We are the owner and one of the professors from UnemployedProfessors.com. We help students cheat by writing their papers for them. AMA!

Do you ever find out if a student who used your services gets caught for cheating? I have a personal story that is relevant to your website in particular that you might find interesting:

I was a Teaching Assistant at the University of Toronto, and a Chinese girl in a fourth year class who would never show up to class (0% on participation worth 20%) submitted a very high quality risk management case analysis, a little over 3000 words, leagues ahead of what some of the other idiots in the class were writing. It was a great paper by MBA standards. So the professor and I called this girl in, and when we confronted her about the content of her paper, we found that she could barely even hold a conversation in English let alone tell us what her paper was about. Her academic misconduct case went all the way up to the university tribunal, which is like a council style hearing for academic integrity cases. We found out that not only had she been using essay writing services, namedropping UnemployedProfessors.com for her work over three years, it also exposed a ring of corrupt TOEFL authorities in China that apparently lead to the arrests of a bunch of people for fraud.

EDIT: Since this is getting some attention, some of you might enjoy actually reading some of the tribunal cases. They are public, with the names censored. It's a treasure trove of /r/JusticePorn quality entertainment.

http://judicial.governingcouncil.utoronto.ca/Reports/Tribunal.aspx

Search by [Outcome/Sanction: Expulsion] for the juiciest ones.

We've answered that in other comments, but no, we haven't heard much beyond an occasional negative review for a professor. Since our papers are original, the only way for a professor to prove anything is for the student to admit that they're guilty. However, obviously, if a student clearly barely speaks English, it's not that hard to prove the paper can't be theirs. At the same time, many non native speakers get help from official writing centers who correct their English, so it's not beyond the realm of possibility that the work is actually theirs.

I'm not surprised by your story; many of our clients are non-native speakers, often from China. I wouldn't be surprised if /u/IamDeleuzienne wrote those papers. Was it specifically our site? We hadn't heard about that case before. Thanks for sharing!

Interesting how this one isn't getting answered.

Edit: they've responded

We've got nearly 1,000 comments here; can't get to them all instantly unfortunately, but we're doing our best.

Edit: Thank you to whomever gave us gold. I've posted an extensive response to the comment in question in the meantime.

Have you ever failed a paper you have written? If so, do you refund the client?

It happens occasionally. Often it's the result of miscommunication, where the client or our professor misunderstood the requirements, or the client only provided partial instructions. The latter is a huge problem for us.

However, when this happens, our professors will usually offer a rewrite immediately, and if that's not an option, the client receives a refund.

How do you verify that they actually failed and aren't just scamming you? I guess that's the kind of scam that would only work once, anyway.

there really is no way to know. in my experience, the papers that don't succeed are usually because either a) the person has given me very little meaningful or contextualizing information or b) the request was completely unrealistic to begin with. I once wrote an entire master's thesis, start to finish, in < 12 hours, based entirely on one sentence. no idea how it turned out, and i got it done, but... never again.

I once wrote an entire master's thesis, start to finish, in < 12 hours, based entirely on one sentence.

Holy hell. I would want to know how that turned out. That one had to be squarely in your main area of expertise, right? Otherwise why even try in 12 hours?

at this point just about everything is squarely in my area of expertise.

Yup, I've seen /u/IamDeleuzienne successfully produce Master's theses in a variety of fields, ranging from Business to the Humanities.

But what about the sciences? I feel like that'd be harder to do without appropriate datasets / software / etc

I know /u/IamDeleuzienne can work with things like regression software and such. Not sure about higher level science projects. I don't think our Humanities professors would bid on those, and they definitely get fewer bids overall.

Speaking for /u/IamDeleuzienne, who is probably busy writing papers right now, it's a matter of picking up easy lower division science projects first. Then over time you pick up increasingly more difficult projects, and eventually, even though you were in the Humanities, you have no problem doing a 400-level science project.

What the holy Jesus fuck

I'm half tempted to enroll on a masters and pay you to do it in 12hrs just to see what happens

edit to be clear I'm joking and would never do this

Took me 4 years to get my degree. I don't fancy another one just yet.

Lmao oops accidentally got another Master's degree

Our professors joke about that a lot. "Might as well pick up another degree in our spare time, since I'm doing that stuff anyway."

