StudySoup: Friend or Foe? Is StudySoup safe? Is StudySoup legit? Is StudySoup for real? EDIT: also CourseHero, Crystal Study, and OneClass.

(If you're here about Course Hero, Crystal Study, or OneClass, you can just scroll to the bottom if you like)

StudySoup.

Yes, StudySoup.

Is it safe? Is it legit? Is it for real?

I recently read an article on College Investor about StudySoup. It inspired me to begin a blog about things that bother me.

So, even though I dislike you passionately, StudySoup, I must thank you for inspiring me to write.

My comment on that article is as follows(Edit: I think the author actually deleted it, must not like bad publicity on StudySoup, oh well):

 The idea sounds brilliant!

If I read this article first rather than getting my inbox chock full of those advertising emails from enterprising young students attempting to earn an extra buck, I might have said that.

Instead, I became annoyed. I started to ignore all mass-emails; after all, I could take my own notes, thank you very much.

I missed several important messages from Teaching Assistants because I set my inbox to trash all student-sent mass emails, rather than slowly trudging through the copy-and-pasted pleas to look at their uploaded content on StudySoup. After a few weeks, I became perplexed. I'm a college student who started my own small business on a whim; could I use the mass-email system of the University to let my classmates know about it?

I became curious and decided to check it out. I pulled up the StudySoup website, and suddenly warning bells were going off in my head.  Something felt... wrong.

Something was definitely wrong. Maybe it was the decontextualized logos just pasted on the wall. Maybe it was the lack of links to the glowing reviews and features given by Forbes, TechCrunch, Wired, and CrunchBase. When I performed my own search, I couldn’t even find more than a few sentences outside of rapid-fire list articles for fast cash. Perhaps it's because, in my mind, if it seems too trustworthy, I intrinsically don't trust it till I have research worth trusting. 

Namely, my own.

So I took a deep breath and dove in.

I couldn't really find anything except copy-and-pasted responses. Red flag. The Q&A section? "Explain that you're not uploading.. any illegal material." Wait, it could potentially be considered illegal? Another red flag. Searching for reviews from former "Elite Notetakers” yielded mostly plastic-sounding marketing speak. Big Red(TM) flag. And about University policy on using mass-email and information systems to advertise personal commercial activities? Yeah, it's forbidden.

Finally, I read their Terms of Use agreement (...which was rife with errors both grammatical and http formatting; let me tell you, it was painful to read.)

That's where everything came together and I came to understand why the warning bells had been going off.

To start (in regards to their 'Regular Notetakers' or 'Elite Notetakers'):

"Consultant is an independent contractor and nothing in this Agreement will be construed as establishing an employment or agency relationship between Company and Consultant."

Well, not bad to begin with. Pretty straightforward.

"Consultant will perform Services under the general direction of Company, but Consultant will determine, in Consultant's sole discretion, the manner and means by which Services are accomplished, subject to the requirement that Consultant will at all times comply with applicable law."

Again, still in line with their forward thinking "student marketplace."

But then, you start looking at their terms and description on how their 'Notetakers' will be paid.

"Manual Base Pay: If consultant does not achieve necessary sales to reach Auto-Base Pay disbursement, then the consultant will need to submit the following proof documents to receive 50% of the base pay for that study guide. A snapshot to snapshots@StudySoup.com of the email or class messaging efforts directed to the entire class with appropriate link to study guide in question (forum or social media posts do not count) Include the URL to the materials in question Upon receiving this information as marketing proof, 50% of base pay will be unlocked for this class. The Quality Control team will determine if the Elite Notetaker will continue posting materials for that class or not moving forward."

So, still within tolerance. I don't mind them making sure that a student is actually doing the work to be paid, but then I went further…. (Warning: Block quote of boring legalese)

"Course Allowance Pay: Consultant is eligible for Course Allowance Pay only if the following conditions are met: Consultant advertises his/her notes once at the beginning of the course in which he/she is a StudySoup Elite Notetaker and each time he/she creates a study guide: Option 1: E-mail to class in each course in which s/he is a StudySoup Elite Notetaker, Option 2: Message the class using your class messaging system. [N]ote: If our analytics show otherwise, you will need to provide proof through a simple snapshot… Consultant must add accurate course information and accurate course size (course size is the size of the lecture or section you are in and can contact through class messaging or email; not the total of all sections combined necessarily)[.] Consultant does not upload a professor's PowerPoints, audio or video recordings of lectures, or a verbatim transcript of what the professor says in class. Rather, Consultant uploads his/her interpretation of course lectures or notes from his/her textbooks. Consultant must enter accurate exam dates, and complete accurate course information for the courses where they participate as an Elite Notetaker. [N]ote: If the Consultant doesn’t achieve a minimum of 3 sales per listed Study Guide, he/she may be placed on work probation or removed from the class as an Elite Notetaker negating any future pay. Not achieving any of the above qualifications may result in withholding of base pay, or immediate termination of the Consultant."

All reasonable requirements, at least, at first glance. Yet, in the words of the late Billy Mays (may he rest in peace), "But wait, there's more!"

