September 22, 2007

(Declaration : my first suit was black.Black suits are almost everywhere in Melbourne and I’m sure that’s the case amongst most cities around the world.

You may not be aware but a lot of fierce debate has raged all over the internet (Style Forum has 600 posts) about whether they are acceptable or not. Technically, they are against the ‘rules’ but… most readers wouldn’t care about the rules, let’s get on to reasons.

There’s several reasons for the man in business to avoid buying one.

1) Firstly, it’s unimaginative. Every Tom, Dick and Harry has one. Show a little personality.

2) Black suits look cheap. Why? Black suits are generally worn by people who can only afford the one suit (in case they have go to funerals.)

3) Black suits are hot . If you’re going to be wearing a suit all day you’ll want to be wearing a suit that’s comfortable.

4) Black suits are the servants’ uniform. I feel horrible saying this, but it’s true. Think waiters, think limousine drivers, think bouncers, think butlers.

5) They look horrible in photos. They swallow up the light.

I’ve been asked to look at a site that is one of the most controversial on the internet. It’s one that offers to write term papers and research papers on behalf of students - for a set fee, of course.

Firstly, to the website. It’s a nice enough design but for the logo, which is poor. They could also live without some of the widgets.

But then to the real deal. If you were desperately having trouble getting an assignment done, would you use a custom term paper service?

It’s a deeply controversial topic because no doubt any student caught using this kind of service would find themselves on the wrong side of an expulsion. It’s hard to argue the ethicality of this and I doubt even the website owners would either. They would point out that they are providing a service, meeting a demand, and that if they weren’t doing it someone else would be (and are.)

Interestingly enough given the business type, the website copy has quite a few basic mistakes in sentence structure. I was quite surprised by this, as this would be the first thing I’d be looking for as a potential customer. Then again, most potential customers of this kind of site would probably not recognise this.

In any case, if an essay were written like the website copy at a Bachelors Degree level there would be no problems. I wrote essays that were incredibly rough in written style yet received distinctions.

Following up from reading the site, I loaded up a couple of the sample papers and it’s quite reasonable. If I were a university administrator I would certainly be unhappy, that’s for sure. The quality of writing is of a high enough level for Bachelor degrees without question. I can’t pass comment on its suitability for higher levels of education as I haven’t tried a Masters but if I were dodgy enough to engage this kind of service it would probably be worth the price.

It’s quite cheap - about US$10 per 250 words. This puts it in the range of many a desperate student - maybe someone who has one assignment too many.

Seeing places like this really make you wonder how much success Universities could have combating this. The only real answer to this is to take the approach that the Victorian government did with senior high school students and ban people taking assignments home full-stop! Until then, websites like MasterPapers.com will continue to thrive.