Tonight was the target for having all the evaluations completed in my class, because grades are due tomorrow. But today, I discovered that at least three students submitted term papers that are identical to ones that were handed in by former students during past semesters, so I have not finished all the evaluations, because I am now forced to be really, really careful in checking over every assignment so I can detect how widespread a plague this has become. I am upset, disillusioned, and disgusted. (And that's an understatement.) I have heard from four of the six students involved; the two who are currently in the class, both graduating seniors, are pleading for me to overlook this mistake because, they insist, they have never done such a thing before and they have high GPAs. The two from past semesters claim to not know the students from this semester. I have a lot of thinking to do, and I'll have to have some discussions with others at the university.

I've seen some recent articles in The Chronicle that I was saving, intending to use them as the subject of entries here, once the semester is over. They continued on the plagiarism theme that I write about occasionally. The articles suggested that up to a third of an undergraduate class may be buying term papers off the Internet. I guess submitting student papers to term paper cheating detection service could possibly be a violation of student copyright - because those services keep the papers and build their database for the future. And, they are expensive, so many colleges don't subscribe. I occasionally see pitches in some of the writing newsletters I receive, for people with masters and doctoral degrees to write term papers on academic subjects. They always make me uncomfortable, because I wonder - is this legit? Doesn't seem like it. I have almost considered protesting to the newsletter over running such ads. I didn't expect to have to deal with such an extreme and obvious case in my own class! And no service was necessary: I have all the papers from past classes to check against. The guilty parties are telling me they made a mistake; yeah, risking doing this in my class was a really big mistake...

This sort of behavior could make me give up teaching.