3 ms·

You should never underestimate the willingness of Americans (or anyone) to invest in sleaze for profit

by kolbe 3y ago

pb7 3y ago
I find this comment chain extremely bizarre. One, that somehow getting step-by-step explanations to problems is "sleaze", but two, that you're all convinced that Chegg is only used to cheat. I used it throughout college to learn how to do the problems because it broke things down step by step. All of my classmates did the same. Professors would never teach how to do all the edge cases and if you know anything about high tier math, there are a lot of them, and Chegg was good for this because it was unlikely you were going to figure them out on your own. It was either Chegg or some YouTube video with 100 views by a kind man with a heavy accent. At the end of the day, homework only accounted for a small fraction of the total grade compared to exams so I don't know why you're all so salty about this thing existing. It doesn't somehow make you automatically pass college (maybe in Covid times only, hence the stock skyrocketing).
- kwantam 3y ago
  I completely understand your position, and I'm certainly sympathetic that it's often hard to find good instructional materials. I'll readily admit, however, that I do not know Chegg as anything but a way to cheat. It is well known among the university-level educators I've spoken with (across several institutions) as the place that students go to find material for cheating. So while it may not be the case that all users of Chegg are cheating, at some schools essentially all cheaters are using Chegg, including to cheat on exams (students post course bibles, test banks, etc.). It doesn't help that Chegg is slow to take down materials even when explicitly told that the material was obtained illegitimately (which makes sense---empirically, illicit materials are the draw for at least some segment of their customers). I know several folks who have had to involve their university's legal team to get their course materials removed from the site.
  - s3p 3y ago
    Interesting position, but, in my experience, it's been exactly the opposite. Our university works with Chegg to post false answers to questions in attempts to get students to stop using it for homework. They also look for course content posted on the site during exam weeks for the prerequisite math and science classes, and many students have been caught cheating because they posted a test question on Chegg. Maybe you didn't have such an experience, but that doesn't mean it's a paradise for cheaters. I used it for help solving textbook problems and occasionally for homework. For how much it costs, it was a supreme waste of money.
    - kolbe 3y ago
      > Our university works with Chegg to post false answers to questions in attempts to get students to stop using it for homework Shouldn't the fact that your university has to put effort into thwarting cheating on Chegg be evidence that cheating is a problem at your school?

You should never underestimate the willingness of Americans (or anyone) to invest in sleaze for profit

by kolbe 3y ago

You should never underestimate the willingness of Americans (or anyone) to invest in sleaze for profit

pb7 3y ago

I find this comment chain extremely bizarre. One, that somehow getting step-by-step explanations to problems is "sleaze", but two, that you're all convinced that Chegg is only used to cheat. I used it throughout college to learn how to do the problems because it broke things down step by step. All of my classmates did the same. Professors would never teach how to do all the edge cases and if you know anything about high tier math, there are a lot of them, and Chegg was good for this because it was unlikely you were going to figure them out on your own. It was either Chegg or some YouTube video with 100 views by a kind man with a heavy accent. At the end of the day, homework only accounted for a small fraction of the total grade compared to exams so I don't know why you're all so salty about this thing existing. It doesn't somehow make you automatically pass college (maybe in Covid times only, hence the stock skyrocketing).

kwantam 3y ago
I completely understand your position, and I'm certainly sympathetic that it's often hard to find good instructional materials. I'll readily admit, however, that I do not know Chegg as anything but a way to cheat. It is well known among the university-level educators I've spoken with (across several institutions) as the place that students go to find material for cheating. So while it may not be the case that all users of Chegg are cheating, at some schools essentially all cheaters are using Chegg, including to cheat on exams (students post course bibles, test banks, etc.). It doesn't help that Chegg is slow to take down materials even when explicitly told that the material was obtained illegitimately (which makes sense---empirically, illicit materials are the draw for at least some segment of their customers). I know several folks who have had to involve their university's legal team to get their course materials removed from the site.
- s3p 3y ago
  Interesting position, but, in my experience, it's been exactly the opposite. Our university works with Chegg to post false answers to questions in attempts to get students to stop using it for homework. They also look for course content posted on the site during exam weeks for the prerequisite math and science classes, and many students have been caught cheating because they posted a test question on Chegg. Maybe you didn't have such an experience, but that doesn't mean it's a paradise for cheaters. I used it for help solving textbook problems and occasionally for homework. For how much it costs, it was a supreme waste of money.
  - kolbe 3y ago
    > Our university works with Chegg to post false answers to questions in attempts to get students to stop using it for homework Shouldn't the fact that your university has to put effort into thwarting cheating on Chegg be evidence that cheating is a problem at your school?