Students Settle With TurnItIn In Copyright Case 208
An anonymous reader writes "With the deadline for a Supreme Court appeal rapidly approaching, the students who sued TurnItIn.com for issues surrounding copyright infringement reached a settlement with the site's company on Friday. Now the search goes out for any student who has a paper which is being held by TurnItIn that they did not upload themselves. If your teacher uploaded a paper and ran a TurnItIn report without your permission, I bet the students' attorney would like to hear from you."
how do i find out if my teacher did that? (Score:5, Interesting)
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What if a teacher requires you to submit the paper for their class? Can you do anything then? (Asking because of a class discussion I had once as I do not want my work copyrighted by turnitin.com. It was basically decided that the teacher could do whatever they wanted. Where does the law come in on this?)
Re:how do i find out if my teacher did that? (Score:4, Informative)
it was on the anon-a-blog. ravar@nixonvan.com Bob Vanderhye, 703-442-0422.
I think TurnItIn's strategy is to make the schools make the students submit the papers (and agree to the terms). Many students have successfully challenged their teachers and their schools, saying that this requirement to submit to a PERMANENT ARCHIVE is wrong.
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Well of course it's wrong. Suppose that one of those students if the next Roddenberry (Star Trek), JMS (Babylon 5), or Joss Whedon (Buffy/Angel/Firefly) and said student created a great story for his class. Why should this student have to give-up his copyrights to some asshole company?
This is just another way that corporations seek to steal ideas, stories, songs from artisans by takng-over control of the copyrights.
Re:how do i find out if my teacher did that? (Score:4, Insightful)
And what about the more common case of being a student who was forced to upload things to turnitin or fail the class? Sounds like a pretty big bloody loophole to leave considering how easily schools can find various ways of blackmailing a student into "voluntarily" doing things.
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My wife is an English professor at a large research university. Her syllabus, which is effectively the contract between her and the student, states that she reserves the right to upload it as she sees fit. The student agrees to the contract by remaining in the class (this is the view of the university's lawyers).
So if there's anything like that in your syllabus, you're probably out of luck. "I didn't read the syllabus" is not going to be a successful legal argument. "I had to take the course to graduate" m
Re:how do i find out if my teacher did that? (Score:5, Informative)
>>> she reserves the right to upload it as she sees fit. The student agrees to the contract
This contract would be declared "void" in a court-of-law, just the same as various provisions in the Paypal User Agreement were declared void a few years ago. Why? Because contracts can not be used to sign-away rights protected by Federal Consumer Protection laws. In other words, a company (college) can not force a customer (student) to give-up his rights or privileges as a precondition of service,
Nor can a company add conditions AFTER the money has already been paid, which would be the case if a customer does not see the prof's syllabus until the first day. That's called bait-and-switch.
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In other words, a company (college) can not force a customer (student) to give-up his rights or privileges as a precondition of service, ...
Don't colleges restrict your right to bear arms on campus? Don't they restrict your right to free speech in lectures? Sounds like bunkum to me.
In the UK colleges have a standard IP rights statement in which one gives up certain IP rights in order to matriculate (join the college); I had heard this was true in the US too?
Do "Federal Consumer Protection laws" really specify that a teacher can't make a copy of your term paper ?
Re:how do i find out if my teacher did that? (Score:4, Insightful)
>>>Sounds like bunkum to me.
No it isn't bunkum that the U.S. Courts declared various sections of Paypal's contract "void" since the contract violated federal laws. Similarly a professor that demands a student give-up his rights is also in violation of these laws. For example the professor can not say in his syllabus, "You lose all right to sue me for sexual harassment."
Yeah I know I used an extreme example, but so did you with your anti-gun argument. The point is that there are some rights/privileges than can Not be given-away via contract, because the U.S. laws supercede the contract. One of those rights is copyright. A business like Walmart can not force a customer to give-up his stories as a condition of service. Neither can XYZ College.
Another right is to not have terms added to a contract AFTER the money has already been paid by the customer. That's a breach by the business. For example Walmart can't suddenly tell me, after I bought some Levis jeans, that I am only allowed to wear them on weekend. Neither can a professor arbitarily add terms after payment has been submitted.
Such things must be revealed *before* the money changes hands.
