Ghosts for Hire

Into Thompson Hall at Teachers College of Columbia University trooped some 60 graduate students for a final examination on mental hygiene. Of those who took that exam last January, one was a ghost: a "Mike Benson" had been hired for $40 to substitute for a student uncertain of his own ability to pass. "Mike Benson" was, in fact, New York World-Telegram & Sun Reporter Alex M. (for

Michael) Benson, 32. And last week, largely on the basis of evidence unearthed by him, the New York District Attorney's men raided eight Manhattan agencies engaged in the business of hiring examination ringers and ghostwriters for college term papers, degree papers and even doctoral theses.

Aid to the Indolent. Newsman Benson had come by his noteworthy story, published in seven World-Telegram installments, with remarkable ease. Last December he got an advice-seeking telephone call from a friend who, after answering a want ad in the New York Times, had had an offer of $18 to ghostwrite a term paper for a Manhattan college student. Benson decided to follow up. Posing as a well-educated chap named Mike Benson, he got in touch with the agency that had hired his friend, also sent letters to nine other agencies advertising in the Sunday Times. Benson's first overture produced the ghost test-taking assignment at Columbia's Teachers College. His letters produced a response from a midtown Manhattan agency--whose proprietor promptly made Benson an equal partner.

In five days on this job Benson, who was operating with the D.A.'s full knowledge, rifled the agency files and turned in ample evidence that stand-in scholarship is a flourishing business. Over the past three years, for example, the agency employing Benson had accepted commissions to write theses for at least eight graduate scholars, for fees ranging from $350 to $3,000, on subjects ranging from the Elizabethan theater to the educational ideas of Robert M. Hutchins. The racket was national in scope: Benson found that New York agencies advertising in national periodicals attracted indolent scholars from as far off as Texas, Indiana and Alaska.

Cinch for the Sit-in. Although New York educators had long suspected the existence of the ghost-scholar racket, they were still understandably upset by Benson's evidence. Said Dr. Hollis L. Caswell, president of Teachers College: "The general moral tone in our country is tending to encourage this sort of thing. It is a little like our attitude toward the income tax--if you can get by with it, it is all right." Columbia might have been equally concerned at the facility with which Newsman Benson, himself an admittedly indifferent undergraduate student (Class of '49, with a C-plus average, at New York City's Queens College), sailed through an exam beamed at graduate students. Said Ghost-Scholar Benson, who wrote an A-minus test paper: "It was a cinch."

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