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

reuters.com

101–110 of 333 posts

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

#101
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…

Singapore would probably work well for that. The people there are reported to speak such a thing:

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Singlish

That said, if learning English is the goal, then that probably will be counterproductive.

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

#102
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…

Stimulants (of any kind) don't complete your work for you, at best they provide a little extra capacity and focus.

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

#103
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…

>He and his daughter apparently thought Australia spoke some sort of pidgin English

In all fairness, there is a certain view that most English dialects are pidginized to some extent. et lest tha leksografee iz konsistent with thee observayshun.

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

#104
One common mistake made by westerners is treating lack in language proficiency as low competency in work or study. Native English speakers take for granted the ability to speak English fluently but do not realize it takes years to master spoken English as a non-native speaker.

Although this is tangential to the issue being discussed here, but you can see this mistake appearing in lots of comments here.

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

#105
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…

As an Australian, I can confirm that in some parts of the country this is probably true! Seriously, our elocution is nothing short of atrocious: we drop words, use frequent contractions and then just roll everything into one mumbling, rolling wall of noise. Witness "owzigoin?". Known in more respectable locations as "How are you doing?". FWIW I'm just as guilty as the rest.

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

#106

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

As an Australian, I can confirm that in some parts of the country this is probably true! Seriously, our elocution is nothing short of atrocious: we drop words, use frequent contractions and then just roll everything into one mumbling, rolling wall of noise. Witness "owzigoin?". Known in more respectable locations as "How are you doing?". FWIW I'm just as guilty as the rest.

This is equally true of parts of the USA, and probably most other countries.

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

#107

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

As an Australian, I can confirm that in some parts of the country this is probably true! Seriously, our elocution is nothing short of atrocious: we drop words, use frequent contractions and then just roll everything into one mumbling, rolling wall of noise. Witness "owzigoin?". Known in more respectable locations as "How are you doing?". FWIW I'm just as guilty as the rest.

In Hawai'i this is just "howzit?"

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

#108
post #22
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 have to agree with you on the piece of paper. It always confused me when friends would take easier university courses to keep their GPA higher when they could take a harder one and learn more. In the real world, people don't care about your GPA, or the piece of paper really. They care about your competency. I think you're right in that software is a field where it's hard to fake it 'til you make it. Not sure how it…

>They care about your competency.

Grad school admissions cares about your GPA.

Incidentally I found it freeing to know I wasn't going to grad school. Didn't have to run the grades/stats rat race anymore, and could do the work for the right reasons.

Doing undergrad knowing you are trying to get into competitive PhD programs and doing undergrad knowing it's the end of your education are very different beasts.

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

#109

I was enrolled in a Business Calculus course (100 level) my freshman year. The "instructor" of the class at the front of the room could not speak English intelligibly. I speak multiple languages and am decent at interpreting broken English, but it was not even close to understandable. I left, never went back (except for exams). I still passed just fine, but really was a terrible intro experience to college at a large…

Similar experience at a state school. I ended up dropping Calculus that semester and transferring to NYU, where Calculus was taught by an American nuclear physicist. Got an A+. He was a great professor.

I don't remember any cheating but I wasn't really looking for it.

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

#110
post #41
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 f…

Why do you think you can assess whether they've "got the chops" in an interview better than a university can assess competency in four years?
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