I mean.. I'm guessing but probably was like a $10k paper at least, to get it done that fast 😂

Not sure what the highest paying project is that I've seen, but I definitely see ones that are over $3,000.

How much do you charge for something like that? My college days are well behind me, but I can't even imagine trying to do a thesis in 12 hours.

A lot.

Can we get an amount? For a friend, of course...

slides $10,000 under table

Whispers "Particle Physics"

100 page thesis in 4 weeks? You can probably get one of our profs to do that for approximately $2500-3000.

Yeah, there are absolutely cases where the client is clearly trying to scam us, and we do try to employ a peer review process there. If it's clear to us that our professor did the assignment as requested, then we may refuse a refund. And sometimes we're at fault too. Our professors are only human; they make mistakes, so then we refund the client.

I want to ask you a question, but I'm not good at asking them. Can you ask one for me?

Something about horses and ducks perhaps? Research studies show that this is a popular area of interest.

Okay, well, you asked for this. Would you rather fight 100 duck sized horses, or one horse sized duck? AND WHY?

I'm going for the duck sized horses, so I can bribe them with a single bag of diced carrots to join me in forming a miniature-horse army.

I don't want to get grabbed by the dick with a single peck of a giant duck beak.

Would you rather write 100 duck sized papers, or 1 horse size paper?

100 duck sized papers! $25 minimum project price, and a duck sized paper sounds like it would only be 1/4 of a normal page.

I noticed in an answer that some of your professors still teach as well as write for UnemployedProfessors.com

Have any of your professors received a project that was written by another of your writers?

As a follow up, have any of your professors seen a project posted from one of their own students?

Thanks!

They do! Most of our professors don't know each other. They're virtually all anonymous, except of course when they referred each other to the company. So in that sense there's no way to compare. I haven't heard of any of them finding projects from their own courses, but because of the nature of their job, they also have a better understanding of how to prevent their students from using a service like UP.

We do see multiple clients who are clearly in the same course, but who don't mention knowing each other.

How would a professor prevent students from being able to use a service like yours?

Oral exam. Call a student in, ask them to talk to you about how they found the sources.

How would you feel about submitting an essay for a student of medicine? Would you be worried that you're helping someone unfit to be a doctor a way into the profession?

Yes, those worry me the most. We don't see many people in med school, but rather disturbingly, a large percentage of our students are in nursing school or getting an education degree. Yeah, let that last one sink in...

What do nursing students have you write about? I am in medical school and I don't think I've had one assignment that would even qualify. I mean that as in we don't write papers, we learn, take tests, repeat. I assume nursing is similar, if not even more heavily based in hospital time throughout school. Just curious, thanks!

Former nursing student, current nurse here. Nursing theory papers, nursing research papers, leadership papers, community assessments, case studies.

While I don't think writing all those papers made me a better nurse, it is concerning that people wanting to join the "most trusted profession" make it there by cheating.

That's correct. Lot of case studies, community assessments, and lit reviews.

Your register page (http://unemployedprofessors.com/Signup.aspx) isn't HTTPS, as are pages you can sign in from. You should fix that asap.

And since automod requires questions:

Do you hire non-profs for the role? For example, could I make some scratch doing peoples CS homework?

We always need people good with programming, and we might end up having non-project work for you after getting slammed today. Feel free to apply at http://www.unemployedprofessors.com

How many papers did you get last month in January of 2017?

On average, we get around 1500-2500 projects per month.

You make more than the top 10% of college professors. I don't know if you came up with the business model, but you've certainly executed it. What kind of hours do you put in?

That is correct. I can't speak for the hours, because the vast majority of our professors picks up projects when they can, in between other jobs. (Most are not actually unemployed, they're teaching as adjuncts.) Our top professors work 40-80 hours a week depending on whether we're close to finals week in the semester system or not.

What was the average fee of those projects?

that is a question the admins could answer best. As of this moment, the average fee / price for projects in my queue is about $180.

(all figures in USD)

And how many can you churn out in a month? In other words, should I switch careers?

today I hit 4,000 completed projects (since late 2012).

So we're talking around $200,000/yr (fudging the numbers to make them round)?

