Parents are paying adults big money to do their kids’ homework

The New York Post reports:

On a recent weekday night, Ben is holed up in his Bushwick, Brooklyn, apartment doing homework — reading “A Separate Peace” for an eighth grade “reaction paper.”

And to pay his rent.

Ben is 27 and already has an Ivy League graduate degree and several national arts awards under his belt. A freelance writer, he’s been hired by a harried Park Slope, Brooklyn, mom to help her 13-year-old daughter keep her head above water in honors classes at a small private school. Ben pockets $350 for each 500-word writing assignment.


“[The mom and I operate] under the polite fiction I write a paper that is to be used as a ‘guideline,’ but I think we all know that’s not true,” he says.

Ben, who advertises his services on Craigslist, is just one of many members of the local creative class padding his or her unsteady income by taking on middle-school assignments. (As with everyone in this story, he asked that his last name be withheld.)

We are moving to a world where the only way to test people is: the live event.