I was amazed to read “Cheating Goes Global as Essay Mills Multiply” in this week’s Chronicle. Thomas Bartlett takes readers inside an “essay mill” to see how a business dedicated to cheating works — by churning out a steady stream of made-to-order essays for busy students who don’t have the time (or ability) to do the work themselves. The very matter-of-factness of the business of cheating — without anyone fussing even for a minute over the ethics of it all — staggers the old-fashioned mind.

Hear Ye College Professors. The days when student cheating was confined to a few quaintly scrawled words (in ballpoint ink) on the palm of a hand are gone forever. Today one orders a made-to spec essay — anything from a specific basic freshmen English composition to a grand Ph.D. thesis in aerospace engineering.

Like most professors, I have an arsenal of weapons and tricks I use in academic courses that are designed to prevent student cheating on examinations and papers. Most of them belong to the category of the obvious, and I won’t repeat them here. (Professors teaching fewer than 40 students ought to be compelled to take Remedial Cheating Prevention 101 if they don’t apply basic rules to prevent cheating in essay writing; in courses with more than 40 students, examinations are the only way to go.)

In my studio courses, as opposed to my academic courses, cheating hardly ever takes place. By watching students work during class, studio professor learn by heart their individual styles. But I have an anecdote to relate that proves for every rule there’s always one, sometimes startling exception.

Several years back, I had a very talented student in one of my drawing courses. She played on a women’s varsity sports team and was extremely disciplined in all her endeavors. As a drawing student, she mastered drawing concepts quickly and applied herself intelligently and with passion to advanced, fairly complex classroom assignments — all of it done with a deft touch. She missed class only when her team had an away game. And she always did excellent homework, and handed it in on time.

For the last homework assignment, I required a six-hour drawing (if you’re wondering, it’s pretty easy for an experienced studio professor to look at a drawing and know, more or less exactly, how long it took to make). The assignment came during athletic crunch time for the particular student I’m talking about — there were one or two games a week going on at the time, not to mention daily practice. She was obviously going to be pinched, even though I’d given plenty of time to complete it.

When I saw this girl’s homework my heart sank. I knew instantly that she hadn’t drawn it. In theory — if you hadn’t been me watching her draw over the course of a semester — it could have come from her hand. But visual people have visual memories. I not only knew that this girl hadn’t made this particular drawing, I knew who had made it — a student from a few years back, in a drawing course in which I’d given the same assignment. (Before you say, “Well, you should never repeat the same assignment,” this is an excellent assignment and I’m not about to give it up.)

In confronting the student, I let her know all the usual stuff — that I was disappointed in her, that she’d let herself down, that this was never a way to solve a problem in either art or life. Getting caught was bad enough (while tears streamed down her face she pleaded the case of “no time”), but because she was an ethical person — unlike any of the people in the Chronicle article — she was deeply ashamed of herself.

But what really got to her, what surprised her deeply, and showed on her face, was that I had spent the time grappling with her drawing enough to know that she hadn’t made a particular work of art. In an inverted sort of way, I was honoring her art. My eye’s ability, applied to her art, demonstrated to her that art occupied its own self-contained realm where truth and authenticity make up an essential part of its meaning.

The consequences for this student, academically speaking, were disastrous. I like to think that, in the long run, she learned from her mistake. As I said, however, she was an ethical person, and unlike today’s cheaters, she didn’t need any lessons.