Theory on the Future of the Academic Outsourcing Industry

My theory on the academic outsourcing industry is that it will inevitably enter the mainstream, just like various other forms of outsourcing. Put yourself in the shoes of a student. To the left you have professors, to the right you have career and corporate.

Professors / Faculty

When you look at professors ten years ago versus today, the trend is from little/no outsourcing to full-out outsourcing. They send TAs to teach lectures, draft exams, proctor them, and grade them. Perhaps more significantly, the major online textbook publishers are increasingly offering online tool suites complete with prepared quizzes and tests. More often than not, when we execute an online quiz for somebody, the answers are accessible online because the verbatim questions are completely Google-able. Professors are huge outsourcers.

Our industry is only really value-adding to students whose professors fit the lazy profile above. My father is a medical school professor, but he doesn't even bring lecture notes or slides to class, much less a textbook. He has all the chemical compounds and teaching content up in his head and he believes quality teaching only comes through great face-to-face interactions between student and professor, and by careful note-taking on the part of the students. Professors like him pose the greatest challenge for our industry because completing high quality work necessitates deep knowledge of what is discussed in-class. Google-able content becomes extremely restricted.

In short, our industry is able to exist and thrive because professors are lazier than ever, and becoming even lazier.

Career / Corporate

Outsourcing is clearly mainstream in corporate. If I am hired as a marketing manager at Pfizer, my responsibilities include market research, advertising allocation, strategy development, and other stuff. I wouldn't perform any of those tasks on my own. I hire MR vendors like IMS or BCC, I hire advertising agencies to allocate my spend and channels, and I hire top consulting firms like Bain/McKinsey/BCG etc. to develop a strategic marketing plan.

As important, in most corporate settings, the nature of the work is largely disconnected from academic curriculums. This is evident by the fact that (1) fresh graduates are not taken seriously, because in the professional world experience >>>> theoretical knowledge; and even more significantly by (2) whatever company you work for, you are retrained according to that particular organization's SOPs. To build on the earlier example, if I am hired as a marketing manager at Pfizer and then leave to take the same role at Johnson & Johnson, J&J will retrain me. My wife graduated economics then went to work for a major bank. She was trained and presently uses none of the knowledge she graduated with. This is the norm, not the exception, and this pattern effectively renders many academic curriculums dysfunctional at best and moot/redundant/pointless at worst.

Another reason why the industry will become mainstream--

Plagiarism is BS

The only people who care about plagiarism are professors. The principle interest of most professors is conducting research and authoring publications--specifically being first author and taking credit for research--with teaching being viewed as the added "cost" of being affiliated with and receiving research grants and resources from an accredited academic institution. I honestly believe most students do not give a rat's ass about plagiarism. Students just want to pass and graduate, and hope to earn a high enough GPA to land a job that will enable them to pay back their student loans. In short, the notion of "plagiarism" is the construct of elitest professors and because it matters to them in their community's p contest, they push it onto students as well and tell them it should matter to them. Moreover, if the writer does not mind if the student takes credit for their work, then the law will never have any say in the matter. The question of adequate education is settled separately via professional licensing systems. For these reasons, I believe our industry will always continue to exist within the boundaries of civil/criminal law.

There's more to my theory but I'll stop there for now. Interested in hearing your thoughts.

Not so sure about that; students want to pass and graduate and professors don't want to deal with problems either. Besides, what would change if the 'academic outsourcing industry' was mainstream; it is (and will be) legal to order a custom academic paper and use it as an example for your own, original research.

Som Mittal, former president of NASSCOM: For our industry this was the first-ever headwinds we saw. impacted not just the Indian companies here but the multinational companies and captive centers in India as well. Today, with outsourcing being the top business trend, the biggest question on everyone's mind is: what will the future of the outsourcing industry look like.

I agree with what TMG is saying. Back in the day, a student in my field ( foreign language) had to study 8 novels( in-class discussions on interpretations) and meet with a two different tutors for an oral exam during which one had to be able to translate straight off the page from random page chosen by tutor. Finally, we had to write a shorter academic essay in order to show that we had learnt the ropes of narrowing down a topic, finding sources, reading up on them, writing using one of the referencing systems and so on. Now, all this has been replaced by a major paper. Where did language learning go? Proficiency levels are dropping and I am shocked by the poor level of younger colleagues' proficiency.

I was under the impression that the articles, "a," "an," and "the," were part of "the ropes" when one is writing term-papers in English.

Want to join the circus? Go to clown school.

The current financial crisis faced by the United States has created a situation in which many workers are going back to school. Workers who were secure in their careers are facing layoffs or the threat of layoffs, which is causing them to want to obtain additional skills to find employment. Old ideas about higher education only being for young people planning to begin their careers has changed. Older adults with professional experience are attending colleges and universities, which is not only changing how workers view higher education, but also how employers treat higher education. The trend toward more adults pursuing higher education will cause workers, employers, and institutions of higher learning to change previous negative stereotypes about adults that pursue higher education.