When looking through the "General Prohibitions" section, it states, though nicely hidden in between two statements steeped in technical jargon, that the consultant is prohibited from:

"…Send[ing] any unsolicited or unauthorized advertising, promotional materials, email, junk mail, spam, chain letters or other form of solicitation…"

What this all boils down to:

StudySoup is well aware that most colleges have some sort of policy or agreement against using their mass email system for personal commercial activities but, regardless of how you put it, using that system is the whole basis of StudySoup’s pay system (y'know, the whole 'independent contractors’ deal). Empowering students? Ha. I went to my University's office of Student Rights and Community Policy and found out they've been cracking down on StudySoup since it was first introduced.

If you look and say, "Hey wait! Look at this little section right here" that says that when you upload your content, you guarantee that it does not:

"infringe, misappropriate or violate a third party's intellectual property rights, contractual rights, rights of publicity or privacy, or result in the violation of any applicable law or regulation, including but not limited to any university or other academic regulations."

Yeah, you're right. 

That's what it says. But we look back at the payment requirements, and we see that it requires you to enter in University information, without getting the University's consent to publicize. You can find all sorts of loopholes on StudySoup’s behalf if you feel like defending them, but this next one was the final nail in the coffin for me:

When you become a 'notetaker' for them, whether Elite or not, when you upload content, you "hereby grant to StudySoup a non-exclusive, worldwide, perpetual, irrevocable, royalty-free, transferable license, with the right to grant sublicenses, to use, display, copy, modify, create derivative works based upon, distribute, publicly display, publicly perform, translate, sell, offer to sell, make available for download, reproduce, publish, advertise, market, design and redesign your Content for Sale in connection with operating and providing the Services and Content to you and to other Account holders."

This basically means:

You grant them a license to do whatever they want with what you had uploaded, and they have no obligation to pay you again. In other words, let's say you were an 'Elite Notetaker' in a creative writing course. You had a sweet idea and you took it down on your notes but then forgot to delete it before you uploaded to StudySoup. Someone from StudySoup's higher ups stumbled upon your idea, loved it, and turned it into a triple blockbuster movie, with no credit or royalty to you. This would be completely legal. A bit of a dramatic example, but effective.

I don't know about you, but I'm a creative writer, physics major, and code monkey. I hold my ideas close to my heart; I don't mind sharing them, but I want to share them on my terms, not theirs.

Oh, but wait—if you accidentally infringed upon anyone else's Intellectual Property and you were caught, well...

"You acknowledge and agree to pay for any and all royalties, fees, and any other monies or monetary obligations owing to any third-party for any Content for Sale provided and uploaded by you to the Services."

StudySoup is not all it's cracked up to be with infringement on Intellectual Property in terms of the Professor, requirement to enter University information—which is not the student's to give out—and a system which seems... eerily similar to Multi-Level Marketing and a pyramid scheme.

Regardless of what StudySoup markets itself as, and what ideals upon which it was based, I feel like it has strayed far away from that original goal and is no more than another one of those "Sell your [insert item here] and get money quick" scams that pop up every few years and are questionable legally and incredibly amoral.

To conclude, I tip my hat to those who came up with the idea of using money to make a student more motivated. It's a grand idea that has been around for ages; it's called scholarships. 

This 'solution' of StudySoup's is nothing more than taking advantage of students, specifically freshman who don't know any better and and take the massive 100-level lectures (where it's most feasible to earn the amount of money that StudySoup advertises, the whole payment system is geared towards lecture-style classes). This adds another set of fees onto the already fee-infested forest of college, and I find it incredibly distasteful.

  

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Almost as disgusting and as morally ambiguous as using a virtual monopoly (but it's not illegal, I promise; Your department can choose any provider they want... just not you, the student) to force me to purchase my textbook/homework online for a hundred and fifty bucks when I could just purchase the textbook secondhand for twenty then do said homework on paper.

This online education landscape is starting to be formed, and I for one, do not want to trip into the pitfall of paying for all the bells and whistles when the hardback books were just as good, if not better (but that's another story for another day).

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EDIT (11/3/2016):
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So I've looked up some more stuff (Thank you Paige!):

If you'd like a less emotionally charged/more objective view of what is going on, check this article, from InsideHigherED.

Here are some similar sites to StudySoup:

• StudySoup's sister site, CrystalStudy: a "...2-week high intensity SAT course designed to help you boost your SAT test score. Oh, and the best part is that it's all done online!" (direct quote). After a closer look, it's basically just StudySoup as all links refer back to the main site.

• OneClass: The same premise as StudySoup but after about an hour of looking around, I had to follow the link to register an account to be directed to their Terms of Use. The company redeems credits you earn for gift cards. A red flag is that it doesn't specify how you earn credits until after you register. They're a Canadian company called NoteSolution Inc.

• CourseHero: A lot more... acceptable, I guess(?) These guys are more upfront and less confusing about what it means to upload and specify in their Terms Of Use that they'll only take and modify the content you submit to provide it to other Users. They also are pretty explicit about how you can earn money with them. Though, I actually had to create an account to find out a lot of information. You don't have to advertise on your college e-mail to others to receive pay (as far as I'm aware).

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