At Academic Composition, we serve customers from all walks of life, who major in a variety of scholarly disciplines. The majority of our customers are accomplished professionals in their 30s who are looking to advance in their careers. Yet, to do so, they must obtain multiple academic credentials in disciplines that may seem only remotely relevant to their professional occupation. For example, many accomplished managers are required to pursue a degree in HR or Business Administration, yet it’s far from clear how writing a case study on Wal-Mart is relevant to their business experience. To be sure, one cannot learn the craft of management through a book and some practical experience is necessary in order to develop competence, in a way, on the job learning is crucial to developing competence.
Yet, one may ask if an experienced manager could supplement his skills with academic insight. For instance, he or she may already be quite familiar with what it takes to motivate disgruntled employees, but perhaps learning a thing or two about transformational leadership could expand their range of competence. Likewise, a nurse may acquire most of his or her essential skill on the job, but the academic experience could endow them with newfound knowledge that could not have been easy to acquire on the job. As persuasive as that may be, one may wonder what is to be said about fields that seem to have no practical applications. For example, if you have class on the intricacies of the 14th century Italian poetry, can we really say that acquiring such skill or knowledge is beneficial?
To be certain, one may say that such an experience is in and of itself enlightening and therefore intrinsically valuable, but one cannot apply that generalization to all assignments in Italian poetry. Not all professors are equally good at teaching, and not all assignments are structured in a manner conducive to intellectual growth. When you deal with an assignment that is not applicable to your career and does not serve a practical purpose, it is up to you to determine whether it is worth doing. If you believe you can acquire valuable knowledge that you would not have been able to obtain on your own, then the assignment certainly is worth doing.
Yet, if the project seems so poorly structured that it’s nearly impossible for anyone to benefit from doing such a chore, you would be well advised to outsource it. Conventional wisdom may suggest that outsourcing your academic projects is always wrong, as such an act may involve a violation of the university’s policy of academic integrity. Yet, our clients don’t buy that and can we blame them? It would certainly be naïve to say that we have to follow the rules of all institutions at all times. If that were true, would it follow that Reverend Dietrich Bonhoeffer was wrong to argue that true Christianity wasn’t compatible with national socialism? In his famous book, “Cheap and Costly Discipleship”, Bonhoeffer argued that there is a fundamental distinction between what is morally right and what’s socially acceptable.
In a similar vein, an eminent 20th century psychologist, Lawrence Kohlberg, argued that rule-based morality is primitive, if not altogether childish. Kohlberg maintained that moral development can be broken up into the following three phases: preconventional, conventional and post-conventional. In the preconventional phase, children tend to assume that obedience to authority is always justified. As they get older, they transition to the conventional phase of moral reasoning, where they move beyond the dictates of authority figures and accept broader rules of behavior. These broader rules of behavior include the laws of society, social mores, behavioral conventions and other standards societies employ to judge human behavior. However, the main problem with these rules is that they often contradict each other.
For example, the university’s academic policy may find our practice to be questionable, however, that is a mere violation of academic ethics, not laws. People often get the two confused, but there is an important difference to take note of: laws are injunctions backed up by threats of punishment from the government. Professional ethics consist of rules of conduct practitioners of a trade are expected to follow in order to preserve the integrity of their discipline. In academia, the code of academic integrity constitutes an instance of such rules, but only the institutions in questions can enforce them. In other words, while the university can discipline you for academic dishonesty, it’s not a matter of civil, let alone criminal law. Hence, academic dishonesty is not punishable by fines or incarceration: to this day, not a single person incurred a criminal penalty for violating the university’s policy of academic integrity.
Hence, Lawrence Kohlberg proposed a solution: instead of relying on the post-conventional rules that may contradict each other, it’s important to appeal to the broader universal principles in moral philosophy. There are many different ways in which one may approach these problems, but the three main positions are Utilitarianism, Deontology and Virtue Ethics. We will not expound upon all of them in detail here, but for now, we will show you how you can analyze this problem from a Utilitarian perspective. Utilitarianism is the thesis that the most morally commendable course of action is the one that maximizes the well-being for the highest number of people. Hence, you have to ask yourself how your actions will affect your well-being and that of others.
These are the questions you’d be well-advised to consider when deciding if it’s a good idea for you to outsource your paper.
Am I cheating myself out of a valuable learning opportunity?
A. Does this assignment help me cultivate knowledge that is applicable to my career?
B. If it’s not applicable to my career, does it allow me to pursue learning and personal growth in a way that I would not have been able to do on my own? In other words, is the process of doing the assignment worth the opportunity cost I would be forfeiting?
How is the well-being of others affected?
A. Would I really be less competent at my job or less capable of fulfilling my duty as a citizen if I were to outsource this assignment? Hence, is this paper truly essential to your long-term growth and education or does it seem to be busy
work?
B. Did your university have an apparently justifiable reason for requiring you to take the class, or does it seem like an unnecessary class they may be pushing on you to justify billing you for the additional credit hours? Are you undermining an admirable academic institution or are you dealing with a mere degree mill that offers little by way of quality education in return for the exorbitant tuition rates they are charging you?
Based on your answers to these simple questions, you should be able to carry out elementary utilitarian calculations to determine how the collective well-being of all parties involved would be best served. You will then know if you’re better off outsourcing an unnecessary assignment or if you need to bite the bullet and trudge through a project that’s an integral part of your education. Do not automatically assume that outsourcing your paper is always wrong, this is a moral problem you need to evaluate on a case by case basis.