For workers, the trend in adults pursuing higher education has meant that returning to school has become less stigmatized. It used to be that adults returning to school were viewed as people with extra time or extra money to pursue learning as a hobby. In the current economic climate, however, adults pursuing higher education are perceived as individuals who are attempting to protect themselves against layoffs or the threat of layoffs. These adults are also believed to understand that economic changes are causing some industries to become less financially viable while other industries are growing and producing higher paying jobs.

Companies have been impacted by the trend toward adults pursuing higher education. More companies are having to make concessions for employees to pursue higher education in the form of providing some flexibility in scheduling to accommodate class schedules. In the coming years, it is likely that more companies will find that employees are less able and willing to work overtime or extended hours because of the need to use more personal time to attend college classes. Companies may also find that more employees are less loyal because as they achieve higher levels of education, they will seek out employers who will be willing to compensate them for the additional knowledge that have gained.

Colleges and universities are already discovering that adult students are not the same as the traditional college student with regards to their expectations about the education process. Adult students expect to be respected for the knowledge and experience that they bring with them to the classroom. Furthermore, adult students often want to engage in courses and subjects that the believe will be beneficial to their specific career and life goals. In the coming years, it is likely that colleges and universities will offer greater flexibility to adult students in terms of the types of courses needed for specific disciplines, as well as the ways in which adult students can demonstrate competency, such as providing credit for professional experience and on-the-job knowledge.

The trend toward more adults pursuing higher education will cause workers, employers, and institutions of higher learning to change previous negative stereotypes about adults that pursue higher education. While some changes impacting adults, employers, and colleges are already occurring, even more changes will take place. The idea of the adult student will become more common and companies and colleges will have to adjust their operations to accommodate them.

Millions in student debt in most first world countries with many grads slinging coffee and burgers?

Give me a bloody break about fairness and moral 'backbone.' It's a joke at best.

"Pi contest, BS"? Really, whether you meant this article for a formal research paper or a submission to a professional journal, your choice of words are not very respectful to the reader. I was expecting a more respectful and analytical tone in your presentation, specially since you are defending an industry that is concerned underground and illegal in most academic fields. Whether professors choose to have the TA perform most of their tasks or not, that is their prerogative. The TA still bases his method of teaching on the professor's instructions and he cannot deviate from that. As for the plagiarism thing, we both know that there is a reason professors focus on that. They want to be sure that the students actually understand the lesson and don't just copy paste information for the sake of the word count.

I do not believe that the academic outsourcing industry can ever go mainstream because it represents something that academicians frown upon. The fact that students can have someone else do the work for them and then get a grade for it. It is an industry that gives the professors a finger because the students can legally get away with not doing their work. As long as they submit their requirements, the professor has to pass them. There is nothing in the rules that say the students have to prove they did the work. If the industry is out in the open, then the reasons why the students use the service will be nullified. The professors and teachers will see to that. Which is why the academic outsourcing industry will forever be destined to be whispered about in student circles and an open secret among the faculty and the learners.

Whoever wrote the original post obviously wrote it during the time when the industry was not struggling to remain relevant in a pandemic scenario. The academic industry has changed. Adjustments to homework, exams, and research have also been enacted to help students adjust to the new learn from home or mix learning setting. While the education industry tries to sort itself out, the academic writing companies and writers are left on the sidelines. We have to wait for the normalization of the academic setting before we can even begin to create a new work system / adjusted future for our own industry. It is difficult to predict what the future now holds for both the company and freelance writers now and in the immediate future. Everything is still up in the air and this semester, will be our semester of adjustment, just like the other students. All future plans for company and writer growth are on hold until further notice. Right now, there is no theory and no predictable future for the academic outsourcing industry.

What is your theory about why this industry is "struggling to remain relevant" when professors are still assigning just as many writing projects now as they were before the pandemic? Why do you think it makes such a critical difference to this industry that many classes are now conducted virtually? Hasn't the submission process for written assignments often been virtual for at least a decade? (Since the title of this thread is "Theory on the Future of the Academic Outsourcing Industry," there's absolutely nothing "off-topic" about these questions.)

Academic outsourcing is dying a slow and ignored death. Nobody seems to pay any attention to the regular demise of academic writing companies and the retirement of once highly active independent writers in this field. There is no future in academic writing and outsourcing where AI is fast taking over the human job. Pretty soon, AI will be able to judge a plagiarized paper for itself, which would mean that even plagiarism checkers may see their usefulness short lived.

AI is far from being able to replace human academic writing. It spews out the same parroted writing style, includes incorrect and made-up information, cannot form objective arguments properly, doesn't understand the complexities of wider context, etc.

The world is fast waking up to the amount of AI slop being churned out by everyone in every industry, and it will soon be resented. The use of AI is obvious and people will automatically start to associate AI garbage with failure, low IQ and laziness.

Exactly.