As a former Chinese international student graduated from one of the top Canadian universities with distinction, I have mixed feelings about this. On one hand, the toxic culture permeated the Chinese visa student community is definitely responsible for the high rate of cheating. Most Chinese visa students came to study in the west did not came to pursue academic excellence. They (and their parents most likely) see it as a way to beef up their profile with a foreign diploma. This was a culture that I tried so desperately to stay away from when I was in school.
On the other hand, I feel bad that the broad generalization impacts tremendously negatively those Chinese visa students who did pursue their dream and passion which led them to a foreign university. I worked hard to graduate with distinction, and learned my stuff well enough to go on and have a successful career, but I always feel I have to go the extra mile just to prove myself; I have to go above-and-beyond just to gain equal footing. I cannot quantify the negative impact the those people cause, but it's incredibly unfair to be prejudiced just because I may look like those people.
Academic dishonesty is certainly not a Chinese-only problem. The media singling out a group such as the Chinese visa students is certainly a popular thing to do to gain clicks, but it's a little unfair.
As a former grad student who has interacted with both the good and the bad of your group, I understand the differences... and regret the unfortunate realities.
I remember a Chinese PhD student who could not function in spoken English . Nice guy. Always smiled, bobbed his head, and said "hi", and that was the extent of his verbal vocab. Still don't know how he got into an American graduate school. Really brings the department down. :-/
I attended a conference where young Chinese PhD was giving presentation and nobody could understand what he was saying. Finally one of the organizing professors interrupted him and requested that he should speak English. "But I'm speaking English." he replied with desperation in his voice.
He knew his stuff and could write and read English well, but it was very hard to understand what he was saying.
> He knew his stuff and could write and read English well,
Right, I really don't have any way to assess that of a grad student I meet in the halls if they can't speak to me. They may be brilliant, they may be the best student there, and be totally walled off from everyone who doesn't speak their native tongue. I feel bad for them... but I don't think they should be in a grad school where English is the lingua franca.
I would vastly prefer "adequate English proficiency" be a hard criteria for attending a US graduate school. Not only are grad students part of a cohort themselves, they often are TAs and provide assistance and guidance to undergraduates. English adequacy is generally the de facto requirement to adequately assist others who are in college (in the US).
It is a requirement, it's just that apparently the test of English as a foreign language (TOEFL?) either are too easily cheated or aren't adequately checking for that. I should add I knew many excellent students in grad school, from dozens of countries, and good and bad us students :-) I never achieved any fluency in other languages, it would be incredibly hard to learn Mandarian or another non-romance language,and I appreciate the challenge for them.
At my grad school, there were students from two countries that there seemed to be widespread believe that there was widespread cheating. This included (not really cheating things) like copies of all tests given by any professor in the past. I didn't believe it at first, but then someone from said country showed it to me.
It's hard to believe if you really were cheating, how could you make it through a bachelors in CS? Someone should notice, right? I was a TA of a class where the prof eventually figured out one student was copying from another student. He gave him an F.
In my masters CS course we had 12 Chinese students, out of which only 1 did any work, the rest played LoL on university's computers, then when the time came to hand in work they all simply dropped out, they haven't had any notes, nothing. The remaining student said that to them, just coming to a foreign university is prestigious enough for when they go home, no one cares that they dropped out as long as they can also say they went. Obviously an anecdote, I met a lot of very hard working Chinese students too.
I went to grad school with a lot of Chinese visa students. It was pretty clear about a week in who was the real deal (absolutely brilliant students) and who had worked the system to get into the school. The ones that had cheated their way in generally were generally just average folks who had taken what they viewed as their best option in a very high pressure and high stakes situation. I'm guessing most of my US raised classmates would have made the same decisions in same situations and certainly fair bit of them cheated although usually in less dramatic fashion.
The part that is surprising to me is that schools aren't doing much to prevent this. Studies show us when humans are likely to cheat and probability of getting caught is at the top of the list [1]. How universities and colleges can raise tuition an average of 8% a year and get away without doing a minimum of due diligence around cheating is beyond me. Simple things like some certified system for transcripts, letters of recommendation and teachers who ID/recognize their students would be a huge step to resolving these issues. At my grad school the only change was to make foreign students take the TOEFL[3] upon arrival which solved their big problem of english skills as graduate students are supposed to be teaching assistants in undergrad classes.
> How universities and colleges can raise tuition an average of 8% a year and get away without doing a minimum of due diligence around cheating is beyond me.
Why would they? The students and their parents aren't paying for hard (which includes catching cheaters). They're paying for the degree. If college was harder the perceived ROI* would be less.
As far as I can tell colleges are happy if the students keep showing up paying real live money-dollars, regardless of if they learn or cheat or even have to do work.
* Individuals might feel like they are getting a good deal, but in the aggregate, most college degrees are essentially worthless now, I suspect because college is way too easy so a degree is a signal for almost nothing.
Agreed. And this article could just as easily be run with the headline "Schools do almost nothing to stop known cheating" which would make for more bad press.
And what exactly should they do? Require students to bring two forms of ID to each test? Require students to sit in Faraday cages during exams? Isolation rooms?
A school can't prevent cheating outright and it's lame to act like it's the school's fault when American and European students understand just fine that cheating is simply wrong and disallowed. If a student wants to cheat, s/he will cheat. The fact that there's an entire industry built around one culture's penchant for doing so seems to imply that maybe that culture is the problem.
> And what exactly should they do? Require students to bring two forms of ID to each test? Require students to sit in Faraday cages during exams? Isolation rooms?
The first article in this series talks about how the SAT is being gamed overseas [1]. The article makes a strong case that a unique copy of the SAT should be administered each time the test is given.
As it is right now, the College Board / ETS reuses the tests to some degree. This 3 minute video is a good summary of the situation [2]
The podcast How to Game the SAT is also enlightening [3]
There are people working on this problem. There is also an alternate test called ACT which has stricter requirements for testing in China.
Supposedly, the College Board, which creates and administers the SAT, is afraid that if it gives the SAT less often then it will give up market-share to the ACT test.
There could be a real opportunity here for some startup that can help either of these testing agencies securely administer tests overseas.
The SAT cancelled a test date in January due to concerns the test they were going to use had already been released on the internet. Then they gave a test in March and found its questions on the internet hours afterwards.
I imagine we'll see more updates from these reporters in the coming months / years. It's a tough problem.
> I would think they care about diluting their brand.
They should, but nobody has sued them over this issue of widespread cheating yet.
Something similar happened at UNC when athletes were taking bogus classes [1], but the judge tossed out the case because the students waited too long to sue [2]
FIRE is a firm whose stated goal is to defend individual rights in education [3].
> At some point these degrees you say are worthless will mean people stop paying - don't you think?
Yes, if there's an alternative to college to earning a higher salary. But, most parents aren't advising their kids to get a blue collar job like Mike Rowe espouses. Parents want their kids to go to college. They're not as concerned about their kids' debt, and high school kids haven't yet learned to be wary of student loan debt. The moment they discover that student debt is a problem is the moment it's too late, when they've failed out of school or look for a job and can't find one.
Rather than pushing college upon everyone, we should be educating students about debt and other options. At the same time, we should be pulling back some manufacturing jobs to provide such other options. The US isn't going to survive on elitist service industries alone. We need to understand that while every human being is capable of very high intellect, every person in America does not need or want to be in the services industry. Obama has been pushing to recall manufacturing jobs [4], so that's a start
One local public university suddenly had a 10% budget cut in funding from the state, to which their response was to stick thumbs in the dam: get more international students to pay the full tuition.
However, many smaller universities are very inexperienced with regulations governing I-20s, and outsource to services involved in getting Chinese students into American colleges. What is referred to in the article as companies that "help students contrive their entire college application" are more commonly referred to as recruiters. Recruiters get students in the door, often by any means necessary. They are often the only way for Chinese students to access info about American universities at all: blocked websites, inability to pay online, and a host of other problems guarantee that recruiters will continue to exit.
Another contracted service is transcript verification, also too expensive a resource to hire on campus and often outsourced to companies outside the USA. I've seen presenters at NAFSA on this topic, the difficulties translating degrees from one country to another, and hiring someone knowledgeable, authentic and with local connections is expensive. So many universities will again default to contracting out to---you guessed it---Chinese 'educational' groups that work with recruiters.