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Or a student could add a copyright notice granting the teacher the non-exclusive right to upload the paper, but reserving all other rights including the right to do anything more than store the paper once uploaded. In other words, comply with exactly the letter of the 'contract' but make sure it's worthless.
It does seem interesting to me that at least in theory, the student is the customer and is certainly the one that pays, but their work gets treated as a work for hire.
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>>>Want to buy a car? Arbitration and liability waiver.
Yes and virtually all of those have been declared void in court. For example a lot of these arbitration contracts claim the customer MUST go through arbitration and abide by the arbiter's ruling. They also say the customer may not challenge the result in court. Time-and-time again the courts have nullified these contracts, and stated that the customer may sue a company at any time, without being bound to arbitration, per U.S. law.
But compani
Re:how do i find out if my teacher did that? (Score:4, Insightful)
Thank god your wife doesn't teach where I go to school, most of us don't put up with that kind of crap and will drop the class before the first period is over.
What a crock! And if her class is a requirement for graduation and happens to be the only session being taught in a given semester, I'd be willing to wager you would get a lot of complaints. B.T.W. does she states this in her syllabus clearly, or do you wait until someone complains and then bring in the lawyers?
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A good syllabus is an explanation of the expectations of the course, a description of what will be required of the student to succeed in the class. It may not reach the requirements of a legal contract per se, although I do know some universities that consider syllabuses to be a somewhat binding agreement on both student and teacher - meaning that if a teacher grades on material or assignments that aren't in the syllabus, the student could challenge it.
I'm in favor of turninit.com, by the way. I don't see a
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Your wife is a shyster and a con artist.
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Something tells me that you haven't taken any law courses.
A "contract" presented to me after I've already paid to take the class, that isn't even represented to me as a legally binding contract. My ass.
The student agrees to the contract by remaining in the class (this is the view of the university's lawyers).
I hope their legal argument is a little more nuan
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If Chewbacca lives on Endor, you must acquit!
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So, if the syllabus says there will be a test on 2/6, and snow prevents the test from happening, the teacher is in violation of her contract with the students?
Sounds like your wife's university should get different lawyers.
Always did wonder (Score:3, Insightful)
I always did wonder how these plagiarism detection things were able to legally continue to operate. They obviously have to hold copies of works that were not uploaded by the original authors to compare this stuff to. Are they not in mass violation of copyright? Are not the teachers who uploaded this stuff at least as guilty as file sharers, I mean after all, my term papers from college are way more useful than a new tune from Bittany.
Re:Always did wonder (Score:5, Informative)
They obviously have to hold copies of works that were not uploaded by the original authors to compare this stuff to. Are they not in mass violation of copyright?
No. Go read the standard of fair use again.
"Academic purposes" are one of the black-letter exemptions. If this were a college doing the bundle and offering it for-free to all participants, instead of a private company making a buck, this wouldn't even be a problem.
Re:Always did wonder (Score:4, Insightful)
I assume you're referring to the fact that it would be an infringement if someone sold photocopied knockoff textbooks?
Get back to us when Turnitin start buying and selling essays. By essays I mean the full text in its entirety. Not excerpts, not metadata, not statistics derived from them.
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They are first party to copies made in entirety to their servers, aren't they? (This question is rhetorical, I don't know the answer) A better way would be to have the hashcode algorithm run by the submitter, and only the hashcodes uploaded. This would be, IMO, a sustainable fair use argument.
C//
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yes, but this wouldn't work as well. turnitin intends to catch running a paper through a theosaurus or rewriting the occasional sentence/paragraph. Change a single letter and you defeat hashing
Re:Always did wonder (Score:4, Funny)
turnitin intends to catch running a paper through a theosaurus
What good would it to do to run a paper through a reptile god?
Unless you mean thesaurus ;-)
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Are not the teachers who uploaded this stuff at least as guilty as file sharers
Most universities claim copyright on any work students submit as coursework. Presumably the ones being sued failed to do this, but the staff working for them were under the impression that they did.
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Oh really? Where's your source for this one?
I paid for my classes and I own the work I did.
University funded graduate research is a different story, but that's pretty obviously not what we are talking about.
Gary Mckinnon (Score:2)
Why don't they just recruit Gary McKinnon? He may not be the greatest ever to have compromised a US military computer, but he could sure warn them of the dangers in leaving default passwords set.
