As Online Courses Grow, Sites Offering Unauthorized Academic Help Get More Brazen

By Alisha Azevedo. Plenty of Web sites offer to write students’ papers or complete their assignments for a fee. But they appear to be growing more aggressive in promising to get students good grades for no work; some even promise to take entire online courses for students.
One new site is sure to worry officials embracing massive open online courses, or MOOC’s. It’s called We Take Your Class, and its marketing text says: “We do it all. Tests, Homework, Discussions, Projects, and More!” After all, the site states, “Life is too short to spend time on courses you have no interest in.” Managers of the site could not be reached for comment.
One key concern about the latest moves to embrace online education has been ensuring that students taking the courses are who they say they are. Some new online efforts have formed partnerships with testing centers where students can go to take tests in a place where their identity can be confirmed and proctors can watch for cheating.