Finally there's what's commonly called an IEP (Intensive English Program), that gives out I-20s to 'study English' for a certain length of time. In desperation, universities co-opt IEP programs onto their campuses to test and assess student English levels once they're on campus to avoid the Chinese educational link. This often fails too. I know one IEP that was creative with the truth in order to cut through the DHS paperwork to issue IEPs, that never checked transcripts and paid kick backs to recruiters as well as administrators for every kid that got into college.
The recruiting industry is so corrupt that universities that care have a very short list of trusted recruiters. The shocking truth here is that many don't. I know of two students who ETS caught cheating on their TOEFL tests--the university accepted them based on this score. Sadly it was not a surprise to me that when the university was notified of the cheating by ETS, they did not rescind their admission to the school. Many unis would rather take the money and look the other way.
> I know of two students who ETS caught cheating on their TOEFL tests--the university accepted them based on this score. Sadly it was not a surprise to me that when the university was notified of the cheating by ETS, they did not rescind their admission to the school. Many unis would rather take the money and look the other way.
Yikes. I hope news like what happened at Iowa gives schools the kick in the butt they need to either (1) be more strict in who they accept or (2) provide some additional English training for these incoming kids who supposedly know English but really do not
I understand your frustration. The difference is at least clear to most other students, even if it's not so clear elsewhere. When I attended university in the UK about ten years ago, about 1/3 of the students on my course were Chinese. Unfortunately I reckon the majority of these were suspect. Many could barely speak English, and when doing group work would contribute to the written work in broken English, but then mysteriously submit flawlessly written final work. However there were several Chinese students who were clearly smart and doing their own work, but these were sadly very much in the minority. There were lots of other international students and none of the rest were suspect. I'm not saying there was no other cheating as I'm sure there was, but none of the rest made me wonder how they even got onto the course, let alone maintained good grades.
A lot of Chinese students learn to read and write English perfectly but can barely speak it because of the way it is taught in Chinese schools. Learning to speak requires practice speaking as well as hearing, and there arent enough teachers who can speak fluent English to set an example. Try learning Chinese sometime and see what its like.
I've noticed a more general trend where white people assume those who don't speak like them are stupid. this will end up hurting them as the world grows more connected and more people from different backgrounds end up in the same place.
I realise that it's possible to be able to read and not speak it. However these students were supposed to have passed tests of written and spoken English proficiency. If they couldn't understand spoken English it will have been pretty difficult for them to understand the lectures and seminars. I certainly never said they were stupid. I know the languages are very different and it will have been very hard for them. I've spent a little time in China and know how hard it is the other way around. What I said is that this wasn't reflected in the work they submitted. The comparison with times when they wrote without the opportunity for outside help was also significant. There's no dispute that cheating is widespread among Chinese students, and other Chinese students expressed frustration similar to those expressed by commenters here.
As for your point about white people: I don't think skin colour has anything to do with it. It's a problem with English speakers. Foreign language proficiency among native English speakers is terrible. Hypocritically, because so many people do speak English as a second language well, then it is easy to assume, even subconsciously, that if someone doesn't speak it well then they're not as smart. The fact we don't speak their native tongue makes it harder to disabuse ourselves of this. I will say in our defence that it is actually quite hard to learn a foreign language when you're in the country and everyone just replies to you in English. Having lots of Swedish friends and spending quite a bit of time in Sweden, I took several courses to learn the language, even though I never met a single person who was unable to speak English, and nobody under 50 who wasn't totally fluent. In the total of probably three or four months I've spent there over the past decade, not once has anyone responded to me in Swedish when I've spoken to them. It's not useless, as it does at least mean I can understand when they're speaking to each other. Scandinavia is an extreme case, but the phenomenon has spread with English proficiency. In most of Europe it's safe to assume that almost anyone under 40 will speak at least some English. This certainly makes things easy for English speakers, but it does lead to complacency.
> In the total of probably three or four months I've spent there over the past decade, not once has anyone responded to me in Swedish when I've spoken to them
This behavior varies from country to country. In Cambodia, for example, people love when you speak khmer and will spend the whole day teaching you and showing you around the city. They are ridiculously friendly.
In my case, when doing group work multiple Chinese students submitted things copy-pasted from Wikipedia. I turned them in. No sanctions. I barely value the paper my degrees are printed on as a result, and I'm hesitant to hire from CMU as a result.
> The media singling out a group such as the Chinese visa students is certainly a popular thing to do to gain clicks
There are a lot of Chinese in American schools. They account for a greater proportion of students.
There are also ton of really bright Chinese like yourself who work hard. News articles don't tell the full story, but I think most readers understand and can identify stereotypes. If they can't, well, that's their loss.
I used to teach at a community college which attracted a lot of Chinese students. I found that for the most part they legitimately wanted to learn the subject I was teaching, but that the language barrier was a problem for many. They would sit in the back and the student with the best comprehension would quietly translate for the rest. When it came to assignments, they did their own work as far as I could tell. So when I read reports like the article, I see this more as an indictment of the U.S. university system (as opposed to the CC system) than of Chinese students. My own experience tells me that there are plenty of students who are willing to do the work, so we're deliberately importing students who aren't, and doing so disproportionately into the university system. I see this as symptomatic of the "I'll pretend to teach and you pretend to learn" culture currently strangling undergraduate instruction at R1 universities.
I figured I'd add my anecdotal experience from the perspective of a student, having been to college before and after every answer was online. My experiences are mostly interacting with non-international students as well.
As far as cheating on homework, I feel like it is quite common to just look up answers online, and many people are quite open about doing so.
It comes in different forms. There is what I consider "soft cheating," where people will work on a problem and look it up if they can't figure it out. They intentionally penalize themselves a few points, or if they can't understand how the answer was arrived at tall they will intentionally leave it blank or leave a wrong answer. One time a person I knew refused to write something for an answer even though I thought he understood and explained it to him (talking about homeworks was allowed as long as you list them as a collaborator), because he didn't think he could put it in his own words.
Then there are people who flagrantly don't care, or don't see it as a problem. Often their justification is that the university system is a sham, or that everyone else does it. Some people seem to have gotten through by relying on homework helper sites, and scrape by just on getting perfect homework schools while bombing tests.
I feel like I have to compete in this environment, but see it as a personal challenge. The problem is that I suspect professors have adjusted by over-assigning homework to compensate, so it makes it more time-consuming to do well. I personally feel this is a broken situation.
Professors should probably change their approach, and just outright allow the use of secondary sources as long as they are cited. I know a few who seem to implicitly allow this, but most students fear citing work as possibly indicting them as cheaters.
I'd view this as a temporary solution until we figure out a better approach that maintains institutional academic integrity, encourages learning, and fairly evaluates performance.
I got downvoted and can't edit my response, but wanted to add that I'm not endorsing or advocating cheating, or trying to paint anyone as inherently dishonest. I just think the system will have to adapt to the new reality, and should acknowledge that this info is widely available.
>so we're deliberately importing students who aren't
Except most, if not all, of these universities have strict English requirements and fluency testing. If they're cheating to get past those, which is a known issue, why are you indicting the US educational system? How can you stop English fluency cheating when the students don't see anything wrong with it? Perceiving them as the victim at this point is ridiculous.
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 reckon with the fact that many of its expensively Western-educated professionals have no skills other than fraud.
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.
> 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
Yeah, I'm not sure what GP thinks prevents rampant cheating from American students. It's not elaborate cheat detection systems — most students don't cheat simply because they choose not to.
And to act like this isn't a problem unique to Chinese students is a cop out. Culturally, there just isn't the same overwhelmingly negative view of cheating, and that difference is seeping through GP's justifications themselves despite GP ostensibly not being a cheater himself.
Sure a university should try to prevent cheating, and they do, but how far can they go? I don't want the costs of my education to skyrocket and the stresses on my professors to amplify just because some foreign students don't perceive an inherent wrongness with cheating.
I don't think anything prevents rampant cheating by American students. The difference is that American students do a lot of things that don't feel like cheating to them. For example, fraternities sharing libraries of old exams and problem sets, versus outright plagiarism and ringers sitting for exams.