"Citation Needed" (Score:2, Funny)
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As somebody completely unrelated to the submitted entry or Anon-a-blog, I'm also pretty much cool with it!
Classic Moment from the Appeal (Score:5, Insightful)
I can't quote it exactly... but when he made the point, nearly EVERY head nodded, including the three appellate judges. It was one of those made-for-TV moments. This was right around the time of the US Presidential election:
something like "You can bet if Barack Obama's or Sarah Palin's high school papers were stored on the *most secure server* on the internet, they would have been hacked. There's no doubt that a site with the lax security of TurnItIn would be hacked."
Man, ya shoulda been there!
Talk to your professor, opt out (Score:5, Interesting)
Seriously, each professor that I had that used this service specifically mentioned it the first day and it was written in the syllabus. I brought up an objection with each professor and they had no issue with me opting out and them presumably just googling various sentences in my papers. It wasn't an issue, the professors agreed with me when I voiced my objections about the privacy, copyright ownership, data retention, presumption of innocence, etc. The only reason that they used it was because the department head dictated it.
Exercise your rights. It's your paper. Remember, professors are people just like you. While they may believe you to be paranoid, they won't hold it against you if you voice your concerns with logic, passion, and conviction.
Re:Talk to your professor, opt out (Score:5, Insightful)
they had no issue with me opting out
You do not have to, and should not have to, opt out of your creative works being infringed.
The only reason that they used it was because the department head dictated it.
If the department dictated that the professor should take your laptop, sell it on eBay, and give the money to some third party corporation, would you see the professor as having done no wrong? This corporation is building its cashflow on your creative work, without license. If they want to come to you and negotiate a deal to use your creative work in their business model, fine. Until then, it is yours.
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You do not have to, and should not have to, opt out of your creative works being infringed.
You are absolutely right. This should be an opt in service with waiver or contract, unfortunately that's not the case. Complaining about it isn't going to fix it unless you can provide pressure to the people higher up in the food chain or by legal means. I was, however, a poor college student so I could only fight my own battles.
If the department dictated that the professor should take your laptop, sell it on eBay
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I didn't mean my post to be an attack on you. More on the system.
A big part of "the system" is that the system pushes us to "be reasonable." To find reasonable solutions to problems, as you did.
The problem with that is while we are being reasonable, the corporations are being sociopathic. That is a recipe for a steady slide.
I'm just trying to encourage you and others to be unreasonable. It is the reasonable thing to do when presented with an unreasonable system.
Of course, the system punishes those who do no
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"That implies that there are times you should choose not to fight or choose a less confrontational approach."
Only if you're being reasonable.
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I think you're severely overstating the problem.
My uni made it clear that they reserved the right to use turnitin for certain assignments, as a condition of enrolment, and I would guess other universities would do the same. So, it's not technically opt out as it is making an exception for your opting in.
And the fact that it's head department policy is neither here nor there. The university wants it, you agreed to it, make a deal if you want an exception.
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Get back to us when that happens. Meantime, learn what a strawman is.
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Perhaps you should send a couple of essays to the attorney to find out if you really did manage to opt out. Perhaps one or more of your professors just nodded and uploaded the text anyway?
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Exercise your rights. It's your paper.
Is it. You make it at their behest and give it to them. Unless you apply licensing terms surely they're entitled to do as they please with it within the usual confines of the law.
Of course you don't have to give it them if you feel it's worth more to you in some other way.
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Aren't you a precious little snowflake? I assume your parents are big donors to the school.
Actually, I was a broke as shit college student paying my own tuition by working 60 hours a week on top of being a full time student so I wouldn't fall into unmanageable debt. I live by my principles and my convictions, when those are violated I act to correct them. Taking 10 minutes out of my day to right a wrong certainly isn't going to kill me, though it may inconvenience me.
The profs should given you two options
But is this REALLY copyright infringement? (Score:5, Interesting)
In a way it's too bad that this didn't go to trial. Back when I was working in the Academic sector there was occasionally firestorms between students and faculty about this subject.
The major university I worked for (which will remain unnamed obviously) had it in the student contract (or code or bylaws or whatever) that the copyright of anything turned in by a student was owned by the university. I am guessing many universities do the same thing.
So it would have been interesting to see if that sort of fine print clause in a student agreement with a state institution would of held up. If it does I would think that the student didn't really have a case.
