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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

#281

Post by Ivannahack »

studentrob wrote: post #194
ken47 wrote: post #178

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I went to a privileged American school where cheating was not uncommon. I watched at least two students openly cheat their way into Ivy League colleges, whose rich parents ensured they were unscathed when they were caught. I watched students with inferior intellect, but superior connections, finesse their way into colleges beyond their pay grade. I sure as heck hope foreigners don't judge me based on their encounters…

I don't think cheating is a part of Chinese culture, however, gifting seems to have been as recently as 2013/2014 in education [1] [2]. In business, it's still common to give your boss a gift in order to get a promotion [3]. [1] https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/in-china-parents-bribe-... [2] http://www.chinasmack.com/2014/stories/teacher-scolds-class-... [3] https://www.rnw.org/archive/what-give-chinese-boss-who-…

I got a pair of $400 Prada sunglasses as a "gift" from a Chinese student, first week of school. I was told it would be extremely rude to not accept a gift in Chinese culture. The student was very confused when a lower than expected grade was received.

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

#282

Post by smy20011 »

Snargorf wrote: post #143
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…

Non-Chinese students also have those same problems, but they don't cheat like the Chinese. Chinese students cheat because cheating is part of Chinese culture. Go to China and you'll be shocked at how little people care about others in public, or society at large. This is a place where bystanders will watch cars swerve wildly around an open manhole cover over and over, nearly getting in accidents, doing nothing to hel…

> Chinese students cheat because cheating is part of Chinese culture.

It's not Chinese culture. It's about penalty. During my college study, two student had to quit school at them forth year because they got caught in an Exam. No one will risk that dangerous to cheat in an Exam. If school didn't punish the cheater, this will happen again and again. I think you are filtering all positive news about China(Like most media in western country do) and judge Chinese people based on these negative news. Please open your mind.

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

#283

Post by studentrob »

Nokinside wrote: post #197
Snargorf wrote: post #143

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Non-Chinese students also have those same problems, but they don't cheat like the Chinese. Chinese students cheat because cheating is part of Chinese culture. Go to China and you'll be shocked at how little people care about others in public, or society at large. This is a place where bystanders will watch cars swerve wildly around an open manhole cover over and over, nearly getting in accidents, doing nothing to hel…

Countries like India, Vietnam, Indonesia etc. have the same cheating problems in their countries. I think I know why. Asian countries value education very high. It's way out of poverty and improves your status. In that kind of culture it's no surprise that people who should not go to university want to get there. So you have admirable cultural thing of valuing education and it comes with negative side effect where pe…

> So you have admirable cultural thing of valuing education and it comes with negative side effect where people try to get it even when they don't have the ability.

Good observation. It's not limited to Asia. There are blue collar jobs available, as Mike Rowe tells us. You can make a decent living as a plumber. But people don't want to deal with actual shit. They'd rather deal with the metaphorical variety =)

Anyway, student debt is going through the roof in the US. We may have invented the problem.

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

#284

Post by smy20011 »

killerpopiller wrote: post #198
SolaceQuantum wrote: post #149

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Chinese students cheat because cheating is part of Chinese culture. Go to China and you'll be shocked at how little people care about others in public, or society at large. I am Chinese and I would respectfully disagree that cheating is some part of Chinese culture. The only example you gave was basically the bystander effect in action, which you then ascribe to... cheating somehow? Moral depravity of millions of p…

I this cheating aspect of the chinese Culture very believable for several reasons. - china is a highly competitive culture (extremely densly populated, need to competing aout ressource) - china acts economically like Borg, they sold solar panels for less than the production costs to crush the European market (which they successfully did), the same is now happening with Steel btw. > I call that cheating as well - chin…

For the steel, no, if you import more ores, you will get lower prices. The production costs will lower due to large scale production.

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

#285

Post by studentrob »

Ivannahack wrote: post #281
studentrob wrote: post #194

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't think cheating is a part of Chinese culture, however, gifting seems to have been as recently as 2013/2014 in education [1] [2]. In business, it's still common to give your boss a gift in order to get a promotion [3]. [1] https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/in-china-parents-bribe-... [2] http://www.chinasmack.com/2014/stories/teacher-scolds-class-... [3] https://www.rnw.org/archive/what-give-chinese-boss-who-…

I got a pair of $400 Prada sunglasses as a "gift" from a Chinese student, first week of school. I was told it would be extremely rude to not accept a gift in Chinese culture. The student was very confused when a lower than expected grade was received.

Where was this? In China?

