Wow... I'm actually surprised so many of you judged me as strongly as you did, helped me look at it from a different angle. I suppose it's a lot worse than I had managed to convince myself it was.
A few bits of additional info, my main business is straight math tutoring I help people with whatever math they want and teach them how to do it for $20 an hour, I know I've done people's take home work in this format but I never ask where it came from and I believe most of it is legitimate homework. But I don't ask where it came from I just explain step by step how to do whatever problem they come to me with. This is at least 90% of the work I get. Occasionally I get people who just want the work done for them and have no interest in learning the material and they ask me how much to do their work all for them, these are usually older people and often people in the army taking online classes, usually from private schools. I charge them around $40-$50 an hour they give me cash and logins for online classes and I take the test from a public computer.
I always justified this by saying these people probably wouldn't make it to graduate and since they were doing online classes with nothing to prevent this cheating it would be stupid for anyone to give a degree coming from such a school any credit. Which btw you shouldn't, online school is very easy to beat with cheating like this.
Thanks for the responses though, you're actually making me rethink the ethics of ever doing that. Even though it has helped me a great deal with supporting myself through school.
Yikes. Okay, the tutoring part is perfectly fine. I tutored people in French and English. It's commendable to explain to people how to do something.
It is NOT commendable to do their assignments for them or take their tests for them. That is grounds for them to be expelled (and you, if you also attend that school). As I said - unethical, morally wrong, reprehensible, and many other similar-meaning adjectives.
Something else that factors into this for me, though: I've been a teacher. My first college degree I took was in Elementary Education. I have also taught music. I firmly believe that there is no point at all in paying for the course if you're not going to learn the material. People who pay others to do their work for them are only cheating themselves, in the long run. And because of this, when I did English essays and found mistakes that I
could have fixed but the student wouldn't have learned any lessons from having it fixed, I let them learn the hard way. Obviously this wasn't anything as simple as a spelling mistake, misplaced semicolon, or whatever. But I had an insanely strict English instructor my first year there, and learned from the experience. I felt they should have that same benefit.
To some extent, I must admit that this also applied to some of my clients. There were some who accepted my recommendations to brush up on their basic writing skills. Sometimes they'd phone me even while working on their rough draft and ask questions related to grammar. And some never did learn. I sometimes wonder what became of them after they did their two years here and went on to Edmonton or Calgary and suddenly found themselves without benefit of a typist who actually took the time and energy to do more than just an adequate job. It was a proud day for me when one of my clients went off to the University of Calgary and, a few months later, phoned and said he had a term paper he wanted me to type - he said it was worth 50% of his grade and he didn't want to trust it to anybody but ME.
Something to ponder when you do somebody else's work for them: What if your work isn't good enough for them to pass the course? What happens if you screw up - do you offer a money-back guarantee? How would they make you refund their money if they weren't satisfied?
One of my clients, the first time we met, asked if I guaranteed she'd get an A. I told her, No. I do NOT guarantee an A. What I did guarantee was that I would do my very best to help her get the best grade she possibly could - but I couldn't turn a C or B paper into an A if the material wasn't there to begin with. The research and writing was all on her to do. I ended up having this client for two years, plus she recommended me to several of her friends and classmates. And she was a
very good writer, so I ended up learning in turn.