Those prices include our commission. The site's expensive to run because we do a lot of marketing and several times a year we're hit by DDOS attacks (usually accompanied by death threats) that make it expensive for us to keep the server going while students are waiting for their paper with a deadline to meet.

That's about right.

January is a pretty slow month in general, but I believe u/unemployedprofs numbers are about right.

That's true, January tends to be on the lower end, and then of course around finals time on semester or quarter systems we get an influx of new projects. Summers are a little slower too.

You mentioned hatemail, what kind do you receive and from who?

And do you correct the hatemail and return it?

only if i'm bored

/u/IamDeleuzienne actually does this.

Death threats, DDOS attacks, journalists trying to infiltrate, etc. Recently an academic sent us hatemail from his official address. We reported him to his employer for sending threats and named him on our blog. Universities may not like us, but they also don't like their faculty sending unhinged threats of bodily harm to our site.

Assuming you know where your clients attend school, do you notice any trends? In other words, which school has a bunch of filthy cheaters? ;D

I second /u/IamDeleuzienne here, but I would say it's often for-profit universities. And a surprising number of Ivy League schools, where parents are paying their rich kids' way.

Have you ever written a paper you felt was worthy of publication? Better yet, have you ever written a paper that went on to be published under one of your clients' names?

We have! I see requests for a research article about twice a month. They get fewer bids, because most people in academia, even tenured professors, cannot guarantee that their own paper will be published, let alone guarantee it to someone else.

I've seen two or three get published. We just make it very clear that we make no guarantees.

Do you make some mistakes so the teachers doesn't know that you wrote it?

Good question. Many of our professors will offer to include a few mistakes (and we're only human, we make mistakes too) to make the paper more believable, but interestingly, clients typically turn down that offer. They tell us they want the best possible paper so they'll get an 'A'. Since our papers are original and pass plagiarism filters, that usually works out okay, but we recommend including a few typos at least.

How cheap/expensive is the service?

Our professors choose what to bid on projects, which varies depending on difficulty, area of expertise (we have more people who specialize in the humanities, so prices are more competitive), and deadline. Then the client picks which bid they prefer, which is often the lowest, but they may choose a higher one to work with someone with more experience, or with whom they've worked before.

To give us a more concrete sense of your fees, what has been the average fee for first-year undergraduate history essays of lengths around 2000 words?

Unless the deadline is very soon, an undergraduate history paper of around 8 pages double-spaced, with plenty of references, would probably average around $200.

With rare exception, I bid no less than $25/ double-spaced page, $37.50 for 1.5 spacing, and $50 for single-spacing (assuming 250-300 words for double-spaced, 350ish for 1.5 spacing, and 500-600 for single spacing). An estimated word count is always better than a page count.

Per page pricing would lead to a lot of papers submitted in Courier New, amirite?

We'll submit in whatever the client asks, but typically we encourage clients to specify a per-word amount. If they don't, we require our professors to deliver a minimum of 225 words per page.

Has anyone who has used your services ever emailed you to say they got caught?

No, though I've seen an occasional (rare) review of our professors in which someone says they get caught. Because we write original papers, it's pretty much impossible to get caught unless you get nervous and admit to it yourself. Which does happen.

Do you ever write lab report papers for phys/chem? I imagine you become very limited by the scope of data collection and methodology but it would be interesting to know

Those are definitely a smaller part of our projects, and sometimes they simply can't be done without physically being there.

Who retains copyright of the work your company provides? If a client were looking to get all or parts of a work to eventually sell, how do you handle that?

The work belongs to the person who commissioned it in this case, so they could sell it. We don't save or reuse the work.

What is often the motivation for students to purchase services like yours? Is it because they are lazy/unmotivated or are they sometimes overworked? And in the second case, would a student be able to send a half written essay for you guys to finish it?

I dont promote the idea of cheating, but seeing what ludicrous assignments are floating around like "Write a essay that is atleast 60 pages about a subject that isnt relevant to your study" etc. Makes me wonder if those overwhelmed students are the majority of your clients or if the majority is just lazy..

A variety or reasons! And yes, we do finish half-written essays quite often.

