Product Versus Process: The Term Paper Industry and the New Face of Cheating in American Education

During the past decade, cheating and plagiarism have become serious problems in education. This increase in academic dishonesty is attributed in part to the term paper industry, as the student with a penchant to cheat can acquire custom-written essays, theses, and dissertations with the wave of a credit card. But while term paper companies profit from such behavior, the question that needs to be asked is why such companies are able to profit from academic dishonesty in the first place.

PRODUCT VERSUS PROCESS uses the term paper industry as a launching point for a vibrant debate over the nature of cheating in an educational system that is increasingly standardized, mechanized, and dehumanized. Dougie Child references acts of cheating with first-hand accounts from term paper writers to show how the process of education no longer plays a substantial role in the academic careers of America's students. Child shows how our decision to rationalize a successful education according to grades, test scores, and, of course, term papers is destabilizing: Choosing to emphasize the end product over the process of learning not only invests a false sense of security in product-centered educational systems, but also provides incentives to cheat.