final project sounds more or less reasonable for a kid who just wants the credential and not the education/training. There should be some kind of ethical filter where if you're obviously trying to contract for a stereotypical final project around the end of the school year...