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India students caught 'cheating' in exams in Bihar

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Re: India students caught 'cheating' in exams in Bihar

#61
post #38
post #15

The problem is that if you have 1.4 million people to compete against in your state and you know the authorities don't really care if you cheat, then you absolutely have an incentive to cheat. This is a political & cultural problem, but is absolutely solvable. In my graduate program (~60 people) at a top tier US engineering school, about 10% were Chinese, 80% Indian, and 10% American. The Indians did all their work a…

Cheating in U.S. higher education is really a moral crisis, and the amount of accomodation for cheaters is shocking to me. I was bored one day and decided to read through the opinions of my school's honor board proceedings. You wouldn't believe the shit people got away with. One student plagerized most of his final paper from one of the professor's books. He said in his country that was a sign of respect! And he got…

This can happen. In India, you have this tradition of 'notes sharing'. Basically the course instructor circulates around lecture notes(Which is basically a highly trimmed version of the text book), all students do is mug up the whole thing and write it down in exams.

The person who gets it 100% right generally scores the highest. If you are some who does it a little differently by thinking and working your way through the course, you can be silently penalized for trying to be smarter than everyone else.

Re: India students caught 'cheating' in exams in Bihar

#62

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not 45000 British students, but 45000 students in British universities.

Well its got to match OP's title mate.

The difference being that Britain is well known for having a lot of foreign students (many universities range 20-40%), so the set of "students in Britain" is very different from "British students".

The same is not valid for India which, as far as I know, it's not a popular destination for foreign students looking for an university degree.

Re: India students caught 'cheating' in exams in Bihar

#63

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And? I linked clear evidence that the BBC covers problems like cheating/fraud in the UK's educational system. You asserted they don't. What is defamatory in the BBC's coverage here? The photographic evidence looks pretty conclusive.

Well. Did they report the article with clear picture? I dont think so. There is a clear bias. EDIT: Please read this - for some back story. BBC keeps on doing this. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Criticism_of_the_BBC#Indophobi... EDIT: Also, read this thread if you have some time. https://www.reddit.com/r/worldnews/comments/2zmk9h/bbc_cut_o...

Claims of bias are not the same as bias. The same Wiki you link to indicates the BBC has been accused of both pro and anti Muslim bias, for example, and a Reddit /r/worldnews thread is pretty absurd as evidence.

Re: India students caught 'cheating' in exams in Bihar

#64
post #59

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I decided to post this anonymously. I am a professor at a major CS program in the united states. And we have a very serious cheating problem with indian students. It's clearly cultural. We also see cheating at a fairly high rate among the chinese and students from a handful of middle eastern countries, but the indian students are way out in front: it drives our indian faculty nuts. It seems that indian students have…

I don't get it. Call them out. I hated dealing with the cheating at my school. I hated that their GPA got them the same considerations as mine. The worst part was the lazy faculty that did nothing. I built a bit of a reputation around publically reprimanding students in class when they acted like brats. This was not my job and it alienated me from much of the of the student body. Unfortunately I had to do it because…

I don't know how it works in the US, but in the UK foreign students pay much higher fees than domestic students and are a significant source of revenue for universities. There may be pressure on academic staff not to jeopardise this arrangement by calling attention to cheating.

There are significant problems with cheating in UK universities too, particularly (but not only) with international students [1].

[1] http://www.independent.co.uk/news/education/education-news/4...

Re: India students caught 'cheating' in exams in Bihar

#65

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well. Did they report the article with clear picture? I dont think so. There is a clear bias. EDIT: Please read this - for some back story. BBC keeps on doing this. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Criticism_of_the_BBC#Indophobi... EDIT: Also, read this thread if you have some time. https://www.reddit.com/r/worldnews/comments/2zmk9h/bbc_cut_o...

Claims of bias are not the same as bias. The same Wiki you link to indicates the BBC has been accused of both pro and anti Muslim bias, for example, and a Reddit /r/worldnews thread is pretty absurd as evidence.

Well see who is claiming now Mr.

You are asserting that the comments posted by the people there are absurd? You Sir!

I cannot argue with stupid people. Goodbye.

Re: India students caught 'cheating' in exams in Bihar

#66

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well its got to match OP's title mate.

The difference being that Britain is well known for having a lot of foreign students (many universities range 20-40%), so the set of "students in Britain" is very different from "British students". The same is not valid for India which, as far as I know, it's not a popular destination for foreign students looking for an university degree.

Note taken Sir. But I cannot edit the title anymore. Sorry!

