Campus Practice Controversial : Professional Note-Takers Thrive, Professors Profit

The controversial practice of students paying stand-ins to attend their college classes is a thriving business at such prestigious schools as Stanford University.

And on some campuses, including the University of California, Berkeley, and UCLA, professors who permit the paid note-takers into their classes receive cash payments.

“Frankly, I’m horrified by the fact that it’s taken for granted,” said Todd Gitlin, a sociology professor at Berkeley, who will not allow professional note-takers in his classes. “I think students use it as a crutch.”

Note-takers have heard the lectures over and over and take better notes than students scribbling during an unfamiliar class, said Berkeley history professor William Slottman, who has allowed note-takers into his classes for several semesters.

$17-$21 a Course

“He’s heard me give these things so many times, he can remember my better days,” Slottman said.

At Berkeley, the service is run by Black Lightning, which sells notes for $17 to $21 a course to 10,000 subscribers each semester. Black Lightning pays note-takers from $6 to $12 an hour, with the higher rates paid for technical classes. Most note-takers are graduate students.

Proponents argue that students use the notes to supplement their own attendance at class, not as an excuse to sleep in and skip lectures.

“You can’t just get Black Lightning notes and do well in class,” Berkeley note-taker Jackie Krentzman said.

“We have huge lower-division classes where students really do get easily lost. That’s why this flourishes here,” said another Berkeley note-taker, Carol Baird, a single mother who has a doctorate in zoology and supports herself by taking notes in four science classes.

Lorrie Oelkers, manager of Black Lightning, said the service is a way to get ahead, not an easy excuse to avoid work.

Alan Dundes, a professor of anthropology and folklore at Berkeley, accepts the service’s royalties: 50 cents a semester for each student who signs up.

“I’m providing my stuff, my material, my ideas,” he said. “If Black Lightning is going to make a living, I feel I should get something for it.”

In large classes, royalties run up to $375, and some instructors donate them to teaching assistants to pay for parties, Oelkers said.

At Berkeley, paid note-takers have been on campus since 1934, according to Tom Winnett, who began as a note-taker for Fybate in 1946 and went on to own the business until 1976.

Jonathan Knight, associate secretary of the American Assn. of University Professors, said his organization has never addressed the issue of note-takers. He calls the practice dubious.

‘They Don’t Learn to Listen’

Judith Gruber, associate professor of political science at Berkeley, is among faculty members who disapprove of the practice.

“If they have someone else take notes for them, they don’t learn to listen and distill,” Gruber said.

And note-takers are not 100% reliable, as Black Lightning learned this semester when a man responsible for four science classes quit without word before midterms.

By the time Oelkers realized that he had quit, the service had missed a week of classes, and students flooded the office with calls, she said.

The service scrambled to compile notes for three of the classes, but students in one chemistry class were given refunds, she said.