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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

#51

Post by sotojuan »

otoburb wrote: post #44
knn wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?

Chinese international subculture of cheating, I assume.

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

#52

Post by yeowMeng »

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.

Anyone else like Bob Dylan... If people cheat, I believe there is a slow train comming.

Example: I had a friend who had an interview for company XYZ, "Write a program that clicks the first link in a wikipedia entry and exits when you reach the philosophy page (implement in the language of your choice). You have 15 mins"...

My friend was a really hard working, intelligent, and honest guy and he could not do it... i doubt cheaters could do it cold.

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

#53

Post by mrep »

I went to a public university with a large international population and this doesn't surprise me in the slightest. A lot of the international students were extremely poor at english. One of the guys on my software project team was an international student who confirmed that it was very easy to pay someone to take the english proficiency exam.

Us Americans aren't so innocent though. The amount of adderall/vyvanse/ritalin... that goes through college campuses is ridiculous.

Honestly, I feel that it's just a symptom of extreme competition. With colleges and first time jobs taking such extreme care to filter on GPA and the likes, every little bit usually pays off.

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

#54

Post by qrendel »

s_baby wrote: post #27

The international students have unreasonably high standards for maintaining financial assistance and staying out of academic probation(3.5-3.8 at my university). By design college courses give work just a little beyond what a student can reasonably accomplish(with a "good" grade) and curve accordingly. These kids aren't just cheating they are marginalizing students who are honest or don't have this kind of social acc…

>If you're not part of a fraterntiy/sorority that archives coursework/tests of previous students or part of an international student in-group then you can easily fall through the cracks from this grade deflation effect.

That is a huge problem for a lot of us more introverted types, especially if you're a transfer student from another school. I remember taking a bunch of classes where I didn't know anyone and had no one to discuss problems and solutions with. Organic chemistry, diff eq, among others, but pretty much all classes were like that. Having social anxiety issues made it very hard to work my way into the community. Meanwhile the other students had all been stuck together in the same program for years, the same dorms, the same fraternities, etc.

I'd come in and the entire rest of the class would be sitting around sharing their homework answers, copying each other on the ones they couldn't figure out, getting help from each other... Never had any access to it and I know I worked harder for lower grades (in some cases) just because I wasn't part of the in-group.

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

#55

Post by yen223 »

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 don't care about a degree. But the Department of Immigration does.

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

#56

Post by xviia »

yeowMeng wrote: post #52
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.

Anyone else like Bob Dylan... If people cheat, I believe there is a slow train comming. Example: I had a friend who had an interview for company XYZ, "Write a program that clicks the first link in a wikipedia entry and exits when you reach the philosophy page (implement in the language of your choice). You have 15 mins"... My friend was a really hard working, intelligent, and honest guy and he could not do it... i do…

How would this be done? What kind of language, etc. would enable this?

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

#57

Post by darawk »

mrep wrote: post #53

I went to a public university with a large international population and this doesn't surprise me in the slightest. A lot of the international students were extremely poor at english. One of the guys on my software project team was an international student who confirmed that it was very easy to pay someone to take the english proficiency exam. Us Americans aren't so innocent though. The amount of adderall/vyvanse/rita…

To be fair, there is a difference between adderall and actual cheating. One of these is a thing that helps you do your own work better, and the other is hiring someone else to do your work for you.

One of these things is fraudulent, and the other is simply performance enhancement. Taking Adderall to study doesn't make you less competent at the subject in question, whereas cheating your way through tests does.

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

#58

Post by sotojuan »

qrendel wrote: post #54
s_baby wrote: post #27

The international students have unreasonably high standards for maintaining financial assistance and staying out of academic probation(3.5-3.8 at my university). By design college courses give work just a little beyond what a student can reasonably accomplish(with a "good" grade) and curve accordingly. These kids aren't just cheating they are marginalizing students who are honest or don't have this kind of social acc…

> If you're not part of a fraterntiy/sorority that archives coursework/tests of previous students or part of an international student in-group then you can easily fall through the cracks from this grade deflation effect. That is a huge problem for a lot of us more introverted types, especially if you're a transfer student from another school. I remember taking a bunch of classes where I didn't know anyone and had no…

Even worse is when people with connections get interviews or jobs based solely on knowing people who can recommend them.

At least in programming we have GitHub/Twitter/meetups to help with that (worked great for me).

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

#59

Post by msie »

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…

The professor should be held responsible for letting the cheaters get away with it. Not that hard to find cheaters in a programming class if he/she cared.

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

#60

Post by WWLink »

qrendel wrote: post #54
s_baby wrote: post #27

The international students have unreasonably high standards for maintaining financial assistance and staying out of academic probation(3.5-3.8 at my university). By design college courses give work just a little beyond what a student can reasonably accomplish(with a "good" grade) and curve accordingly. These kids aren't just cheating they are marginalizing students who are honest or don't have this kind of social acc…

> If you're not part of a fraterntiy/sorority that archives coursework/tests of previous students or part of an international student in-group then you can easily fall through the cracks from this grade deflation effect. That is a huge problem for a lot of us more introverted types, especially if you're a transfer student from another school. I remember taking a bunch of classes where I didn't know anyone and had no…

In my experience the cheaters don't socialize outside their group at all. That's how it's so easy to tell the cheaters from the normal people! They won't. And if half your class is like that, well.. yeah :(

My take on it: There's no solutions manual for building stuff in real life lol.

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