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How are they going to claim that a work by the student is copyrighted by the university? If they were paying me a salary then I could see it, but they're not. I'm paying for the education, so it's mine.
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How are they going to claim that a work by the student is copyrighted by the university? If they were paying me a salary then I could see it, but they're not.
Your college credit is the salary. The consideration for this salary is 1. tuition and fees, plus 2. assignment of copyright in covered works.
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I don't think that the colleges are buying the work as part of a trade for th
You paid, but you didn't pay enough (Score:2)
You're paying them tuition and fees in order to get credits and hopefully a degree.
Simply repeating that this (without the copyright assignment) is sufficient consideration is like repeating that "stealing"[1] cable television is OK because the shows on basic cable have advertisements.
The papers belong to the student as the student is the only one with the legal right to redistribute the papers.
And also the only one with the legal right to assign this copyright to another party.
[1] In before "it's not stealing." Theft of services [wikipedia.org] is the legal term.
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Kinda like how no college has EVER felt entitled to any of the patents its grad students were granted based on research while there? Colleges never get any share of inventions by their students....
I got ripped off then (Score:2)
Your college credit is the salary.
If course credit and a piece of paper is their payment to me then I got ripped off. I hate the higher education system, but have learned to deal with its shortcomings and maneuver through the system to get my piece of paper so that I could finally have my work experience count towards a PE license. I was very annoyed while streaming my graduation ceremony* that the president of the university bestowed my degree upon me with recommendation from the faculty. BS I earned that degree, fulfilled all requireme
Re:But is this REALLY copyright infringement? (Score:4, Insightful)
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Technically speaking the professors aren't doing their jobs if they're duplicating work in different courses.
Let's say in one course you're required to write an essay on the economics of crime and in another you are asked to write about US society during the Great Depression. These are rather different topics for different courses so it's difficult to say that they are duplicated. Within those broad topics you get to pick a more specific subject as you like. So you write about gangsters, smuggling, gambling and the illegal entertainment industry in the Chicago of the early '30s. You turn in the same paper for both
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Depending on how you wrote your first paper, you may be able to hand in the same paper again at some point during this course.
If you're submitting a paper twice, two years apart, then you're failing to apply what you've learned in between. That's just lazy, and misses the whole point of getting a proper education. Show off that you have been listening and thinking between times, at least a bit...
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Agreed -- my University did the exact same thing.
As for having to agree to the terms of handing over your copyright -- it was in the terms that you agreed to when you applied and registered.
You never signed a 'I waive my copyright' agreement, but you did sign an 'I agree to the terms, conditions and code of conduct as laid out in the calendar' agreement -- those terms included the copyright transfer deal.
The copyright transfer was not 100% though, you were still guaranteed attribution, but the University wa
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Courts around here tend to frown on easter egg hunts in contracts, particularly those that include references to other documents and where one co
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I think it would fall in the same category as a EULA. Very, very few people will actually read a EULA before clicking I Agree, but it's still considered enforceable in court.
In our case, it wasn't actually that hidden either. It was in the general guidelines section where you could find other things on sexual harassment, drug use, plagiarism, etc. And, if I recall correctly, it was phrased in pretty plain English (something like: 'All work submitted for course credit becomes property of the University.')
Bec
Doubful (Score:2)
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You will assign all copyrights for any work you ever make and utilize for a class assignment, without renumeration whatsoever, sounds like a good example of an unconscionable contract...
Remuneration shall include credit for the course.
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Remuneration shall include credit for the course
What if I don't complete the class or fail the class or otherwise don't get credit? Does that mean there was no renumeration and I get to keep my copyrights?
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Remuneration shall include credit for the course
What if I don't complete the class or fail the class or otherwise don't get credit? Does that mean there was no renumeration and I get to keep my copyrights?
Correction: Remuneration shall include a chance for credit for the course. And as I understand the contract law concerning invitations to bargain [wikipedia.org], "a chance for" is valid consideration, much like buying an option on a film script.
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Totally Unfair! (Score:5, Insightful)
Copyright law is supposed to protect corporations from potential customers. It is not meant to be used to protect authors from corporations. This is a perfectly honest corporation advancing its agenda by innocently infringing the copyright of authors. Corporations are supposed to get unequal protection under the law. How this court could see fit to apply the law equally in this case is beyond me.