> I don't think anything prevents rampant cheating by American students
The system prevents it. Cheating has consequences at lower levels of American schools. In China, for the most part, it doesn't. Gifts buy good grades. The whole idea of getting into a good school based on your merits is subverted.
The documentary Education, Education, about private colleges within China, shows what happens to poor families with this mindset [1]. They end up paying for schools that aren't really that good, and then they become part of what's become known as the Ant Tribe (蚁族),
> Lian Si (廉思), then a postdoctoral researcher at Peking University, coined the term "ant tribe" to draw a comparison between the lives of these college graduates and ants: "They share every similarity with ants. They live in colonies in cramped areas. They're intelligent and hardworking, yet anonymous and underpaid." [2]
The same thing happens in for-profit universities in the US. The film College, Inc documents this [3].
The degree of cheating by Asians is out of control. The entire SAT is being published. See the 3 minute video "Reused and Abused: How the test-prep industry games the SAT" [4]
The research establishes that virtually everyone cheats "just a little bit," and I think that sharing backwork falls under that "little bit" in most circumstances. At least at my school, backwork is demonstrably different seeing as one of the service fraternities officially, publicly distributes backwork for students to check out/scan/return. Some of the old exams are actually contributed by the professors themselves.
Crucially, the amount of effort necessary to combat backwork sharing, should a professor see it as a problem, is pretty miniscule. I've taken numerous classes that either had no backwork available (hand-counting the number of tests given to the class), or that had totally useless backwork (changing the test format).
Compare that to combatting students hiring test takers and paper writers?
I know tons of students who utilize backwork, very very few who use unauthorized resources (e.g. cellphones) during exams (I've seen it happen once maybe twice), and no one who would ever consider a ringer. Do you really believe that these are all of the same severity and total damage to academic integrity?
Regardless of whatever anecdata either of us can come up with, there are substantial cultural differences on this topic, isn't there? That's a serious question – I've always been led to believe that's the case, but I'm not an expert on Chinese culture by any stretch.
I think there's more than one cultural difference at work here. It's not just that there are cultural differences between the U.S. and China, but that there are generational cultural differences between you and me. It's been almost 20 years since I was an undergraduate. Back then, at my institution anyhow, sharing old exams that weren't publicly posted was considered deeply dishonest. As bad as having a ringer sit the exam for you. I was deeply shocked when, as a senior, I finally learned about the fraternities' libraries. Certainly, I was naive at the time. But my point is that, however you want to rationalize the practice of sharing old exams, it gives an unfair leg up to people who have access.
At any rate, I thank you for the discussion. I'm going to be away from the internet for the weekend, so I'll yield the floor and read any further responses later.
You're 100% correct that it's not a Chinese-only problem. But I don't think the media is focusing on Chinese students because they're Chinese, but because the businesses that specifically advertise to and help Chinese students are being exposed.
I'm not sure if identical services exist for Indian students in American universities, but my anecdotal experience in engineering grad school in the US was that Indian & Chinese students both study & cheat in blocs ... which totally sucked for the 5-of-60 American students in the cohort.
>The media singling out a group such as the Chinese visa students is certainly a popular thing to do to gain clicks, but it's a little unfair.
Did you bother to read the article? There is a cheating industry that caters to the Chinese. This is a valid topic to write about. I think going full politically correct just makes us all stupid. This industry exists for a reason; there's demand from the Chinese and this most likely ties into the ideas of success from Chinese culture where cheating and copy is tolerated, if not encouraged.
Yes, there is an industry catering to the Chinese but making the leap that only the Chinese culture tolerates cheating and copying is idiotic. A problem with news articles is they can only focus on one topic and sadly for some readers that creates a myopic view of the world. Tomorrow you'll read about welfare fraud, tax fraud, investment fraud and insurance fraud and not realize that there is cheating everywhere in every culture. Remember diploma mills? They catered to American employees who wanted to beef up their resumes and get promotions at work. Remember news about grade inflation in American high schools? Remember the use of steroids in baseball? Or painkillers in football? Or insider trading? Or Ponzi schemes? Or insurance companies not honoring their policies? Deflategate? Stealing signals? Stealing playbooks? Videoing rival teams? Bribing amateur athletes? Cheating in Multiplayer games (Halo ;-))? Yeah.
> making the leap that only the Chinese culture tolerates cheating and copying is idiotic
Where do you see it written in the article that only China cheats?
The authors chose to write about a business that helps Chinese students cheat. It sounds like you would prefer that they write an article about every place that has cheating in the world. Do you expect to be able to dictate the topics for author?
> Academic dishonesty is certainly not a Chinese-only problem. The media singling out a group such as the Chinese visa students is certainly a popular thing to do to gain clicks, but it's a little unfair.
Nobody suggested that academic disonesty is chinese only, everyone suggests that there is an industry that reliable will attract wealthy Chinese families to pay for preferential treatment at top universities. It would be dishonest to say otherwise.
I reckon what you say. All the chinese students I know from grad school are few of the most honest & hardworking people. There are thousands of people even from my country(India) who come here only for prestige diluting the genuine student population who come here. Also, it is up to the universities to have a thorough check in these cases.
I said it's unfair to single out and potentially antagonize a group while the problem is more prevalent across many different groups. I don't see any contradiction here. Sorry...
I'd say the concern is Chinese, but it's a systemic problem rather than a concern about any individual's morals or honesty.
Here's a great, sad documentary on the hollowness of the Chinese dream's cycle of expectation, lack of regulation and general chaos of creating unrealistic expectations for millions. Highly recommend watching it.
What a touching documentary that shows a different side to the plight of Chinese students. Thank you for sharing it.
The same system exists in America. The US version of this documentary is College, Inc [1]
The whole exchange between parents who want the best for their kids, teachers who are pushing a sub-par education at their private schools that they know takes advantage of poorer students, pre-enrollment students who will do anything to find a job, and graduated students who can see that this education hasn't opened any doors, is easy to see through this documentary. I wonder whether this film is viewable within China or not
The teacher explaining how his school isn't worth it, particularly for the poor, is heartbreakingly honest [2]
The part when she sings a song about what happened to her hands when she was a child is both sad and happy [3]
Also interesting to learn about the term "Ant Tribe", that is, kids who can't find a job after school [4]
This comment displays a misunderstanding of common logic that so commonly leads people to racist views.
There's a logical difference between saying "a lot of chinese students are cheaters" and "chinese student is most likely a cheater". While statistically speaking these propositions seem to be equal, notice that we are not 100% sure here — we're talking in probabilities.
But talking in probabilities has two important implications. First, human brains are not wired up to work with probabilities probably: so, when you hear a statement "chinese student is likely to be a cheater", next time you see a chinese student, you will see a cheater. Not a 80% probability cheater, just a cheater.
And second thing is that modern morality is based on assumption of best in people — presumption of innocence in law is just one example of that. And this norm have worked really well, in general. When we know that someone is 'bad' only with 80% certainty, we prefer to act as if he's good — for a variety of reasons too complicated to discuss here. Let's just say that in general, it's good for everyone.
So, in the end, answering your point: it's not "unfair to call it out". It's just bad to make all chinese students look bad and create pre-conceptions about them.
> There's a logical difference between saying "a lot of chinese students are cheaters" and "chinese student is most likely a cheater".
Where does the article say Chinese students are most likely cheaters?? I've see this claim repeated multiple times in this thread. Nobody can point out where that is mentioned.
If you could rewrite the article, how would you rewrite it? Would you mention the Chinese at all or just claim that this particular business, Fanyi Translation [1] [2], is helping students cheat, and not mention that they cater to Chinese speakers?
> And second thing is that modern morality is based on assumption of best in people
That's a great attitude and I hope more people can embrace it. Let's begin by fostering trust and call a spade a spade. The article is talking about facts that happened. Students cheated. The article is not saying that the cheaters are bad people. In fact, it says the opposite and demonstrates an understanding of the students.
The article acknowledges that the students know they broke the rules and wish to move on. End of story. The implication for the rest of us is that this doesn't just happen in Iowa, and this thread is a discussion about how to help students, schools and government identify problems and issue corrections for the benefit of all parties. There is nothing wrong with openly talking about an existing problem.
