SilasBarta:

It's named after the phenomenon in which someone with virtually no knowledge of the field sells the service of writing papers for others who don't want to do the work, and are never discovered, with their clients being granted degrees.

I agree this is indicative of serious pathology of one sort or another, but in fairness, I find it plausible that in many fields there might be a very severe divide between real scholarship done by people on the tenure track and the routine drudgery assigned to students, even graduate students who aren't aiming for the tenure track.

The pathologies of the educational side of the modern academic system are certainly a fascinating topic in its own right.