/sarcasm
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Go back to Libertaria!
I had an issue similar to this. (Score:3, Interesting)
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Email the lawyer -- they could probably get a court order to do discovery on Turn-it-in's database. If the paper isn't in the database, then no biggie. If the paper is in the database as you surmise, Turn-it-in probably isn't going to get smacked as hard as your teacher, but it's one more chance for a plaintiff to get a judgment against the company.
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The revenge of the geeks. Students now have to shrink wrap their essays with an EULA saying that by opening you have agreed to the terms of the Creative Commons Non-Commercial Use license.
I do hope you included the attribution required clause!
Did they copy or distribute? (Score:3, Interesting)
It seems like they ought to be suing the teacher for distributing and/or reproducing the paper, not the company. As I understand it, the company merely received the copies and stored them. Or does the company allow other teachers to download potentially similar papers if there is a match flagged? Its the same argument about downloading music not being the issue, but rather allowing others to download it from you.
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> It seems like they ought to be suing the teacher for distributing and/or reproducing the paper, not the company.
The company is the one profiting.
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Yes, but as we've been trying to hammer into the RIAA's defenders for a few years now, suing someone for copyright infringement requires proving that they distributed copies.
Use judo (Score:5, Interesting)
Instead of fighting a big company yourself, just direct the weight of a big company to do itself in.
1. Write a paper. A really, really good paper. A research paper.
2. Get it accepted by a big journal. A really, really big journal like Nature.
3. Now somehow get this sucker added to Turn-it-in's database. Maybe you wrote the paper as a thesis and the prof needs to check it. Whatever.
4. Let the journal know that Turn-it-in has your paper. The paper to which they hold exclusive rights.
5. Pop some popcorn and sit back and let Nature do a little "Hulk Smash!".
6. The End.
(of course there would be several key problems in carrying out such a plan, but it would be delightfully amusing if you could pull it off)
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3. Now somehow get this sucker added to Turn-it-in's database. Maybe you wrote the paper as a thesis and the prof needs to check it. Whatever.
If you upload it you're the one copying it. You granted Nature an exclusive license and so are in breach. It is you who Nature will "Hulk Smash!". If you're really on a roll Turn-it-in will remove the data and then sue you as well for breaching their terms when you uploaded data that you knew you didn't have rights to copy thus causing them loss of trade and reputation to the order of, oh I don't know ... one-million-pounds ... [pinky-twist]
Bad summary (Score:2)
Now the search goes out for any student who has a paper which is being held by TurnItIn that they did not upload themselves.
Er, no. It was pure supposition on the part of the blog author that the lawyers might be interested in hearing from more students.
On a side note, the students lost. Twice. They were also facing accusations of unauthorized access to the TurnItIn site, and opted to settle rather than face the prospect of actually having to pay for poking the hornets' nest (the district court had ruled against the company, but the Court of Appeals reversed and remanded that decision). Meanwhile, the TurnItIn people had alr
Do Not Plagiarise Thy Self (Score:2)
I would never let a service like this have any of my original work if I could possibly avoid it. Why isn't there some provision that you can check this paper against others, but you CANNOT add it to your database? It is outright theft otherwise.
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Do you not have the right to reuse and improve upon your own writings?
Depends, but one of the requirements of my degree was that coursework could not have been submitted as coursework for any other qualification previously. So, no, plagarising your own work, if it had already been submitted as coursework for another module or another qualification, would have been the grounds for getting no marks.
Easy way to make most paper cheating go away (Score:2)
Make the students write the paper in class and show intermediary work. Only 2-4 full classes need to be sacrificed for it.
Each piece of intermediate work is mandatory and averaged into the paper's overall grade. If they miss the writing class, they could do it at
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schools will just change their agreements (Score:2)
You effectively have an agreement with your school or university under which you study there. If that agreement doesn't explicitly allow the use of plagiarism detection services right now, it will in the future. Your choice will be to either agree to it or walk away.
Re:Who is really hurt by such services? (Score:5, Insightful)
But my intelligence isn't proved in some one-time essay. It's all about how I create real solutions for real problems.
If you are incapable of taking a task, and expressing the solutition to said task in written form, then you're essentially sub-literate. Unless you're an astonishing genius, you're just a drain on your company due to your inability.
