You mentioned some of your clients using your service as a tutorial. Can you say more about that? I really want to write research proposals but have never written one before! Does paying for one (or two!) make sense as a way of helping me learn how to put them together well?

Thanks!

What are your favorite methodologies for writing essays? What are your favorite topics to write about? What are the biggest changes you have seen in academia? How is the neoliberalization of education affected your life?

How can you guys possibly write a dissertation on behalf of someone else (I assume we're talking doctoral dissertations)? I just don't understand the logistics, given that a dissertation is something that takes years of work, completely original research, direct work with your dissertation advisor (ostensibly), and enough expertise in the niche subject of the dissertation that you could generate novel research findings. Beyond that, your client needs to be able to defend it on their own.

The sheer effort required to do that on someone else's behalf seems crazy. Is it basically like hiring a ghostwriter for months and years on end? How does it work? How much would this even cost?

Occasionally. There are lots of junk "peer-reviewed" journals that are basically pay-to-play. Every so often we get requests for full-pipeline research for those journals (I do not personally bid on those so I don't know how they progress). Sometimes we get project requests for helping with edits / proofreading / finalizing formatting and similar for completed research that's about to be submitted, or that journals have asked authors to revise/resubmit. I haven't worked on those tasks personally, but I know we've got a lot of professors who can probably do that in their sleep.

No problem! It's a huge question and every time I think about it, it gets raveled in with larger issues of social stratification and mobility (made thornier by racism and sexism), national economic policies, globalism and corporate responsibility, and broad-based cultural values ... just to begin...

What do you think about ChatGPT detectors that try to tell whether someone has used it to generate text or not? Can they be relied upon? What are your thoughts on whether/how organisations and institutions should try to combat its use?

Great question, haha. We've seen a lot more non-traditional students, along with a lot of customers completing some kind of mandated ongoing professional education - particularly nursing and teaching. We get way more grad students using our service than we used to, or at least that's my perspective. We also get a lot more requests for entire courses.

Publish fast, perish young, leave a beautiful corpse.

If clients are paying you about $30 for every page you write, how do you claim to be unemployed?

Do you ever work on peer-reviewed scientific literature?

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I'm thinking - this is a great question and I don't want to rush an answer, nor do I want you to think I'm ignoring you.

Again, this just seems like a rhetorical justification: 'system stinks, might as well profit." How do you grapple with the day to day reality of "everybody cheats, my job is to explicitly help them. Look, I get it, spineless department chairs will rollover.

How do you all personally feel about shrugging your shoulders and just helping people cheat explicitly? You've crossed a line that you keep rationilizing away.

I hope your warrants you charge for in your writing are more cogent than the word games you've played here.

LOL only if I get residuals when it is inevitably picked up by a streaming service

So, what broad trends have you observed in your customers over the last ten years?

Publish or perish?

When we were working as professors, most of us had experiences in which our attempts to "prosecute" students for plagiarism - regardless of evidence or the hours we spent preparing the paperwork and evidence - resulted in things like: being told we were wasting everyone's time, being screamed at by chairs and course supervisors who felt we should be less "rigid" or that any plagiarism at all was a reflection of our poor teaching, being asked if we needed therapy because "maybe you just need to accept that your students are learning from you," abhorrent behavior and / or statements from the accused student(s) that led to more institutional shrugging, non-renewed teaching contracts or other penalties if our "prosecution" of the students resulted in poor evaluations or a number of F's in the course above a certain threshold, and ultimately, few or no consequences for the students.

So, in a sense, working as a professor could also be described as "earning money helping people cheat." The difference, of course, being that adjuncts don't really earn any money.

"It's just ...". Humans describing any revolutionary change ever.

That's so cheap I don't even want it.

Will you ghost write my Novel? *I have such amazing ideas*

If you're unemployed, how are you surviving? How do you afford to pay rent/mortgage for a dwelling? How do you afford food to eat?

If you've spent the last 12 years of your life writing things that no one else wants to write, and your work is valuable, how are you not getting paid?

And have you questioned how you spend your time so that you should be getting paid for the value that you contribute to society?

If you're asking what I wish people asked, then here are some questions I'd love to answer:

• What assignment or assessment design features make our jobs hard to do? (I have read so, so many comments by ✨Employed Professors✨ who insist their assignments are "cheat-proof"...)
• What broad trends have we seen in students / our customers over the last 10+ years?
• What sets us apart in an industry that's otherwise a "wretched hive of scum and villainy" ?

So, non-answer is answer?

Please give an honest reply. Whatever the state of the academy - sure, programs will admit many more students than they can place in jobs - how do you justify plagiarism, which you would prosecute if you were actually employed as professors?

You earn money helping people cheat. Please respond honestly.

Hi,

Our rates vary - users post a project (posting is always free), then writers bid on it. Generally, our rates start at $30 per page (where a page is about 250-300 words). Crazy deadlines and very challenging content can push the prices up.

That's a great response. Thank you!

As a writer who has encountered similar challenges, I've taken to making comparisons between fast food and chef-prepared meals: Yes, you can get something from McDonald's in as much time as it takes you to groan out an order and swerve past the pickup window, and yes, the FDA has reluctantly classified the menu options there as "probably food," but you won't get nearly as much enjoyment, nourishment, or satisfaction out of the experience as you would from eating a dish that was prepared by a devoted and attentive professional.

If I feel the need to be less snarky, I just say that it's "bespoke" writing.

That brings me to my follow-up question: You mentioned that you specialize in "fast, effective writing," but "effective" can mean very different things in the contexts of different projects. How do you guarantee (or prioritize, at least) speed when effectiveness requires a slower pace, as with – to quote you once more – "your wacky aunt's self-published book," for example?