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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

#61

Post by wavefunction »

sotojuan wrote: post #58
qrendel wrote: post #54

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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).

That's just personal/professional networking and you should consider working at it. I try to keep in touch with as many former co-workers as I can in case I find myself looking for something new or I can help out someone who is looking themselves.

That's my favorite opportunity: helping someone find a job when they need one.

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

#62

Post by davidmr »

sytelus wrote: post #20
davidmr wrote: post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I have no relevant experience in academic finance, but I sincerely doubt it. The brand and reputation of the universities are what allows them to charge so much for tuition and get prestigious faculty (i.e. grant money). Besides, at a large research University, tuition is usually not the majority of their income ( http://www.uiowa.edu/homepage/about-university/budget )

I'd heard that seats at Harvard was going for $20 million per piece for internal students who wouldn't remotely qualify otherwise. There are always few seats like these reserved at most universities. If you do the math, that one guy basically covers the cost of his entire class.

Do you have any citations for this? I'm extremely skeptical. Harvard doesn't need the $20M; they're doing just fine as it is.

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

#63

Post by WWLink »

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…

Some kinda javascript plugin that opens every link on the page, and then every link inside the pages following until it hits philosophy? XD

The best part is you could cap it to 5 levels of recursion before it runs away.

Still no way I'd have that in 15 minutes haha. I could describe it though!

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

#64

Post by sotojuan »

xviia wrote: post #56
yeowMeng wrote: post #52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?

Any language with support for web crawling? I can sorta see it being done in Node with cheerio[1] and an HTTP client.

[1] https://github.com/cheeriojs/cheerio

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

#65

Post by mrep »

darawk wrote: post #57
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.

100% agree with you and that's why I said "Us Americans aren't so innocent", not "we're just as guilty" (Albeit, there are a lot of us who cheat also).

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

#66

Post by sotojuan »

wavefunction wrote: post #61
sotojuan wrote: post #58

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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).

That's just personal/professional networking and you should consider working at it. I try to keep in touch with as many former co-workers as I can in case I find myself looking for something new or I can help out someone who is looking themselves. That's my favorite opportunity: helping someone find a job when they need one.

Yeah I've done my fair share of networking as I mentioned. Just meant it's also a common complaint by introverted students.

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

#67

Post by xviia »

sotojuan wrote: post #64
xviia wrote: post #56

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

Any language with support for web crawling? I can sorta see it being done in Node with cheerio[1] and an HTTP client. [1] https://github.com/cheeriojs/cheerio

Thanks! Always good to learn new things

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

#68

Post by jdavis703 »

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…

A 3.5 is easy. I got a a 3.82 at my school of engineering, while working, and commuting for about 4 hours per day. I didn't really even try that hard in school.

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

#69

Post by leroy_masochist »

Perhaps a dumb question but why doesn't the Chinese government crack down on this? I feel like they have a pretty good handle on what's going on within their borders, and this issue is poisoning the reputation of Chinese-born young people whether as applicants to companies, applicants to grad school, or generally as trustworthy human beings.

Is it because the college students benefiting from these operations are the children of influential people? That's the only explanation I can think of that makes any sense.

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

#70

Post by sotojuan »

jdavis703 wrote: post #68
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…

A 3.5 is easy. I got a a 3.82 at my school of engineering, while working, and commuting for about 4 hours per day. I didn't really even try that hard in school.

This comment doesn't really add anything to the discussion especially because colleges have different grading scales and culture of grade inflation or deflation. For example in mine most GPAs hovered around 3.5. A 3.8 would be rare.
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