College doesn't test, train, or reward INTELLIGENCE. It tests, trains, and rewards LEARNING and ABILITY -- which are three very, very different things.
Choosing to bypass testing is the right answer, no matter what the question.
God, I would love to work for your competitor. "Sir, BadAnalogyGuy's company is beating us!" "Ok, just file a complaint. I'm sure that semi-literate guy did something wrong enough to slap them down."
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I always saw it as testing and rewarding obedience, and the submission to allowing strangers to set your goals and priorities and otherwise to direct your efforts, to take on their tasks as if they were your own with a diligence that lasts well into what would otherwise be your personal time. To me this is the trait college tests which employers would find
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You went to the wrong college then. Or maybe just had a liberal arts degree.
Try an actual science education.
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You went to the wrong college then. Or maybe just had a liberal arts degree.
Try an actual science education.
I refer not to subject matter but rather to the methods by which they teach and the spirit in which that is done.
Albert Einstein captured the essence of which I speak in a single sentence: "It is a miracle that curiosity survives formal education."
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If you read up on the history of higher education, you'd understand that the systems referred to by Einstein in that quote (late 19th/early 20th century) essentially no longer exist. Today's system, at least in decent schools, lets you get out of it what you want. I'd say 70% of the student population in the school I went to was there to finish a BS in four-five years, while
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My minor was in the humanities, and it was a bit of a mixed bag for me. A couple professors required us to have citations for everything in our papers. Most notably ethics, where I wasn't even allowed to talk about what my thoughts on Aristotle's ethics were, I had to have citations reporting what other people thought about it.
Of course, that professor got turned down for tenure.
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History is a different bag than philosophy, though. Using plenty of citations makes sense there. Though given the various ways historical methods can and have been used, there's still plenty of room for critical thought and analysis.
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Psychology, in particular, is a social science. The social sciences are somewhat distinct from the liberal arts, though often closely related. If you're being forced to stick closely to the textbooks, it's likely because of the attempts in the last couple decades to make psychology more like the hard sciences--in which personal experience likewise lacks standin
Re:Who is really hurt by such services? (Score:5, Interesting)
"Ok, just file a complaint. I'm sure that semi-literate guy did something wrong enough to slap them down."
I love how the Americans think that suing everybody is the best solution for every problem.
That illness has a self-perpetuating nature, as does all aspects or expressions of "us against them." To sum it up, when you find yourself born and raised in an environment in which most recipients of most legitimate complaints are insensate and unreceptive, the "force of the law" nature of legal remedies become the only undeniable way to call attention to even the slightest injustice. All it really should take is for a person to stand up, with understanding, and call out those things which need to be addressed, to shine a light upon them and remove the shadows of excuses and other utilitarian purposes under which they are sheltered. By comparison, what we have now is not an underlying acknowledgement of human dignity or a celebration of harmony, but the primitive desire to avoid punishment.
It's such a precious thing, such an exquisite privilege, to put the lie to this pattern by nothing other than your living example of a higher order.
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To sum it up, when you find yourself born and raised in an environment in which most recipients of most legitimate complaints are insensate and unreceptive, the "force of the law" nature of legal remedies become the only undeniable way to call attention to even the slightest injustice.
This is very well said, and deserves modding up.
Civil action is oftentimes, unfortunately, the only way to get a 3rd party and/or the opposing side in your issue to take an actual look at your side of the argument
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How dare you!
We'll see us in court!
Oh... wait... ;)
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Well we can't imprison corporations or put them to the death, but further those alternatives would only apply to the enforcement of criminal law.
Spare me the elitism, and tell me how do you suggest civil law be enforced?
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Re:Who is really hurt by such services? (Score:5, Insightful)
Indeed. Your posting history is all the evidence we need.
Re:Who is really hurt by such services? (Score:5, Insightful)
Testing is not perfect but it does have a useful purpose. Yes, everybody is unique blah, blah, but there are millions of students at all levels in the USA and you got to classify them somehow by ability, so what method do you propose? The right answer is to keep improving the testing methods, not to bypass testing. A good test should present something like real world problems and take into account the difference in priorities for engineering students, versus, say English students etc. And by the way, the ability to communicate, including in writing, is very important even for nerds.
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FTFA: Not about the money?
They probably just wanna make them pay :)
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