If you are offended by that, I can't help you. This is the way we solve problems in America.
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 pretty good. Even if you can't get the video on 4 corners, the transcript is available.
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 help. When the Westerner comes by and closes the manhole cover, the Chinese are surprised. They'd never consider doing anything like that, because - what's in it for them?
This is a country where people pay others to go to prison for them. If they clip a child with their car, they'll deliberately run over the child again and again to make sure he dies and doesn't create hospital bills.
I was never more staggered by rampant, blatant cheating, plagiarism or dishonesty than when I spent a semester studying in a university there. For someone raised in the West, Chinese callousness and dishonesty towards strangers is unbelievable until you experience it.
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 with these sorts of Americans. As a side note, none of these students happened to be Chinese.
So let's try to avoid taking the most extreme headlines ever written about modern China and painting all Chinese with a single stroke. The 1900s are over.
EDIT: Ignore this exchange. I misinterpreted the parent comment (see down below)
> So let's try to avoid taking the most extreme headlines ever written about modern China and painting all Chinese with a single stroke. The 1900s are over.
The article and headline seem balanced to me.
I find this accusation of racism common in response to articles critical of Chinese. Perhaps you misunderstand the text.
The implied word in the headline is some, not all,
"How an industry helps [some] Chinese students cheat their way into and through U.S. colleges"
Does that make it more clear? If not, then how, in your view, could this headline be rewritten to not be racist?
The fact that I was talking about a different topic aside, of course we don't expect the headlines to be balanced. The virtue of fairness is at odds with the financial benefits of controversial wording.
> The virtue of fairness is at odds with the financial benefits of controversial wording.
Agreed. You said someone was "painting all Chinese with a single stroke". I don't see that. Which words specifically do you find controversial?
Or, do you just dislike the premise of the article? In that case, if you could rewrite an article like this, how would you write it, generally speaking?
Ken47's comment was in reply to another comment, not the article. The other comment said "cheating is just part of Chinese culture" and Ken47 was disagreeing.
Oh gotcha. My bad, thanks. I read "extreme headlines" in the wrong way, but I see what he meant now, that the comment above was piecing together the worst headlines about China. Fair criticism.
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].
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.
Yeah that puts you in a really weird position. Speaking as someone who grew up with a foot in both worlds, the best way to handle it is to refuse the gift as inappropriate in American academic culture. (I'm assuming this was in an American institution.)
Also refusing a gift isn't extremely rude in Chinese culture if it's in the nebulous "I scratch your back you scratch mine" gray area that might be bribery. Accepting is basically signing on for the "deal".
If a family member is visiting me and brought a gift, it would be rude to refuse beyond the culturally customary back and forth in which I put on a show of refusing. But if I were a TA and a new student tried to give me a pair of Prada sunglasses, I would outright refuse it, and possibly act insulted/offended by the thought.
> Also refusing a gift isn't extremely rude in Chinese culture if it's in the nebulous "I scratch your back you scratch mine" gray area that might be bribery. Accepting is basically signing on for the "deal".
So, the person who tells you it is rude to decline, is really just attempting to persuade you to "sign the deal".
After living in Asia for a few years, I can understand how accepting gifts from family members and pretending to decline them is a form of showing respect. I wonder how that developed and why the straightforward Western approach of simply saying, "this is an amazing gift, thank you so much" isn't more common.
Westerners do sometimes say "you shouldn't have" while accepting gifts. We only try to decline the most over-the-top gifts. I guess levels of "politeness" vary across cultures and from situation to situation. In the case of giving and receiving gifts, China's culture appears to be more polite
At any rate, similar to pushing education on other parts of the world, the act of making this a cultural norm seems to make the act lose its meaning, particularly for people outside the culture, like me.
I wonder whether government officials in China really believe in education, and how many view it as a charade. I tend to think it's only a charade when viewed as a charade, and only helpful when viewed as helpful. Education is what it is to you
This was in 2013. We had a Chinese liaison/translator who worked with us in the USA-she's the one who convinced me not to return the gift. It could be she also got a gift and had an interest in keeping it-couldn't say for sure.
In what year? I find it hard to believe that someone studying in the US hasn't been briefed by other students that this is not part of American culture, particularly in the digital age
Assuming it happened recently, my guess is this is more the exception than the rule
Student was definitely in the 1%. His dad owns a company that's on stock market, he has his own gaming servers company in China. He wore suits worth more than my monthly salary.
That explains a lot. Kid knows exactly how business works, though maybe misses the point that gift-giving is viewed as a negative thing in the West, particularly in education. Schools' reputation for integrity of calculated grades is everything for that business.
> 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 people?
Chinese callousness towards strangers is shocking. Wait till you see what some us politicians have to say about foreigners!
> I am Chinese and I would respectfully disagree that cheating is some part of Chinese culture.
I'm not sure what it takes for something to be considered part of a culture, but academic cheating is very widespread in China to the point that there can be strong resistance to local or regional efforts to curb it on the grounds that this will put those who are prevented from cheating at an unfair disadvantage due to the widespread cheating by those outside their region [1].
There's also a plagiarism problem in China, and cultural factors are a major reason for this [2]. More on the scientific plagiarism and fraud problems in China: [3] [4] [5] [6]
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
- china manipulates it's own currency
- china steels intelectual property notoriously
The culture of cheating and lying in China is so bad that even the government posted economic numbers aren't trusted. I have plenty of very close Chinese friends and they would be the first to admit that the mainland Chinese culture is messed up these days, and the instinct to lie and cheat is prevalent.
I believe SolaceQuantum would still argue you're being racist by casting all mainlanders into one group
People have different perspectives on what is and isn't part of a culture. Your disagreement may come down to different definitions of culture. How many people need to perform a certain action in order for it to be considered "part of the culture"?
For an American student who has only ever met the 30 Chinese caught in this cheating scam, it might appear that cheating is part of Chinese culture. Similarly, even though you've been to China, you were probably only in one city and had limited time there.
I know what you're saying. I'm an American living in Asia. I've visited China several times. I live in Taiwan. As a foreigner living in the region farthest from home, you notice some patterns of behavior you may not like about different groups. I've also met tons of Chinese and Taiwanese who I fully understand and get along with better than those who have habits different from my own
If you put yourself in SolaceQuantum's shoes, assume the definition of culture is subjective, assume he is a mainlander who does not cheat and is trying to contribute to the definition of his culture, maybe you can see why he objects to your remarks.
The article, by the way, does not make the claim that all mainlanders or all Chinese cheat, and it does not attempt to define Chinese culture.
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 people try to get it even when they don't have the ability.
> 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.
> 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.
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.
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.
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.
I thought it was 'jo' or 'joe'. I run into a lot of Chicagoans and they pepper their speech with 'joe'. I was always like 'joe' who? Found out recently it is a stand-in for dude.
Isn't that typical of most English countries (and presumably other languages)? For example, in Yorkshire (UK), "I would not have" might become "I'dn't've".
A linguist once pointed out to me that this is really common everywhere. She used the example "dijaeet?" Written that makes no sense, but it really is how a lot of people ask the question "Did you eat?"
Sadly, your examples seem to suggest the opposite. The condensing of phrases makes the language more opaque and difficult to learn. So to a versed English speaker, the dropped implied words are easy to fill in; for someone learning, it's requires significant processing.
Surely you can't be serious? I mean, to hear that someone went to Brizzy, had some brekky, and watched some footy on the telly is comprehensible to anyone.
>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.
Unless schools start getting more strict, this trend will continue
I believe schools have some charter with the government about this. In exchange for federal money, schools agree to uphold some standard of quality. If they are failing at that, it could be grounds for other students to sue the school.
This happened at UNC when athletes were taking bogus classes [1], but the judge tossed out the case because the students waited too long to sue [2]
FIRE is a firm whose stated goal is to defend individual rights in education [3]. I'm sure they'd be interested.
The international students have unreasonably high standards for maintaining financial assistance and staying out of academic probation(3.5-3.8 at my university). By design college courses give work just a little beyond what a student can reasonably accomplish(with a "good" grade) and curve accordingly. These kids aren't just cheating they are marginalizing students who are honest or don't have this kind of social access. If you're not part of a fraterntiy/sorority that archives coursework/tests of previous students or part of an international student in-group then you can easily fall through the cracks from this grade deflation effect.
