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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

#41

Post by kabdib »

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 just interview people. I really don't care where they went to school, or if they have a degree. If they've got the chops, that's all I care about.

In a small company it's pretty easy to avoid the automatic filters of large companies, the ones that screen out applicants without degrees, or from "wrong" universities, or who have low GPAs. Most of these metrics don't seem to matter in the long run (but they are easy for HR types to apply, so they do).

GPAs and such probably matter in government orgs, or places that are very strict and hierarchical. You probably want to avoid places like these anyway.

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

#42

Post by rhizome »

ori_b wrote: post #8
yeowMeng wrote: post #6

Unrelated but: It's easy to believe that yr peers are cheating. But I believe there are a lot of hard working people that know the concequence of cheating your way through.

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

A long time ago at a university not far away, I and a few classmates all turned in the same report for a group project. The teacher absolutely and rightly thought we were cheating, after which we explained that we interpreted the instructions to mean that a group project would have a group paper. He seemed to accept this and gave us like an extra week to compile our own papers, but he must have smoked an extra bowl that night. I know I would have if I was a professor in that situation!

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

#43

Post by coredog64 »

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.

Sure you can cheat as a developer. I have had contract firm setup interviews with candidate A and then send candidate B on-site.

I have interviewed candidates on the strength of a resume only to find out that someone in the building at a previous position was working with a technology.

Once on the job, I have seen people pass off code from Java tutorial sites and StackOverflow as their own. Eventually, they find someone who will protect them and then they can collect pay while generating excuses and blame storming.

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

#44

Post by otoburb »

knn wrote: post #39
Spooky23 wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 ho…

>>most of them shared the same code for the assignments (in front of the professor). [...] cheating is a terrible part of the subculture

Which is terrible - your particular university's subculture of cheating-condoning professors, or a Chinese student subculture of cheating?

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

#45

Post by xviia »

coredog64 wrote: post #31
Afton wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

The student may have come from a place where cheating is OK, but he came to a place where it's not OK.

(I don't fault the humanities professor, he may have grown up in a culture where it's acceptable to be full of shit.)

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

#46

Post by 67726e »

coredog64 wrote: post #43
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.

Sure you can cheat as a developer. I have had contract firm setup interviews with candidate A and then send candidate B on-site. I have interviewed candidates on the strength of a resume only to find out that someone in the building at a previous position was working with a technology. Once on the job, I have seen people pass off code from Java tutorial sites and StackOverflow as their own. Eventually, they find some…

I have friends working for government contractors. They basically just need a warm body in a seat. Get that piece of paper and you're golden.

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

#47

Post by 67726e »

coredog64 wrote: post #43
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.

Sure you can cheat as a developer. I have had contract firm setup interviews with candidate A and then send candidate B on-site. I have interviewed candidates on the strength of a resume only to find out that someone in the building at a previous position was working with a technology. Once on the job, I have seen people pass off code from Java tutorial sites and StackOverflow as their own. Eventually, they find some…

I have friends working for government contractors. They basically just need a warm body in a seat. Get that piece of paper and you're golden.

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

#48

Post by SilasX »

kyebosh wrote: post #33
SilasX wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

If someone has a subtle point they want to make, they should make it explicit and as obvious as possible. The principle of charity doesn't require me to invent arguments for them.

If someone doesn't say what they think the difference is [1], and they ask me to apply all the implications about one to the other, it's not a strawman to say they are equating the two.

[1] between "doing Y would help improve your score" vs "the answer is X"

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

#49

Post by sotojuan »

benten10 wrote: post #34
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 fr…

> and then use their frat connections to land exceedingly awesome jobs

That happens everywhere though. It's not endemic to "frat bros"—a lot of people find jobs through connections rather than only grades. Most of the time it's through a family friend or family member, or in CS through open source or meet ups. It sucks when you don't have any connections but it's not unfair; it's just how it is. Should I not tell an undergrad friend that my company is hiring interns and recommend her?

Of course an international student will have less connections which is why they sometimes struggle getting internships.

But yeah, the cheating stuff is messed up!

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

#50

Post by whamlastxmas »

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 valued my degree's paper more than the content. The content was largely bullshit. Who needs to learn astronomy for a business degree? Employers don't give a shit if I know about astronomy, why should I care? It's required, however, so I took it. I did the minimum to get a 4.0 and nothing more. I think space is interesting and I read about it in my free time, but memorizing facts and figures about random things isn't really interesting.

Even the relevant classes are largely bullshit. I took a marketing class where the textbook was seemingly written by a group of people who sit in a room all day making up labels for common sense concepts. As a student, I have to memorize those labels. I have to memorize the meaningless systems and charts and diagrams those people came up with. I have to memorize the names of people who did things in the field of marketing.

You get my point. It was a waste of time. There was definitely useful stuff in my degree, stuff that was helpful in my actual jobs, but it was maybe 1-2% of my total undergraduate career, and I could have learned that information on my own with a few books and about a month of studying.

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