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

#286

Post by davidmr »

studentrob wrote: post #278
davidmr wrote: post #274

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm not even sure where to start with this. I went to a fancypants-ish school in the University of Chicago which does not have a Harvard or Yale-sized endowment so they likely did care about tuition. We did indeed have a lot of Chinese undergrads and grad students. They were every bit as smart as anyone else there, so I doubt they were there because of their tuition money alone, but on their academic merits. Also, yo…

> Also, your extension of the argument about STEM grad students doesn't make much sense because STEM grad students almost never have to pay for school, or at least didn't at the UofC At my grad department, 90 out of the 100 kids were Asian, and only 5 or so were PhD for that class year. The rest were MS and paying tuition. > If you can fake your way through a Ph.D. physics program at a reputable university, you deser…

Gotcha. Sorry to have kept to conclusion; thanks for the clarification.

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

#287

Post by studentrob »

smy20011 wrote: post #282
Snargorf wrote: post #143

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Non-Chinese students also have those same problems, but they don't cheat like the Chinese. Chinese students cheat because cheating is part of Chinese culture. Go to China and you'll be shocked at how little people care about others in public, or society at large. This is a place where bystanders will watch cars swerve wildly around an open manhole cover over and over, nearly getting in accidents, doing nothing to hel…

> Chinese students cheat because cheating is part of Chinese culture. It's not Chinese culture. It's about penalty. During my college study, two student had to quit school at them forth year because they got caught in an Exam. No one will risk that dangerous to cheat in an Exam. If school didn't punish the cheater, this will happen again and again. I think you are filtering all positive news about China(Like most med…

> It's not Chinese culture. It's about penalty

I agree it's not Chinese culture to cheat. Adults know this leads to poor work performance. Why, then, does the cheating happen on a larger scale among Chinese students?

American high schools and below are more strict than Chinese schools. In the US, after four years of high school, most of us know one or two kids who were expelled for some major transgression like cheating.

Therefore, by the time Americans get to college, most of them know there are immediate consequences for cheating. Students coming from China may never have seen someone seriously punished for cheating. Rather, students are praised for giving gifts.

So, if the student is innocent, whose fault is it that Chinese students do not know the consequences of cheating? Is it the American college's fault? Or the Chinese high school's?

Someone else in this thread pointed out how lousy instructors filter out students who are not self-driven [1]

Perhaps China's plan is to just let what happens happen. Anecdotally, I feel this produces some extremely smart kids alongside some who get caught up in the feeling that the piece of paper is the most important thing.

[1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11779160

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

#288

Post by sevensor »

drzaiusapelord wrote: post #268
sevensor wrote: post #266

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They're playing the system, and the system is playing them. Everybody loses, and neither party is innocent. In the short term, the people who pay the most disproportionate price are the honest students, especially the many honest Chinese students who aren't involved in cheating. In the long run, we in the U.S. will have to face the music for over-pricing and devaluing the university experience, and China will have to…

Just because I sell an expensive product doesn't give you the right to rip me off nor does it make me guilty of anything. I'm fairly sick of this "no one does wrong" attitude and the complete lack of personal responsibility here. No one is pointing a gun at these kids to come to the states and commit fraud.

I don't know where you got "no one does wrong" from my comments. Allow me to clarify.

Students are cheating. This is wrong.

Universities are institutionally indifferent to student learning. This is wrong too.

The latter is our point of disagreement. You make it clear in your first sentence that you don't think there's anything wrong with the university system, and that the institution is an innocent victim here. On the other hand, I think there's plenty wrong with the system.

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

#289

Post by studentrob »

googletazer wrote: post #236

The real question is how can you make money from this. Cheating is a part of human nature, and its not very surprising it would happen, especially when the pressure is high at universities. If it wasn't good for survival, it wouldn't happen.

> The real question is how can you make money from this.

Apparently you can set up a homework helper service for graduates like Fanyi Translation [1] [2]

> If it wasn't good for survival, it wouldn't happen.

There are all kinds of things that happen in evolution that don't survive. Happening isn't evidence that something is good for survival

[1] https://translate.google.com/translate?hl=en&sl=zh-CN&tl=en&...

[2] http://archive.is/XNZD1

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

#290

Post by studentrob »

sevensor wrote: post #288
drzaiusapelord wrote: post #268

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Just because I sell an expensive product doesn't give you the right to rip me off nor does it make me guilty of anything. I'm fairly sick of this "no one does wrong" attitude and the complete lack of personal responsibility here. No one is pointing a gun at these kids to come to the states and commit fraud.

I don't know where you got "no one does wrong" from my comments. Allow me to clarify. Students are cheating. This is wrong. Universities are institutionally indifferent to student learning. This is wrong too. The latter is our point of disagreement. You make it clear in your first sentence that you don't think there's anything wrong with the university system, and that the institution is an innocent victim here. On t…

> You make it clear in your first sentence that you don't think there's anything wrong with the university system, and that the institution is an innocent victim here. On the other hand, I think there's plenty wrong with the system.

American students already know by their college years that cheating has immediate negative consequences

Why should the college need to hold the hand of foreign students who haven't been taught this by their home countries?

New country, new laws, new culture. It's to be expected

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