A San Diego college student pleaded for help with his homework. But he didn’t turn to friends or family. He posted to Craigslist.
“Willing to pay $40 per assignment/paper and a $10 bonus if I receive an A on my homework,” the student wrote in a San Diego Craigslist ad appearing this week under the “writing/editing jobs” category.
Posted Monday (with typos) under the headline “Need someone to do my Homework Assingments — University of Phoenix,” the ad was removed a day or two later when the student found help.
“I was getting at least 5-8 offers a day and decided to take the post down,” the student said Thursday. “Now I have someone with a masters degree from an Ivy League school working for me.”
Craigslist on Tuesday also indicated that the ad was “flagged for removal,” probably for violating its terms of service.
The student, who didn’t want to be identified, had written that “lately it seems like I just don’t have enough hours in the day to do my assignments.”
“Must be very reliable very reliable [sic] and detail oriented,” the ad said.
He sought someone familiar with APA format, PowerPoint and the University of Phoenix. APA stands for the American Psychological Association, which has a style guide for research papers.
Contacted by Times of San Diego, the student said he would share his story only if paid.
“I think you’d get a kick out of it,” he wrote. “Funny thing is I’m not alone. I donna about the price, make me a offer??” The Times declined to pay the student.
University of Phoenix was not amused.
“Clearly it is unacceptable for any university to relax its academic values, and no college student should be held to anything but the highest expectations of ethics, honesty and integrity,” said school spokeswoman Alyssa Aalmo.
She added that all faculty members are trained to detect “academic dishonesty.”
“We use proprietary software to compare every paper submitted by our students against billions of Internet documents, faculty and student papers and academic and media articles, in order to ensure originality,” Aalmo told Times of San Diego.
“Every suspected instance of academic dishonesty is investigated by three separate teams of professionals employed by the university, and we take immediate and decisive action any time a violation is confirmed.”
Saying the school has no exceptions to this rule, she noted that students who violate “academic integrity rules” can be suspended or expelled.
The school, which has five San Diego County locations, says any student who is proven to have cheated is referred to the university’s Ethics Committee, which can recommend an F for the course, academic suspension or expulsion.
“Lesser sanctions – such as a zero grade for the plagiarized assignment, a plagiarism workshop, or APA paper – may also be assigned,” said Aalmo, who shared a 32-page document on students’ rights and responsibilities.
Among other things, University of Phoenix scans for cheaters via the plagiarism checker Turnitin, “which compares papers submitted by students against a database of 20+ billion web pages, 220+ million student papers and leading library databases and publications.”
Information technology staff also can check whether a student’s account has been accessed by a party outside the university.
“Using IP address information, we can determine the specific geolocation from which the IP address is sourced, the Internet Service Provider (ISP) to which the IP address is allocated, and the type of network (residential, business, library) from which the IP address is sourced,” said a university statement.
“This is how we investigate situations in which we believe a third-party has taken an exam for a student, for example, or uploaded an assignment on a student’s behalf.”
And a 24-hour “Ethics and Compliance hotline” allows counselors and students to report academic impropriety.
Craigslist did not immediately respond to a request for comment.