Some common reasons:

• Non-native speaker struggling to pass Composition or literature courses
• Humanities student struggling to pass a mandatory science course
• Student struggling to pass a required math course for a science major
• Student struggling with health issues or family illness, and unable to complete a paper on time
• Students is rich enough to just have someone else do it so they can go out and party

It's pretty fascinating, considering the amount of demand. Do you get repeat customers most of the time, or one offs? Because I'm guessing keeping up with the quality isn't easy for someone who hires this service when they're about to flunk.

Indeed, many repeat customers, and it would be wise to employ the same professor for an entire term if you're going to cheat, so that your work contains a consistent voice. /u/IamDeleuzienne frequently completes all coursework for an entire term for a variety of clients.

Did you do this AMA to get more people to your site knowing reddits main demographic group is people that would use your service so they could spend more time on Reddit?

Yes

What is the most common type of paper that is being requested? (History, Arts, etc.) Does it seem to come from more physical schools, or online?

Nursing, education, business, literature.

More physical non-profits, and online for-profits. People who go to online non-profits (SNHU, WGU, etc.) typically go there because they're less expensive, so they don't have the money to use our services.

Have you ever had an unemployed professor take a clients' job, only to then submit that job again anonymously, for another professor to take that job, at a higher wage?

Therefore, the first professor would make money of off the second professors writing, without having to do any actual work

For a while there was a guy who was taking projects from our site and reposting them on his own site and charging more. But then he had a weird mental breakdown, started sending us odd messages when we threatened to close his account, and I think his business fell apart after that.

We do a lot of marketing and we're the largest site out there though; there aren't that many legitimate competitors. We look for them, and as far as we've been able to determine, it's just individuals here and there doing this work.

Ever get a student of your class as a client? Talk about a conflict of interest.

Not yet!

Why do you feel helping people pretend to knowledge will help them later in life? As a company, I understand the profit motivation, but why do you feel (other than easy money) that this is a worthwhile endeavor?

It may not be a worthwhile endeavor. I don't know if I can adequately answer that question. Many of our clients use our services for general ed requirements or prereqs that they're struggling with. I've never heard of a client who used us for all of his/her courses (which would be very expensive), so I get the impression that they do most of the work themselves, they just get help for an occasional course.

Do you need writers? I have multiple degrees and worked in the History department for a large university helping students 'essentially' writing their papers for them.

We're always looking for applications from strong candidates. You can submit an application through http://www.unemployedprofessors.com

I come from a very different educational environment than that which exists in the US. I figure that the fact that your service exists and is apparently doing pretty well shows that there is something inherently wrong with the educational service of your country. What in your opinion is the biggest flaw/injustice that lead to your disillusionment with your system and your willingness to help students cheat that system?

Actually our clients come from all over the world, but especially the U.S., Canada, the U.K., Australia, and China. I would say around 30% of our clients are not in the U.S.

Those other four countries have very different education systems from the American one, so I don't think I could accurately point to a specific flaw in the American system.

Do you have anyone on staff that taught emergency management?

I'm not sure about emergency management specifically, but several of our professors work in Business Administration, Marketing, Management, Accounting, etc., so if you're looking for a specific project you could post it and see what bids you get. You can ask professors questions before you accept a bid, so that would definitely be something to ask about.

I agree with your views on today's education system and like to think of better ways to go about it for when I have kids. Any thoughts?

Who knows what the system might look like by then, but above all I would encourage them to work hard and find ways to enjoy the work, so that they will learn the most they possibly can, even if the system is broken. We're only a temporary solution.

How does the pay stack up against being an adjunct? How does it compare to, say, a junior faculty member? What are the qualifications one must have to be able to work for unemployedprofessors?

Well, some of our most prolific professors (who, admittedly, work long hours) make around $140,000 per year. Adjuncts commonly make $25-35,000, if they can find a full-time position, which many don't. Most people I know who are adjuncts make around $10-15K and are supported by their partners.

You're proud of what you do for a living?

I don't think any of our professors are proud of what they do for a living, but many are happy with what they do, as they get to apply their education and make a living, which is becoming very difficult with adjunct jobs that pay minimally and offer no benefits.

@satan has reposted a lot of your memes. why don't you follow him back?

Hah that's a good question, I'll pass that on to our social media guy :)