Eva Guo (10) | STAFF REPORTER
In today’s highly competitive academic environment, students feel immense pressure to achieve top grades in order to secure a place in their dream schools and programs. Unfortunately, this environment has given rise to institutions known as credit mills. These organizations offer quick and easy courses that promise higher grades in exchange for a fee. Although these credit mills might seem tempting, they undermine the education system and are incredibly unfair to all students.
Credit mills exploit students’ anxiety about academic performance and university applications by marketing themselves as convenient solutions. They attract students desperate for higher grades. However, these credit mills prioritize their own profit over students’ learning, providing a barely surface-level understanding of the subject. Students enrolled in these programs may receive the grades required for admission to universities, but they lack the foundational skills and knowledge required to do well once in university.
This problem is worsened by the fact that universities often prioritize tuition money over the merit of their applicants. As long as a student meets the minimum grade requirement, they are admitted regardless of how those grades were obtained. Once in university, many credit mill students find themselves unprepared for the difficulty of post-secondary education. Feeling overwhelmed and underprepared, they often drop out within their first year, wasting both time and money.
The negative impacts of credit mills extend beyond the students exploited by them. Honest students, who work hard to earn their grades, are unfairly disadvantaged when others achieve inflated marks through unethical means. Such may be impelled to turn to such methods themselves, ruining their potential for years to come. After all, why bother working hard when there are shortcuts?
Credit mills are exploitative of vulnerable students who are victims to competitive academic environments. Such institutions are a serious threat to the integrity and quality of education.