>If you're not part of a fraterntiy/sorority that archives coursework/tests of previous students or part of an international student in-group then you can easily fall through the cracks from this grade deflation effect.
That is a huge problem for a lot of us more introverted types, especially if you're a transfer student from another school. I remember taking a bunch of classes where I didn't know anyone and had no one to discuss problems and solutions with. Organic chemistry, diff eq, among others, but pretty much all classes were like that. Having social anxiety issues made it very hard to work my way into the community. Meanwhile the other students had all been stuck together in the same program for years, the same dorms, the same fraternities, etc.
I'd come in and the entire rest of the class would be sitting around sharing their homework answers, copying each other on the ones they couldn't figure out, getting help from each other... Never had any access to it and I know I worked harder for lower grades (in some cases) just because I wasn't part of the in-group.
I'm also introverted, but it was my choice not to take the easy way out. >90% of students in my classes cheated on everything - if there was no way to cheat, the world would end for these guys. It's hilarious when you see students sharing answers on an ethics exam!
Cheating may get you the degree and a good GPA, but you really won't learn that much. I for one came to university to learn as much as possible.
In the end, I graduated with first-class honors and had the highest GPA of my cohort. And even though I graduated from a no-name university in the Middle East, I'm going to start a PhD in Electrical Engineering at a top 10 school in the US this fall.
I like to think it's all thanks to doing things ethically rather than cheating my way through college, but perhaps I'm just lucky.
That really hurt when I was taking Discrete Math. Extremely challenging course, and I'd put in 10 hours a week on the homework and still have a few that I just couldn't figure out. Practically cried when I saw people copying answers just before class. Unusually for a university course, the homework was worth about 60% of the grade.
I saw a fair amount of cheating in college. It really sucked to be competing with people who had an easy way out that wasn't even available to me.
> I'd come in and the entire rest of the class would be sitting around sharing their homework answers, copying each other on the ones they couldn't figure out, getting help from each other...
This is actually one of the reasons I frequently avoided study groups for many of my math classes in college. There was too much of an emphasis on just getting the answers from each other, which meant you might get a decent score on the homework but not on the tests. What's worse, you wouldn't develop a true understanding for the material, which would hinder you in later and more advanced courses.
It was definitely a lot more work for me to labor through every problem myself, but I ended up at the top of almost every math class I took, and I really do believe that my avoidance of the study groups was part of this. They were just toxic to a degree. If I really hit a stumbling block and needed help, I'd go to the TA or the professor, who were always extremely helpful because it was obvious I'd put in real effort and wasn't just seeking a quick answer.
I will say that this approach backfired in one case -- a course on advanced integration theory with extremely difficult problem sets, no exams, a very old professor who was brilliant but not very good at all at interacting with or helping students (his lectures were quite bad too and his handwriting illegible), and an invisible, incredibly harsh grader who was not available for advice at all. Doing every problem myself was too much of a burden and I got my first and only B in a math class ever because I didn't join in on the study groups. A year later I met up with some students from that class who learned that I had done every problem myself, and they were collectively in shock and awe due to the length and difficulty of the problem sets.
That sounds like a bad experience with that study group. I found I wasn't really successful as an undergrad until I started to do problem sets with other students. It also really helped to explain problems to others - you don't really understand something until you can explain it to someone else.
>I'd come in and the entire rest of the class would be sitting around sharing their homework answers, copying each other on the ones they couldn't figure out, getting help from each other...
And I'd say you are luckier that you didn't have access to this.
When I was in university, I did my own homework.[1]
I specifically didn't want any help from anyone because I wanted to see how I measured up against other students and the material.
I took chances with my answers. If the problem set included a hint, I tried using the hint privately, but then worked hard at finding a novel answer that didn't use the hint.
This, in my opinion is a real education. Education isn't something the school gives you, it's something you pursue yourself.
And BTW, my grades suffered as a result of this 'passion' for the material, but I don't believe my prospects after school did. If anything I think they were improved.
[1] I don't know what it is these days, with everyone doing their homework together. Is that a millennial thing? Perhaps high schools switched to over-emphasizing group work?
Yeah I feel there's a massive disconnect between class lectures, the book, the exam, and exam-specific student material.
Which is to be expected. Over time, students will optimise material for the exam. Whereas the lectures often discuss things that you ought to learn, but that isn't tested for mostly practical reasons (some knowledge is hard to test, or would make the exam too long).
I've recently sat in a uni statistics course, about 2 weeks in 80% of students stopped coming to class because the professor just had no ability to teach. 1 on 1 he's brilliant, in academic writing he's brilliant, but he's not a teacher. However, students set up a $60 2-day course, everyone who took it passed. At least that's formalised and open, sent to all students' email. But a lot of that nowadays happens through whatsapp. For example I just got a math guidebook, practise exams and some other helpful stuff sent to me on whatsapp from a maths study group I'm taking, all of which is 10x more helpful than the official book used in class or the lectures. But that's only because I got invited into the group by a friend.
I've also studied abroad multiple times and it's a world of difference without these connections. Mainly because exam difficulty has adjusted to students having 'prime' material allowing them to do well, meaning if you don't have it and just follow lectures or the prescribed materials, you're going to have a hard time even scoring above average when you put in tons of effort.
One terrible way that bad professors try to enforce students attending their class periods is by sprinkling in "clicker" quizzes into their lectures. These are little four-button devices that you have to buy/rent at exorbitant rates from the school IT department. One class that I took, informally known as "Stars for Stoners" aka Astronomy 101, based something like 10% of the total grade on these clicker questions. Naturally, people found ways to circumvent this kind of bullshit[1], at least for a while...
In my experience the cheaters don't socialize outside their group at all. That's how it's so easy to tell the cheaters from the normal people! They won't. And if half your class is like that, well.. yeah :(
My take on it: There's no solutions manual for building stuff in real life lol.
That's just personal/professional networking and you should consider working at it. I try to keep in touch with as many former co-workers as I can in case I find myself looking for something new or I can help out someone who is looking themselves.
That's my favorite opportunity: helping someone find a job when they need one.
You do realize this is the best way to get a job? And also, commonly thought as the best way to find new high quality employees so that when your old colleagues boss
It's not some secret fraternity. All you need to do is to do a good job and not be an asshole, so that when your old colleagues boss asks, does he know any candidates for a new position he remembers to mention you.
> These kids aren't just cheating they are marginalizing students who are honest or don't have this kind of social access
Sue the school [1]. There are firms that specialize in protecting people's rights in education [2]. Suing doesn't make you a bad person, and you don't even have to do the talking
>If you're not part of a fraterntiy/sorority that archives coursework/tests of previous students or part of an international student in-group then you can easily fall through the cracks from this grade deflation effect.
+1 I saw this going on at my highly ranked university. After many B's, my self-esteem got a boost senior year when I finally took a newly required course with a new professor where there were no old tests to study and got an A.
Maybe that's a sign that these people shouldn't be cheating to get into a school that they can't work their way out of. These aren't victims, they're cheaters taking spots from other people.
A 3.5 is easy. I got a a 3.82 at my school of engineering, while working, and commuting for about 4 hours per day. I didn't really even try that hard in school.
This comment doesn't really add anything to the discussion especially because colleges have different grading scales and culture of grade inflation or deflation. For example in mine most GPAs hovered around 3.5. A 3.8 would be rare.
Grade inflation is a problem for many state American universities, at least. Havard also is a private university where grade inflation has been highlighted as a real problem. See:
No, but in engineering the flunk-out rate is near 70%, or at least it was 25 years ago when I was a student. I don't think there is grade inflation going on there.
I only witnessed cheating twice; Chinese and Indians. In general though, the Asians worked their asses off; 1st generation immigrants "off the boat". Very tough competition.
Congrats, you're my first down vote. Seriously though, here you either add to the conversation or perish. Bragging about your GPA is not only childish, but completely irrelevant to prett much everything....in life.
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/ritalin... that goes through college campuses is ridiculous.
Honestly, I feel that it's just a symptom of extreme competition. With colleges and first time jobs taking such extreme care to filter on GPA and the likes, every little bit usually pays off.
