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An industry that helps Chinese cheat their way into and through US colleges

reuters.com

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Re: An industry that helps Chinese cheat their way into and through US colleges

#31

Post by coredog64 »

Afton wrote: post #10
ori_b wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But often the consequences are rather light. I can't think of anyone facing any serious repercussions -- the worst was failing an assignment.

I've taught university classes, and failed students on the class for cheating. But it's true that I haven't seen anyone kicked out of a program or a university for cheating.

Anecdote: Foreign student where I went to school flat out cheated on the final. When caught, he copped to it. A humanities prof then went to bat for him, saying that it was okay to cheat where he came from. They didn't expel him.

Re: An industry that helps Chinese cheat their way into and through US colleges

#33

Post by kyebosh »

SilasX wrote: post #16
whack wrote: post #9

Cheating is and always should be a pox that needs to be eradicated. But let's not turn a blind eye to what's happening here locally. Parents in the 1% spend an extraordinary amount of money and resources on college-prep companies, many of which tell the kids exactly what extracurriculars to take, what to do after school, and virtually write the entire outline of their admissions essays. It's little wonder that school…

Wait, what? You don't see the difference between "here's what you should study to pass the test" vs "here is the answer for that specific question"?

Careful with the strawmen; it was never stated that there is no difference. The point I read was that unfair advantage should be discouraged in all forms, no matter how insidious or subtle. I think it's a very valid point: You don't need to be a moral absolutist, but it's only fair to keep an eye on the nuanced avenues of unfair advantage as well as the explicit ones.

Re: An industry that helps Chinese cheat their way into and through US colleges

#34

Post by benten10 »

whack wrote: post #9

Cheating is and always should be a pox that needs to be eradicated. But let's not turn a blind eye to what's happening here locally. Parents in the 1% spend an extraordinary amount of money and resources on college-prep companies, many of which tell the kids exactly what extracurriculars to take, what to do after school, and virtually write the entire outline of their admissions essays. It's little wonder that school…

YES!

And I don't want to piss of the uhh, bros among us, but it was extremely unfair as an international student to see mediocre fraternity brothers party through the semester, and then using their 'frat-connections' (basically the DL on all the old questions sets, collected over decades, and detailed coaching by fellow brothers on likely questions and answers) due exceedingly well in the exams, and then use their frat connections to land exceedingly awesome jobs. Blame the Chinese all you want, it hurts because they're the 'other'. (/rant. Sorry. Makes me really mad. I WORKED HARD TO LEARN AND ENJOYED CLASSES.) Funnily enough, I did exceedingly well in those exams that were open book (instructors knew the 'sharing of past papers happened, so they changed questions types) to which I didn't any scrap of paper. /humblebrag. But yeah, the system is unfair as it is.

Having said that, dear Americans, as broken as things are (despite those gosh darned 'cheatin' Chinese', as Trump would say), the system is better than anywhere else. Thanks for that : )

Re: An industry that helps Chinese cheat their way into and through US colleges

#36

Post by stvswn »

godzillabrennus wrote: post #19
hoodoof wrote: post #13

I know its naive but I find it really hard to understand why people value the piece of paper more than the knowledge. The good news is that you can't cheat as a software developer. Or maybe you can? Depressing thought.

I share your sentiment. My sibling did Dartmouth for undergrad, Harvard and MIT for graduate school. I bootstrapped and sold a handful of companies after dropping out of college. People need information to judge and trust others by. Information about ones capabilities should be verifiable by your accomplishments. At the start of a career though you have no accomplishments. Companies, especially larger more establishe…

This is absolutely true, but it's not only about being risk averse in hiring -- it's about outsourcing your selection process to the universities. If you had to find 100 young people to be the next class of analysts at your fancy consulting firm, where would you start looking? It just makes sense to go to the places where high-achieving young people congregate. There's not a better system (maybe standardized testing would work, but that doesn't solve the problem).

Re: An industry that helps Chinese cheat their way into and through US colleges

#37

Post by rhizome »

kyebosh wrote: post #23
hoodoof wrote: post #13

I know its naive but I find it really hard to understand why people value the piece of paper more than the knowledge. The good news is that you can't cheat as a software developer. Or maybe you can? Depressing thought.

In my experience it has been declining in importance. In the past I'd see jobs advertised asking little more than a degree (or equiv. industry experience). Today I still see degrees listed, but often as "preferred" & always amongst a litany of other skill-based requirements. Seems to be that there's at least some commercial pressure to value the "piece of paper" less. Of course it could also be that a degree is now t…

In the US it's illegal to require a degree for almost all postitions that people around here are concerned with. Companies always try to elide this, but bizdev, marketing, programming, sysadminning, sales, and starting a company are not classified as the kinds of skilled positions for which a diploma can be required, such as engineering, finance, architecture, law, medicine, etc. I don't know if this maps perfectly to board-certified professions (IANAHR), but there does appear to be a pattern.

Re: An industry that helps Chinese cheat their way into and through US colleges

#39

Post by knn »

Spooky23 wrote: post #24
whack wrote: post #9

Cheating is and always should be a pox that needs to be eradicated. But let's not turn a blind eye to what's happening here locally. Parents in the 1% spend an extraordinary amount of money and resources on college-prep companies, many of which tell the kids exactly what extracurriculars to take, what to do after school, and virtually write the entire outline of their admissions essays. It's little wonder that school…

Give me a break. I went to a big state school that wasn't a playground for the elite, but you'd see these Chinese students who could barely speak enough English to order a pizza demonstrating supposed mastery of written English in core classes. The "ABC" Chinese students who were pissed off about the blatant cheating, reported one group of foreign students were openly sharing answers during the test in Mandarin. The…

Interestingly, I go to a big state school that is somewhat a playground for the international Chinese elite. It's very common to see chinese international students driving $80,000+ cars and many of those same students cheating in classes. In a grad stat/software engineering class I took, most of them shared the same code for the assignments (in front of the professor). I hate to generalize because some of them are honest, but cheating is a terrible part of the subculture

Re: An industry that helps Chinese cheat their way into and through US colleges

#40

Post by TelAviv_1 »

whack wrote: post #9

Cheating is and always should be a pox that needs to be eradicated. But let's not turn a blind eye to what's happening here locally. Parents in the 1% spend an extraordinary amount of money and resources on college-prep companies, many of which tell the kids exactly what extracurriculars to take, what to do after school, and virtually write the entire outline of their admissions essays. It's little wonder that school…

Huh? How did you get from cheating at a mid-western school to bashing the "1%" at Harvard? All you need are the Koch Brothers and you could post this on the Daily Kos!
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