Daily Trojan USC.edu

Issue date: 4/2/07 Section: News

Media Credit: Joshua Sy | Daily Trojan Top dollar | Students pay 25 cents to a few bucks for solutions in more than 300 subject areas on the Students of Fortune website.

Auction websites have been known to offer everything from designer bags to alleged apparitions of the Virgin Mary on a slice of toast, but one new site's product is of high demand to college students: homework help.

Shortly after graduating from Occidental College in 2006, Sean McCleese teamed up with a friend to launch the online tutoring site Student of Fortune.

The website, which functions like a cross between eBay and Yahoo! Answers, allows students to submit questions and place a "bounty" ranging from 25 cents to a few dollars for a correct answer.

Unlike some tutoring websites, the profits go directly to the person who submitted the answer, not hired tutors.

"Every college student is an expert at something," McCleese said. "I think that every student deserves an opportunity to get paid for their expertise."

McCleese acknowledged that some students might take advantage of the site as a quick way to get answers and turn them in as their own work.

Charles Lanski, a mathematics professor, believes the most effective method of learning should continue to be done the old-fashioned way.

"The accumulated experience is historically how learning and understanding works," Lanski said. "Unless you sit down with a paper and pencil, you're not going to get it. It requires effort and work."

USC Student Judicial Affairs officials believe Student of Fortune's intentions are not a blatant threat to academic integrity.

"If (students') purpose was having someone else do their work, that would be viewed as a violation," said Raquel Torres-Retana, director of Student Judicial Affairs and Community Standards. "But if people are using it as a tutor, then it's a tutor. It's the same online as it would be getting help at your neighbors apartment."

McCleese said he believes his site brings the traditional elements of private-paid tutoring to the Internet.

Within a time frame ranging from 30 minutes to several hours, the student will receive a various amount of possible solutions. Before finalizing a purchase, the potential buyer is only shown 20 percent of the answer to aid them in their choice of which answer is the one they are looking for.

Past transactions have included queries about hyperbolic functions for a dollar and writing advanced HTML code for $2.50, according to the website.

According to their terms of service, Student of Fortune does not guarantee every answer will be correct, but McCleese said many of the responders have identified themselves through their profiles as graduate students or professors.

"We've had multiple professors say they're telling their students about our site," McCleese said. "We've gotten a lot of positive feedback saying they're very pleased with it."

More than 4,000 students have registered for the site since its launch, including a handful from USC. James Wrubel, a pre-medicine student, said the site delivers quality answers.

"I find it quite useful," he said. "If not to look at the answers I get, but other people's questions as well. It's the same thing as having a conversation or getting help from someone at a coffee shop."

But other students believe the site invalidates resources already existing within the university.

"I think it's a bad step," said Tammy Zhu, a freshman majoring in business administration with an emphasis in cinema-television. "If a student has a problem they should ask their T.A. or professor because that's what they're there for; they don't charge anything."

McCleese said the site is dedicated to serve as more of an academic tool than a warehouse for answers. The authors of the answers are required to include every step and detail of the solution as a means to learn through example, McCleese said.

"The design is done in a way so that students can take the methodology and apply it to other problems," he said. "I understand possible criticisms. We try to be as morally acceptable as possible."

Inquisitors are only permitted to submit one question at a time as a means to combat cheating, McCleese said.

By discouraging students from uploading homework assignments in their entirety, McCleese said he encourages students to use his site as a stepping stone toward correctly finishing assignments on their own.

Though users can also submit completed assignments, McCleese said the sites take precautions - such as encouraging assignments to be broken up so only a single problem can be purchased at a time - so students give extra attention to each individual problem rather than get all of the answers with a click of the mouse.

McCleese said other websites carrying large chunks of information, like Wikipedia, present the same issues in terms of plagiarism.

"I don't think we could be held liable," he said. "We're not promoting cheating anymore than any other resource on the Internet."

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