Shmoop explains what happened at TESU, says it's temporary...

[Merlin]

It's easy to get a lot of online courses completed quickly. There are websites where you can hire someone to take your online courses for a fee. That's why I prefer CLEP. The security and proctoring for CLEP makes CLEP credits more credible.

WHAT??? I've been killing myself since October and I could have been unscrupulous and hired someone to do all this work? I've not even hired anyone to write all these stinking papers, let alone take the exams. Apparently I'm far too honest. Sigh.

Hah, nice!

What's a little academic integrity between friends, eh?

---

It shouldn't mess anything up. ultimately. Shmoop may just have to add proctoring.

I don't see Shmoop doing that. They would have to increase their prices, make changes to their design, and who knows what else. I don't think would really have an incentive.

It shouldn't really be all that much work. It's mainly about adding the back end API calls to support the proctor tools to restrict taking certain final exams unless proctoring is in place and then to the proctor to verify the exam has been completed for credit, etc.

If they add support for proctoring, they don't have to include proctoring fees in the price... it would be up to the test taker to pay for those. This could work the same as when Saylor added support for proctoring to their site, and that didn't add any costs other than the proctor fee.

That would raise the price to at least $25 more per course for the person wanting the courses. If a person wanted to take one class a week at shmoop that would more than double the cost to that student for a month. $100 for the tests and $88 for shmoop subscription. I won't pay that much for their courses. I barely want to pay the monthly subscription due to how annoying they are.

I would venture to guess that their college plan isn't their biggest seller. They offer far more things than the 57 ACE courses. I just don't see them adding proctored test due to just 1 institution. I believe I read somewhere that WGU doesn't accept shmoop courses, they didn't make changes for them. There are over 2000 universities and colleges that Accept ACE. At least that's what every provider says. That's a lot more than what is considered "the big 3" here.

I could be wrong, but I just don't see it. If they do make changes I don't see it happening until their current ACE recommendations are close to expiring.

Well, $25 more for ProctorU or $15 more for RPNow, but yeah it would add end cost to the test taker. Even at $25 more per course, they're still cheaper than most of the alternatives, particularly if you take several courses during a month.

For folks who don't care about the format and just want specific course credits, I don't think an increased price is bad. I'd probably still pay it because they have several more interesting GenEd courses that aren't available anywhere else. I just wouldn't take as many courses as I'd originally been planning to take.

As for the ACE courses, they seem targeted primarily at high school and homeschool, so I agree that the college courses are probably not their main focus. But if it isn't too expensive to make whatever changes they need to make, I suspect they'd still be willing to do it if it is worth the ROI. It would add to their revenue stream adding proctoring may increase their credibility enough that places like WGU would start accepting their courses.

This is all conjecture anyway. I'm keeping my fingers crossed though.