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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

#81

Post by twshoopboop »

sotojuan wrote: post #49
benten10 wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

"it's not unfair; it's just how it is"

It kind of is unfair. Why should someone get preferential treatment just because you happen to know them? Also there's a difference between recommending someone for a job and "Hey this is my buddy, don't look at her resume and we can also skip most of the interview process". There's different degrees of nepotism, they are all usually a bit 'unfair'. But then, life is unfair and so you just deal with it and do the best with whatever resources you have.

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

#82

Post by howlingfantods »

kirrent wrote: post #12

Australia is also a popular destination for Chinese students and sees high rates of cheating for many of the same reasons as those given in the article. Poor language skills allowed by lax student visa requirements, isolation, and the high penalties for failing a course when your family is paying full price creates desperation. 4 corners did a pretty good story on it and the smh investigation into MyMaster was also p…

Not about cheating, but my friend runs a education consulting service in China and he recently got a call from a father saying that his 20 year old daughter was in the USA studying English but found it too difficult. The father wanted to know if my friend could help his daughter transfer to a school in a country speaking easier English, like Australia. He and his daughter apparently thought Australia spoke some sort of pidgin English that would be easier to learn than American English.

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

#83

Post by eric_h »

sotojuan wrote: post #49
benten10 wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

After my first job after college, my personal social network is how I've gotten all my jobs, and I wouldn't have it any other way. When I get a new job, the company hiring me knows what I can do, because someone they trust told them. No silly technical interviews required.

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

#84

Post by netheril96 »

leroy_masochist wrote: post #72
netheril96 wrote: post #71

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why should the Chinese government help Chinese apply to American universities and companies? They certainly want the best and brightest to stay home.

True, but they also want their young people to get the best quality education available, especially in STEM, which is currently (and probably not forever) disproportionately situated in America.

Only a small fraction of the Chinese admitted into Harvard, MIT, Princeton and Stanford return after their education. Neither does most of Google and Facebook employees who are born in China. The brightest talents of China serve the United States mostly (even though the US places a lot of handicap on them, e.g. the cap on H1B). Can you now imagine why Chinese government is not incentivized?

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

#85

Post by hackaflocka »

Can confirm. I'm a professor at a US university.

One class of 40 students, about 20 were Chinese foreign students.

Turns out, they were each doing 40+ credits that semester. About 20+ from the U.S. university, and about 20+ from a Chinese university (online).

How's that possible? They were sharing assignments and exams. Each one had the responsibility to do the same assignment and exam over and over for about half a dozen others.

They were on track to complete a 4-year program in 2 years. The actual degree was being awarded by the Chinese university, and they were transferring the credits from the U.S. university.

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

#86

Post by redcap »

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.

There's the story about a developer who outsourced his work to China so that he could browse reddit:

http://thenextweb.com/shareables/2013/01/16/verizon-finds-de...

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

#87

Post by throwaway_xx9 »

howlingfantods wrote: post #82
kirrent wrote: post #12

Australia is also a popular destination for Chinese students and sees high rates of cheating for many of the same reasons as those given in the article. Poor language skills allowed by lax student visa requirements, isolation, and the high penalties for failing a course when your family is paying full price creates desperation. 4 corners did a pretty good story on it and the smh investigation into MyMaster was also p…

Not about cheating, but my friend runs a education consulting service in China and he recently got a call from a father saying that his 20 year old daughter was in the USA studying English but found it too difficult. The father wanted to know if my friend could help his daughter transfer to a school in a country speaking easier English, like Australia. He and his daughter apparently thought Australia spoke some sort…

> thought Australia spoke some sort of pidgin English

well ...

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

#88

Post by foobarian »

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…

There used to be a section of Commonwealth Ave around Boston University known as a supercar parking lot, mostly driven by internationals. Cheating of the sort above was rampant. But I figured since they were paying full fare they were subsidizing us rubes so it was worth it. Ultimately college is about what you learn, not your classmates, and what happens after.

I saw a couple of kids like this come through our "homework interview" assignments intended as a phonescreen-lite, and they invariably bomb the in-person interviews.

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

#89

Post by tdeck »

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…

These types of discussions always depress me. You'd think from reading them that everyone has cheated or popped some Adderall at some point, and it's a normal part of college. Is that really true? I never have, unless you count making up excuses for turning in the occasional thing late. I worked hard in school and got decent but not amazing grades (3.7 something). When I hear this shit it makes me feel like I was playing the game handicapped all along.

Either that or the cheaters among is are always looking for ways to rationalize it by making it seem more normative.

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

#90

Post by tristor »

twshoopboop wrote: post #81
sotojuan wrote: post #49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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…

"it's not unfair; it's just how it is" It kind of is unfair. Why should someone get preferential treatment just because you happen to know them? Also there's a difference between recommending someone for a job and "Hey this is my buddy, don't look at her resume and we can also skip most of the interview process". There's different degrees of nepotism, they are all usually a bit 'unfair'. But then, life is unfair and…

> Why should someone get preferential treatment just because you happen to know them?

Because I know what sort of work they will produce, their attitude towards work, and their general behavior/personality and whether that will fit into the team without causing disruption or loss of productivity. That's why.

Business isn't about making everyone feel loved and accepted, business is about making money as efficiently as possible by providing a product or service that your customer want/need. Anything which furthers those goals is absolutely fair, especially things which are discriminatory only on the basis of knowledge.

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