Parents Fund Kids' Cheating Habits

Term Paper-Hungry Students Find Eager, Paid Accomplices

(CBS)  Barrie knows the profile.

"We receive over 40,000 student papers every single day from all over the world," says Barrie.

When he created Turnitin.com, Barrie thought he'd put a stop to kids cheating, at least off the Internet.

"I refer to this as a mosaic term paper - a student has taken information from two student papers and from this Shakespeare Web site," Barrie says of one creative cheater's tactics.

But Barrie admits what students already know: The solution isn't only software, because the beauty of buying an "original" paper is that it's untraceable.

"When girls started handing me $50 to write a paper that took me under an hour, it was hard to say no," says Alex Tava.

Now a freshman in college, Tava cheated for classmates at a private high school in New Jersey. She says parents were willing to pay for good grades just like any other expense.

"They just got money from their parents," says Tava, of her "clients." "They got new cars from their parents, they got new shoes from their parents, they got new purses from their parents."

Tava was just one more expense in high school.

Janet Tava is still stunned by her daughter's revelation, but not surprised students were eager to cheat.

She says her daughter didn't see it as cheating.

"They never do because there's an entitlement that comes with this generation," says Janet Tava. "They don't see any of it as cheating.

"Credit cards are entitled, good cars are entitled and good grades are entitled. They are expected to be perfect."

As for Kristal, one of her "clients" graduated from college a few weeks ago. His career goal?

"He said that some day that he would be the governor of California and if I need a job he would hire me," says Kristal.

Kristal has stopped writing papers, but there are still plenty of people willing to take the cash so someone else will get the credit.