To be fair, there is a difference between adderall and actual cheating. One of these is a thing that helps you do your own work better, and the other is hiring someone else to do your work for you.
One of these things is fraudulent, and the other is simply performance enhancement. Taking Adderall to study doesn't make you less competent at the subject in question, whereas cheating your way through tests does.
>"Taking Adderall to study doesn't make you less competent at the subject in question"
What happens when you stop taking it?
We frown upon doping in school for the same reason we frown upon it in sports. It creates an environment where people are forced to deal with the side effects to compete, or receive a lower grade.
Employers will expect that you continue your performance outside of school. If you stop doping after school, your employer will notice the new correlation between GPA and performance - hurting those with legitimate work ethic and skill. If you don't stop doping, you will start to experience some serious health issues.
(Even if employers don't think that GPA matters, so long as any significant number hire based on it the zero-sum fault will persist.)
Doubt the employer would notice it, being that GPA and performance are not necessarily correlated. Doping in any situation gives an edge at the upper levels, but won't make an average person superhuman. (It makes superhumans even more superhuman).
We frown on doping because it's dangerous due to bad health effects. Forcing someone to use performance enhancers to compete and damage their health is the ethical problem in my mind. Collateral harm.
"As part of its work to prevent diversion of controlled substances, DEA sets limits, known as quotas, on the amount of certain classes of controlled substances available for use in the United States"
Excuse me, ADHD is very serious and real. Let me show you a few relevant quotes. Here's the relevant literature linked.
"Given these deficits in academic skills and behavior, it is not surprising to find that as many as 56% of children with ADHD may require academic tutoring, approximately 30% may repeat a grade in school, and 30–40% may be placed in one or more special education programs. As many as 46% may be suspended from school and 10–35% may drop out entirely and fail to complete high school (Barkley, DuPaul, & McMurray, 1990; Barkley, Fischer, Edelbrock, & Smallish, 1990; Barkley, Fischer, Smallish, & Fletcher, 2006; Faraone et al., 1993; Szatmari, Offord, & Boyle, 1989; Weiss & Hechtman, 1993)."
It causes an order of magnitude more problems in your life.
^^ Medication effects on I.Q && Working memory. WM > I.Q. There is one study that has found an increase of up to 4.5 points for kids that are medicated if they have ADHD.
Very serious. Deserves to be taken very seriously.
Stop doubting something extremely real and significant.
I am in no way doubting the effects and seriousness of real diagnoses of ADD/ADHD. For those that actually need it, it works wonders.
But there is a serious percentage of college-aged ADHD diagnoses that are about as legitimate as most medical marijuana prescriptions. These kids are just snorting Adderall so they can cram for an exam or pull an all-nighter and finish a term paper. I've seen it first hand, and it's an incredibly wide-spread practice at some top-tier US universities.
Right, but because of the rules set in place (since it's categorized as a meth derivative or something), a lot of pharmacies don't stock a lot, or are completely unwilling to fill a prescription.
If you check out places like /r/ADHD you'll see some stories of people unable to get their prescription filled.
> Taking Adderall to study doesn't make you less competent at the subject in question
1. Is exam-cram really the same as knowledge?
2. Test performance can often a zero-sum game, when curved. So dopers may have better performance, but they are indirectly harming all the honest kids.
3. Is it desirable to tie better-performance to having money/connections and weak ethics? (Whether similar to full-time work or not.)
100% agree with you and that's why I said "Us Americans aren't so innocent", not "we're just as guilty" (Albeit, there are a lot of us who cheat also).
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.
I've never cheated or taken non-caffeine stimulants. I haven't seen anyone around me cheat. As a TA grading other students' work, I caught three students cheating out of ~40 whose work I graded. I did see another student taking Adderall once.
So, while cheating and stimulants are not unheard-of, they certainly aren't normal where I am. It probably varies from school to school, though.
Don't feel bad. Cheating is like taking on technical debt. It's a short term reward, but it usually comes back to haunt you. After graduating, their employer will learn that they aren't nearly as good as their resume said they were and with your greater knowledge and word ethic, you'll probably come out ahead.
Yup, that's what I've seen. I have an engineering degree and it is was a common understanding that the cheaters were the guys and gals that ended up being technical reps, while the hard workers ended up doing the exciting work. It only takes 1-2 years in the work force to see who has got the chops and who doesn't.
Cheaters definitely rationalize. I myself never had anyone else sit exams for me, nor used anyone else's work as my own, nor copied homework answers. I think cheating is common but there are definitely people who don't do it. You just don't hear much about them.
In my experience, a lot of the cheaters do, in fact, believe (or want to believe) that just about everyone else is doing it too. Don't buy it.
I wasn't aware of anyone in my circle of friends or even friendly acquaintances who cheated in college or grad school. (I heard about occasional incidents involving people I didn't know. But if there was an active cheating subculture, nobody talked about it when I was in earshot.) And my experience as a professor is that there are an awful lot of students who I work with one on one and whose homework and exam grades are right in line with my firsthand experience of their work.
When I went to college, I saw smart people who not only studied insanely hard, but ALSO took adderall AND cheated just to stomp out the competition. I saw a few friends end up in the hospital, but they had no regrets.
I didn't either, and don't believe I knew anyone that did (grad and undergrad CS, knew 2-3 other students who likely did not). Anecdotal data point, but there it is.
Where I live the modus operandi is amphetamines 48 hours before exam with aspirin. Study without sleeping. Take exam. Sleep. Forget everything. At least the kids don't do it for important professions - the ones I knew did it were mostly medical students and civil engineers /s.
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.
Isn't that kinda counter productive? I would assume that a degree from a US university would count for much more which is part of the reason why so many of the Chinese upper class are sending their children to the US - the stamp on the paper is worth more than the actual education.
Yeah -- I wondered about that too. I think they were aiming to familiarize themselves with the U.S. as much as possible, in as short a time for as little money as possible. I think their real aim was a graduate program in the U.S. You'd be surprised at how much easier it is to get into a graduate program here if you're already here.
"Australia's international student market is a $15 billion industry and the country's largest export after iron ore, coal and gold"... and money talks.
Cheating is and always should be a pox that needs to be eradicated. But let's not turn a blind eye to what's happening here locally. Parents in the 1% spend an extraordinary amount of money and resources on college-prep companies, many of which tell the kids exactly what extracurriculars to take, what to do after school, and virtually write the entire outline of their admissions essays. It's little wonder that schools like Harvard are playgrounds for the ultra-elite.
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 ethics committee's investigation was "undetermined" and no action was taken.
The reasoning is pretty clear -- foreign students pay more and pay in cash.
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 honest, but cheating is a terrible part of the subculture
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.
The professor should be held responsible for letting the cheaters get away with it. Not that hard to find cheaters in a programming class if he/she cared.
The university administrators tell the faculty that cheating is a really big deal, that they take very seriously. They will not tolerate it, and will severely punish any student they catch cheating.
Of course, it is essential that the university treats students fairly when they are under such terrible suspicion. Therefore, any complaint of cheating should be made on the approved 15 page form, handwritten in quadruplicate, and submitted for the Vice-Chancellor to consider in her copious free time.
It's extremely unfair to characterize them as "dumb". They have the same credentials as the tenured faculty did when they start, but they don't have tenure.
That's way different than these companies producing fake transcripts and even taking exams on behalf of students. Everyone has right to do college-prep as much as they like and everyone would get help in essays from friends, parents and professionals. But flat out lying, making up your grades and having someone else take exams for you is whole different ball game.
Careful with the strawmen; it was never stated that there is no difference. The point I read was that unfair advantage should be discouraged in all forms, no matter how insidious or subtle. I think it's a very valid point: You don't need to be a moral absolutist, but it's only fair to keep an eye on the nuanced avenues of unfair advantage as well as the explicit ones.
If someone has a subtle point they want to make, they should make it explicit and as obvious as possible. The principle of charity doesn't require me to invent arguments for them.
If someone doesn't say what they think the difference is [1], and they ask me to apply all the implications about one to the other, it's not a strawman to say they are equating the two.
