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[Keith Palmer]

Has anyone else seen this article?
 http://it.slashdot.org/it/08/06/26/1239225.shtml

That's downright scary! Outsourcing of dissertations? How is that even *possible*?

Most professors I know subject their students to a pretty strict oral review, where the students have to really know their stuff in order to be able to talk about the topic for at least a good 30 minutes or so, usually over an hour.


Has anyone had a student who has tried this (and gotten away with it? or not gotten away with it?)

 - Keith

[LEE EDWARD ALLEN]

The story originally appeared at this site: http://management.silicon.com/careers/0,39024671,39250909,00.htm?r=1

It doesn't appear that entire dissertations are being farmed out, just the coding work (for computer science students, most likely). This would be hard to detect, unless the professor grilled the student on how he/she actually wrote the code, what logic and algorithm was used, etc. But ready-made dissertations have been available for years now.