Is selling class notes educational enterprise or academic fraud?

Jane Brannen’s diligent studies in AP World Civilizations paid off in cash when, with permission from her teacher, she sold her textbook outlines to classmates for $2 a week. “Since I would have been doing the work anyway, selling the notes was a convenient way for me to earn money while saving other students time,” she said. But when Brannen started AP U.S. History, the teacher ended her entrepreneurial education enterprise.

Brannen, now a graduate student at the Missouri School of Journalism, stopped her note-selling career in high school, but many students have had the same idea and are using online platforms to buy and sell the study materials they create for college courses. Buying pre-written papers or completed assignments clearly violates academic integrity, and some academics say selling class notes fits into the same category. But others say it’s another way to promote student success and give good students a little income on the side.

Cengage Learning, a textbook publishing and educational services company, announced a partnership this month with Flashnotes.com, an online marketplace where students buy course-specific, student-generated study guides, notes, flashcards, and video tutorials from other students.

Michael Matousek started Flashnotes.com in 2010 as a senior at Kent State University. Student sellers get 70 percent of all sales and set their own prices, although Flashnotes.com recommends selling notes and study guides for 75 cents to $2 per page. It’s a profitable business for some students, with the website “leaderboard” showing some sellers earning thousands.

“It’s peer-to-peer teaching,” said Lester Lefton, president emeritus of Kent State University and a Flashnotes.com board member. “It’s students helping the professor get across a point that the student might otherwise not get.”

Cengage product officer Jim Donohue called the partnership with Flashnotes.com “the sharing economy at work in education.” Also known as “collaborative consumption” and the “peer-to-peer economy,” the sharing economy uses online platforms to market services such as an overnight stay in someone’s spare room or a car ride to the airport. The practice of “sharing” goods and services for a small fee increased during the recession, but the services sometimes “find themselves in conflict with the complex rules that govern some industries,” according to a 2013 article in The Economist. For example, some landlords say their tenants have violated leases by sub-letting rooms on Airbnb.

The sharing economy surrounding study materials has also run into problems with regulations. A Chronicle of Higher Education blog reported in 2010 that California State University sent a cease-and-desist letter to NoteUtiopia, an online note-sharing service. Cal State cited a California law that prohibits “unauthorized recording, dissemination, and publication of academic presentations for commercial purposes,” including “handwritten or typewritten class notes.”

Some academic integrity policies also prohibit selling notes. The Lone Star College System in Texas lists selling or purchasing notes as a “dishonest/unethical” practice.

Students using Course Hero, another online platform for buying and selling study materials, agree to follow their school’s rules. “It is the user’s responsibility to understand the academic integrity requirements at their institution to ensure that using online study resources like Course Hero does not violate their institution’s honor code,” the company’s website explains.

Brannen believes using other students’ study materials can streamline education, but she draws a moral line when study aids enable students to skip out on true learning. “Reading a summary of Shakespeare is not the same thing as immersing yourself in the story and experiencing the language,” she said. “But if the only benefit you’re getting from a class is a collection of facts, you might as well do the tasks as efficiently as possibly.”

Flashnotes.com doesn’t take anything away from education but provides “extra lubricant” to make the “engine of learning” run more smoothly, Lefton said.

“As a professor, as somebody who’s taught thousands and thousands of students, my goal is to get students to be successful, to know the material, to understand the concept,” he said. “And if I don’t get it across perfectly or if a student has to miss a class … let him buy the set of notes.”