It was relatively easy to catch cheaters in my high school classes; they weren’t very good at it and copied Wikipedia verbatim, or had the same wrong answer on a quiz as the person next to them. Cheating in college, however, is more complicated. The Nov. 19 issue of the Chronicle of Higher Education features a first-person account by someone who has “ghostwritten” thousands of student papers in his full-time job for a large essay-writing service. “You’ve never heard of me, but there’s a good chance that you’ve read some of my work. I’m a hired gun, a doctor of everything, an academic mercenary. My customers are your students,” the anonymous writer states to the readers of this publication — college teachers.

And that brings up what is most powerful about his account: He writes well. His prose is simple, direct and cogent. He wanted to write novels, but his college didn’t encourage this passion. So he used his composition skills to write other students’ papers, and has continued to do that for a living. This year he will earn $66,000.