Typical example of college writing I see

[Midnight Writer]

71. I used to type up papers for college kids around 1970-1972 for cash.

I only graduated from High School, myself.

They would give me something along the lines of the original example. Run-on sentences, misspellings, bad grammar and punctuation, incomprehensible gibberish. These were not papers I would ever turn into a High School English class, let alone college level work.

I, being the conscientious guy I am, started out trying to fix these papers so my customers would not flunk. To my surprise, my clients were upset that I would change their paper. They knew what they wanted, and my role was to simply type it up. So I did.

The surprise came when these papers came back with As and Bs. Most of these papers were from engineering classes, and I assumed that the writing aspect was not given much weight in the grading.

I also worked many years in an office staffed by business school graduates. I would get their memos and notes, and they were written as if by a child. It did not seem to slow their advancement up the corporate ladder. Posting their degree in their office seemed sufficient to pave their way to the top.

I don't think this is a new phenomenon.