[1] between "doing Y would help improve your score" vs "the answer is X"
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 frat connections to land exceedingly awesome jobs. Blame the Chinese all you want, it hurts because they're the 'other'. (/rant. Sorry. Makes me really mad. I WORKED HARD TO LEARN AND ENJOYED CLASSES.) Funnily enough, I did exceedingly well in those exams that were open book (instructors knew the 'sharing of past papers happened, so they changed questions types) to which I didn't any scrap of paper. /humblebrag. But yeah, the system is unfair as it is.
Having said that, dear Americans, as broken as things are (despite those gosh darned 'cheatin' Chinese', as Trump would say), the system is better than anywhere else. Thanks for that : )
> 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 undergrad friend that my company is hiring interns and recommend her?
Of course an international student will have less connections which is why they sometimes struggle getting internships.
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.
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.
> 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.
Sometimes those frat bros are just exceptionally smart, too. My fraternity president got blackout drunk nearly every day playing pong, and graduated with a 4.0. Another guy who had a similar dedication to pong paddles and Keystone Light scored a perfect score on the MCAT. We had no super-secret archives of past homeworks or exams.
Are you arguing that "rich kids tend to have more resources" is justification for cheating, or is it the case that you reflexively comment on articles that don't explicitly criticize the "1%" with a non-sequitur about what you wish the article had been about?
When I began graduate school, it was very surprising to me to see how the Chinese kids all cheated together as a matter of course and the Indian kids all cheated together as a matter of course. Some of the Americans would cheat somewhat, but furtively, rather than just being an ingrained part of culture.
(with the exception of one top Indian student who had no need for cheating whatsoever)
And it's also precisely anathema to the purpose of a university. It's especially infuriating if people are doing it while studying CS or similar engineering topics, because in most cases the job market doesn't require the credentials only the skills and their cheating is causing grade deflation for people who actually put forth effort.
I was taking a school bus license endorsement exam and saw they throw out a Chinese girl for cheating. The examiner said it was a fairly frequent occurrence. They couldn't read the questions or answers but they could match the picture with the correct line of answers on the computerized testing machine after enough memorization.
It's happening at virtually every large state school with many foreign students. The schools let them get away with it because of the absurd amount of $$$ they pay to go to school here. It's become a serious source of revenue for many schools and I think they're unwilling to part with it, especially with the way many states are cutting education spending.
The school won't investigate. They're getting money from students. This hurts your degree and job prospects when unqualified graduates get hired with fake GPAs
In the past, only the brightest and best Chinese students could come to US, mostly by scholarship for their master/PhD, most of them stayed after the study.
These days, the majority students from China are those ordinary kids(or even worse) with a rich dad, most of them are the only child in the family which was likely spoiled, these combined produced a quality issue, so we're seeing them on the news, that they cheat, they committed crimes, they do drugs,etc.
In the meantime, many universities are in need of cash, which is another reason in the mix.
So all in all, it's all about money, one needs that, another one has that but not much more than that, thus all kinds of related issues.
I have no relevant experience in academic finance, but I sincerely doubt it. The brand and reputation of the universities are what allows them to charge so much for tuition and get prestigious faculty (i.e. grant money).
International students are a boon for "good but not top" private colleges. Those lose a lot of money giving top students full rides to improve their ranking/chance at graduating a billionaire or something like that. They make it up by admitting tons of international students who pay full or near full price because back home any decent US degree is seen as amazing.
My sources are anecdotal but I went to a university like that. Some classes were 70% Chinese international.
I'd heard that seats at Harvard was going for $20 million per piece for internal students who wouldn't remotely qualify otherwise. There are always few seats like these reserved at most universities. If you do the math, that one guy basically covers the cost of his entire class.
The nature of the problem dictates it can't go on record. I can only add I've heard the same anecdotal from my international students, not necessarily about Harvard but similar higher-tier schools going for $50,000 admission, probably with more fees for a certain GPA.
The degrees for cash are sold abroad from what I've gathered. I highly doubt the money goes to Harvard directly-instead it probably pays off the service offering the degree first, with money to admissions directors, professors and whoever else needs to look the other way. It'd be hard to hide huge sums of money in the US system, but possible abroad with in-person or otherwise hidden pay offs to people on the inside in the USA.
> The brand and reputation of the universities are what allows them to charge so much for tuition and get prestigious faculty (i.e. grant money).
The effects of this issue are not widely understood by the general public. The general public think this kind of thing doesn't hurt the quality of education in the US. We know better.
Only we know because we all attended schools for science which are inundated with Chinese students, particularly at the graduate level.
The schools' reputations will not be hurt until someone sues them. I'm convinced someone in this thread could bring a case against their school and do a lot of good for the US educational system.
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, 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. If you can fake your way through a Ph.D. physics program at a reputable university, you deserve the diploma.
I'm having a hard time reading your comment as anything other than a statement that you wish there were less Chinese students at your school just because you don't want them there. Did I completely miss your point here?
> 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 deserve the diploma.
Agreed :-D
> I'm having a hard time reading your comment as anything other than a statement that you wish there were less Chinese students at your school just because you don't want them there. Did I completely miss your point here?
Definitely !!! I graduated from my MS program 8 years ago. I live in Taiwan now and I love the Chinese culture and people. I don't like things that make it look bad. I admire Taiwan for its warless entrance into democracy and interesting history with China [1].
The bad parts of this story are ideas, not people. Ideas and people are separate. Hate the game, not the player. The idea that cheating is okay is one that can be criticized without attacking people for holding that idea. People face consequences for their actions. That does not make them bad people.
Perhaps a dumb question but why doesn't the Chinese government crack down on this? I feel like they have a pretty good handle on what's going on within their borders, and this issue is poisoning the reputation of Chinese-born young people whether as applicants to companies, applicants to grad school, or generally as trustworthy human beings.
Is it because the college students benefiting from these operations are the children of influential people? That's the only explanation I can think of that makes any sense.
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.
No free speech. It hurts their educational systems very deeply. They also have a culture of bribing/gifting, from middle school up into the business world and government.
It all boils down to the government wanting to hold onto Asian culture, avoid conflict, keep control and save face.
They view democracy as America's attempt to insert a US-friendly leader. Democracies are arguably the best peace keepers humanity has ever seen, however, China does not view it this way.
This is my perspective after living in SE Asia for 2 years and Taiwan for 2 years. I travel through China occasionally.
> Democracies are arguably the best peace keepers humanity has ever seen,
You might want to examine that belief, and how you acquired it. Evidence for it in the historical record is not exactly abundant.
(Feel free to dig back 25 centuries, and start by looking up how the Athenian democracy went around kicking their neighbors' butts, as told by one of the Athenian generals, a fair-minded bloke. Thucydides' Melian dialogue is the magic string.)
Didn't Athens fall because their democratic government assigned too little tax money to military? That's what happened in first Polish democracy (XV-XVIII centuries).
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?
That's not as good for China as these students building businesses within China, however.
We all see the benefits of China preparing its students better. China isn't fully on the same page yet.
Since reopening trade relations with the US in the 70s after Kissinger's visits, they've only gradually benefited from increased relations. Their growth is constrained by the government's stranglehold on the internet and media. People are constantly jailed for speech that would be considered innocuous in the West.
Many native English speakers will go to China to work as English teachers, but there are not enough teachers to cover all of China. There are so many Chinese people that huge swaths of them will never be directly educated by a native English speaker. Some of these kids enter into American schools, and this post and thread is the result. Students cheat as they realize they're in way over their heads, and the rest of us get annoyed at the devaluation of our degrees and industries. Industries are hurt when unqualified folks are hired based on a supposedly legitimate degree.
Have seen at last one Chinese guy's profile on Upwork having some test passed with maximum score, completed within ~5 minutes (while the time for a test is usually ~40 minutes).
This is something that isn't just unique to higher education in the U.S, it's pretty much standard practice back in China as well. It's all about rote memorization & tests. What you can't memorize, you find a way to cheat through. You can't cheat? Then buy off your professor or teacher. Bribing educators in China is the quickest and easiest way to pass. Practically no creative learning takes place in China.
This is interesting to me because it's something that's inherent to China's culture. It persists passed the education stage of their life, well into adulthood. And that's a terrible shame because it sets up China for failure.