Re: India students caught 'cheating' in exams in Bihar

#67
post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It undermines the moral fabric of the society. It's not a coincidence that in India (or Bangladesh, where My family is from), you have to bribe someone to get your phone hooked up.

Ok, but I still am not clear about how this would affect the GPA of students who don't cheat.

Either because it is graded on a curve or because graduates are judged based on GPA. If you earned a fair and square 3.5 and a bunch of people cheated their way to a 3.7 you have a devalued 3.5.

Re: India students caught 'cheating' in exams in Bihar

#68
post #15

The problem is that if you have 1.4 million people to compete against in your state and you know the authorities don't really care if you cheat, then you absolutely have an incentive to cheat. This is a political & cultural problem, but is absolutely solvable. In my graduate program (~60 people) at a top tier US engineering school, about 10% were Chinese, 80% Indian, and 10% American. The Indians did all their work a…

I decided to post this anonymously. I am a professor at a major CS program in the united states. And we have a very serious cheating problem with indian students. It's clearly cultural. We also see cheating at a fairly high rate among the chinese and students from a handful of middle eastern countries, but the indian students are way out in front: it drives our indian faculty nuts. It seems that indian students have…

The reason Indian students collaborate so much is because the way Indian education system works, hustling students survive better. Students who can read, share and gather information with peers always tend to do better than lone geniuses.

Also, the population ensures that there aren't enough resources for everyone. So, everyone learns to share. A lab project? Share!! You want to do a survey? Form a group and do it. Want computing resources? Share it with others in that time slot. Participating in competitions? All of them are team based competitions.

This is a cultural difference. Nothing else. Also, it's not like all the Indian kids are homogeneously helping each other. They all have their own cliques and many students don't want to share their solutions with other students (Indian or not). Many want to find a better solution.

The solution is simple (something the CS reps in my school implemented with great success). Make homework and (some) tests incredibly hard and encourage team work.

Some of the programming projects we had were so complex that the class had shared forums where we would solve problems right under the nose of the TAs and the prof with full visibility. So, while the code would be individually written, problem solving in the abstract can be a team effort.

An example of how to make them harder would be to deliberately introduce bugs in a codebase that you deployed for a homework. This teaches them how to find solutions and debug.

Sure, some students will chill until the last moment and try to gather answers from friends. But, most students who worked their ass off would never share their solutions (mostly to get themselves up the bell curve). A lot of students will try to make their solutions better by improving on the shared common answer but never revealing it to anyone but the grader.

For exams, we had open book, open laptop, full internet access tests. In those tests, all students would log into chat box to discuss answers. But the questions were tricky and needed speed to solve. So, being on the chat just made sure students are wasting time. The only people who could finish those tests were students who knew what they were doing.

I know this is not ideal in the US. But its a strategy (if used sparingly) that works really well. To be honest, it makes students be super prepared and study real hard so that they can complete tests faster, yet know that they can rely on their friends to get them some info if they happen to forget it.

Re: India students caught 'cheating' in exams in Bihar

#69
post #57

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Normally I would say "what's wrong with knowing what to Google for and getting the right answer in a short enough time span to seem like a reasonable response to your dev question" since that's how many devs (who actually get stuff done) work. However, it's hilarious because the internet speeds are so slow in India that they probably would be better off actually spending the time in front of a reference book than wai…

I've no issue with using Google (or whatever your favourite search engine happens to be) in day-to-day work. But in an interview setting, and especially for extremely basic questions, it's completely inappropriate. Regarding Internet speed, India has seen phenomenal infrastructure changes in the past decade. Internet speed in this particular office in Mumbai is very fast. Fast connections are available in major citie…

Hey Gordon, I'm fascinated by your challenges with scaling applicant evaluations.

Could I learn more about it? We conduct blind auditions at scale for companies and it's a problem we're keen to learn more about.

Could we connect?

Re: India students caught 'cheating' in exams in Bihar

#70
post #15

The problem is that if you have 1.4 million people to compete against in your state and you know the authorities don't really care if you cheat, then you absolutely have an incentive to cheat. This is a political & cultural problem, but is absolutely solvable. In my graduate program (~60 people) at a top tier US engineering school, about 10% were Chinese, 80% Indian, and 10% American. The Indians did all their work a…

Well, in my case I never considered cheating as an excuse to anything. May be, I was lucky to born in a small country with 3 million people. I left my grades are to be an indication of how and where I spent studying. My grades are lower than the most other guys who explicitly cared about their grades. Even so, no one hasn't given me a shit about my low grades within 3 years of my career. May be because of in the end all what matters is that you do what you suppose to do good enough.
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