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Australian universities are accused of trading free speech for cash

economist.com

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Re: Australian universities are accused of trading free speech for cash

#71
post #6

They didn't just trade free speech for cash. They traded their academic integrity. Talk to anyone who teaches at ANU/Monash/Melbourne and they'll tell you the same thing: most international Chinese students should fail by every metric there is, but there is tremendous pressure from the faculty to 'find marks' to get those students to scrape through and look the other way at their plagiarism and cheating. It's like th…

> It's like there are two sets of standards now. One for Chinese students, and one for everyone else. At least in the UK, University of St Andrews, which has the highest percentage of international students in the country, offers a Foundation Year[1] to the applicants from the third-world countries, which must be taken before the 4-year undergraduate degree. It reduces the knowledge gap, improves the language skills,…

Yeah, and Australian Universities require international students to have an IELTS[1] score of at least 6.5, and yet most can barely speak English. Its all bullshit to extract money from China at the expense of watering down the value of the education for everyone.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/International_English_Language...

Re: Australian universities are accused of trading free speech for cash

#72
post #6

They didn't just trade free speech for cash. They traded their academic integrity. Talk to anyone who teaches at ANU/Monash/Melbourne and they'll tell you the same thing: most international Chinese students should fail by every metric there is, but there is tremendous pressure from the faculty to 'find marks' to get those students to scrape through and look the other way at their plagiarism and cheating. It's like th…

> It's like there are two sets of standards now. One for Chinese students, and one for everyone else. At least in the UK, University of St Andrews, which has the highest percentage of international students in the country, offers a Foundation Year[1] to the applicants from the third-world countries, which must be taken before the 4-year undergraduate degree. It reduces the knowledge gap, improves the language skills,…

Universities in Australia have someone similar too. My wife went through a similar program nearly 20 years ago, and was from a country which speaks English.

The problem with some international students is the degree is a means to an end. It's a thing to have for what it allows (work, immigration, prestige). They have no qualms cheating if they know there is no repercussion, English literacy is irrelevant.

Re: Australian universities are accused of trading free speech for cash

#73

They didn't just trade free speech for cash. They traded their academic integrity. Talk to anyone who teaches at ANU/Monash/Melbourne and they'll tell you the same thing: most international Chinese students should fail by every metric there is, but there is tremendous pressure from the faculty to 'find marks' to get those students to scrape through and look the other way at their plagiarism and cheating. It's like th…

FWICT, at the University of Queensland Engineering faculty this looking the other way for international students doesn't appear to happen. I can't speak for other faculties.

I was stunned by the shear audacity of one recent attempt to cheat. It was a group project involving designing and building a hardware / software thingy. The idea was to pull in students from multiple Engineering disciplines I think. This particular group had both Australian students and overseas.

Like all such groups some did some work, others didn't and in this particular case there wasn't enough of the former so things weren't going well. On the due date they had to drop off the the project at a project room, which was locked up until evaluation day. One of the international students decided to break in and continue work. This involved breaking glass windows, jimmying doors, and turning the lights on. Naturally enough security noticed and put a quick end to it - but not before the submitted project was in pieces.

That made evaluating the project in the normal manner near impossible, so they put together a panel designed to feel like the Spanish inquisition and quizzed each student on their contribution for a hour or two. They passed one and failed the others - including the international students.

I went to UQ myself many years ago, back when it was only Australians who attended, and we also got up to some shenanigans. No country breeds only angels. My student cohort did things that were equally bad. The major one was discovering a security flaw in the PDP 10's operating system (TOPS-10), and using it to crash the system repeatedly so we could get the a little more time on the assignments. It didn't go down so well as that same PDP 10 was used to run the Uni's administration, and so it took out things like payroll. They had no idea who did it and no way of finding out, but needed to put an end to it very quickly. I thought they handled it very well. They put the usual suspects in a room, said no one would be punished, but they really needed to know how it was being done. They didn't have much choice I guess, as everyone in the room knew how it was done but no one was going to admit to doing it.

I can't really say which of these two crimes caused the most damage - the one by the Australians or the international student. But I suspect in the eyes of the Uni the international one suffered from a far bigger flaw than damage or inconvenience - it was just plain stupid in a way I had never seen in my day.

Re: Australian universities are accused of trading free speech for cash

#74
post #29

While at university here in Australia I was given the opportunity to spend a few weeks in China sponsored by Huawei. I was naive back then. It was just one massive brain washing exercise where we were taken on a propaganda tour and taught how stupid the Australian government was to not contract Huawei to build the NBN.

I’m a uni student in aus right now and I’m not a fan of Chinese propaganda but I wouldn’t mind a free trip to China. Do you have any links/tips on how I could get myself on one of these trips? I’m at UNSW btw.

Google Huawei seeds of the future and apply.

Re: Australian universities are accused of trading free speech for cash

#75
post #48

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This isn't Facebook. HackerNews isn't about to go around accusing people of being OneNation sympathises though I do understand the position you're taking here. Being critical of the influence of fee-paying students in University can quickly become hyperbolic.

The original comment was talking about blocking Chinese money from coming into Australia on the basis that it was associated with mainland Chinese ideology. That is unadulturated nationalism and it will almost certainly be interpreted as racist by the worlds up-and-coming superpower and probably in Australia as well. It clearly aligns with the goals of the mid-far right. I'm not accusing anyone of anything, I'm just…

I don't agree, I'm far left leaning and consider Chinese money or rather, seeing a greater scrutiny of it's use in Australia to see partisan support.

Similar to how Sam Dastyari [1] was forced out after he'd been shown to receive significant donations. I'm not across this piece as much as I would like so I may be missing some nuance there.

I imagine China's influence in Australian State and Federal government to be a lot more pervasive than this. But it's more of a dirty secret than we're led to believe.

[1] - https://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/2017/dec/12/sam-d...

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