Without actually learning/understanding the material (and learning to think critically), the general populace isn't equipped and stands no chance when it comes to future innovations. The foundation for future technological innovation (in any industry) simply isn't there. Their country has always been a few steps behind, and keeps falling further and further behind as the decades pass. There are no new big innovations coming out of China, they've only been able to hold their own (if you can call it that) by buying, copying or stealing technology from other countries, entities or businesses. The problem is, China's targets have wised up over the years, so future IP/technology theft will be much, much harder if not impossible.
Unfortunately, I think because this has its roots in China's culture (systemic), there is no quick fix as changing the culture of a billion people is nearly impossible. I think the entire thing needs to come down and be rebuilt from scratch.
> Unfortunately, I think because this has its roots in China's culture (systemic), there is no quick fix as changing the culture of a billion people is nearly impossible. I think the entire thing needs to come down and be rebuilt from scratch.
I agree with everything you wrote up to here. I'd have said the same thing until I moved to Taiwan. Now I'm not sure what to think
I live in Kaohsiung (pronounced gow-shung), Taiwan, which is relatively unknown but is actually the second biggest city in Taiwan after Taipei. It's the site of a 1979 protest named the Kaohsiung or Formosa Incident [1]
People were protesting martial law and seeking democracy. The other day I was talking to someone who was at that protest. He told me the feeling of the populace was that steps towards democracy must be made. Otherwise, people were going to start a revolution. 17 years later, in 1996, after a series of changes, Taiwan held its first direct election. Since then, a diverse cast of characters have been elected to the legislative body. Around 65-75% of the Taiwanese turn out to vote [2].
I feel Taiwan's warless entrance into democracy shows that governments can evolve without war. The BBC has a very succinct history of Taiwan that is pretty accurate if you're interested in learning more [3].
Taiwan is a very controversial subject, particularly to China, who claims ownership of it. Taiwan has its own government, holds elections, doesn't pay taxes to China, and you need a passport to go between TW and China.
There are a lot of differences between China and Taiwan so it's hard to predict what will happen in China. I am optimistic.
Entire copies of the SAT are getting released in China, and possibly the US. The College Board's ETS cancelled January 2016's test in China out of concern that the test that would be used was already available on the internet. Then they gave another test in March. Questions from that test started appearing online within hours after it finished [1]
The problem with this is that the College Board reuses tests. They do not feel it is feasible for them to issue unique questions for each test, according to [2]
This undermines the biggest criteria used to admit students to college
It means rich kids in China can buy their way into US colleges through these companies that compile actual SAT questions, and poorer kids who have done honest hard work will miss out on opportunities to study in the US.
So long as this goes unaddressed, we're importing rich kids who will arrive unprepared and return home without much further education. They're simply giving money to certain institutions in the US and not adding much to the development of US or Chinese innovations. The quality of schools could degrade, causing a weaker economy, etc. etc.
Hope the College Board can see how pervasive this is. The internet is a real game changer when it comes to maintaining academic integrity.
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 state school.
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.
Freshman Calculus classes are infamous for being a dumping ground for professors/grad students that can't teach. It's absurd, but it acts as a really perverse weeding-out function.
Reading some of the comments here makes it clear that we (the global we) have way overvalued the piece of paper that we get upon graduation and have largely ignored the process, habits, & knowledge that said piece of paper once stood for. The problem with all these developing nations & cheating isn't one of moral failing, but the fact that a cred is valued more than what the cred is supposed to stand for. I would argue that this has to do more with the venality of Western universities (and our superior marketing) that it has to do with much else.
We (Westerners) tell the world, and ourselves, all you need is a piece of paper and all will be well. This piece of propaganda plays a larger role than any perceived moral inferiorities among the developing peoples of the world.
> we (the global we) have way overvalued the piece of paper that we get upon graduation
Well, that's subjective. It's meaningful to some people and not to others
Schools aren't meant to be perfect. Reputation is meant to help people identify trustworthy parties more quickly. That doesn't mean you can't re-scrutinize a school or person yourself. It's simply one optional filter. Some people find this more useful than others.
If you don't want to pay attention to certificates, that's your choice. People who attended these institutions may care and it's their right to defend their degree from dilution if they wish.
I said we have overvalued the certifications/diplomas, not that they don't have value. I also never implied that schools were meant to be perfect.
My point is that we have zeroed in on the certification/diploma too much and have begun (until recently) paying too much attention to whether the cert has been attained as opposed to what it is supposed to represent. The reason why I believe this happened is because it is much easier to quantify a diploma or any other certification, "Oh you graduated! That must mean X." It is harder to ascertain whether or not a person who gained a diploma or cert actually deserves it or learned anything in the process.
> I also never implied that schools were meant to be perfect.
Yeah, you're right, sorry.
> we have zeroed in on the certification/diploma too much and have begun (until recently) paying too much attention to whether the cert has been attained as opposed to what it is supposed to represent
I can only speak for myself. For me this story is not just about the value of the piece of paper. It's the down-the-road effects that I find interesting. You may feel the plight of China or Chinese students does not affect you. I consider them part of my community. I live in Taiwan, which, while a separate country from China, often gets lumped together with China. I think many people could make a case for how this issue affects them, whether in school or the workplace, beyond just the value of their degree. When this happens at all schools, it becomes the value of our educational system.
> The reason why I believe this happened is because it is much easier to quantify a diploma or any other certification, "Oh you graduated! That must mean X."
I valued my degree's paper more than the content. The content was largely bullshit. Who needs to learn astronomy for a business degree? Employers don't give a shit if I know about astronomy, why should I care? It's required, however, so I took it. I did the minimum to get a 4.0 and nothing more. I think space is interesting and I read about it in my free time, but memorizing facts and figures about random things isn't really interesting.
Even the relevant classes are largely bullshit. I took a marketing class where the textbook was seemingly written by a group of people who sit in a room all day making up labels for common sense concepts. As a student, I have to memorize those labels. I have to memorize the meaningless systems and charts and diagrams those people came up with. I have to memorize the names of people who did things in the field of marketing.
You get my point. It was a waste of time. There was definitely useful stuff in my degree, stuff that was helpful in my actual jobs, but it was maybe 1-2% of my total undergraduate career, and I could have learned that information on my own with a few books and about a month of studying.
Wait what, you had to take astronomy in uni to get a business degree?
Could you elaborate, maybe point me to the program? I've never heard of anything like this.
(although I do know other ridiculous examples, don't laugh but I know people who had PE in a uni business degree. team building competencies and all that crap haha)
I had to take 8 hours (two classes) of a science class with a lab. I could have done physics, biology, chemistry, etc. Astronomy was the easiest option so it's what I chose. I think most, or at least many, business schools have a requirement for this in the US.
In my experience it has been declining in importance. In the past I'd see jobs advertised asking little more than a degree (or equiv. industry experience). Today I still see degrees listed, but often as "preferred" & always amongst a litany of other skill-based requirements.
Seems to be that there's at least some commercial pressure to value the "piece of paper" less. Of course it could also be that a degree is now the de facto baseline, & the wheels just keep turning.
In the US it's illegal to require a degree for almost all postitions that people around here are concerned with. Companies always try to elide this, but bizdev, marketing, programming, sysadminning, sales, and starting a company are not classified as the kinds of skilled positions for which a diploma can be required, such as engineering, finance, architecture, law, medicine, etc. I don't know if this maps perfectly to board-certified professions (IANAHR), but there does appear to be a pattern.
Illegal? Most employment in the US is at-will. You can hire or fire for any reason or none at all, as long as you're not selecting based on race, sex, religion, etc.
Where is it illegal to require a degree in Marketing for a job in Marketing?
There's legal notions that state you can't create arbitrary requirements. i.e. take a job where employees are on the phone with customers all day, it turns out that entrepreneurs would rather want your name to be John than Juan, Kwame or Mohammed. And given racial differences in socioeconomic standing, which create differences in educational attainment, it's easy to say a college degree is a requirement for the job, when you're really just using it as a proxy to hire a certain ethnic profile.
This is just an example, I'm not claiming here it's widespread (although it wouldn't surprise me in some industries, and many blind tests have shown preferences, but that's besides the point.)
Now this isn't new, so there have been court cases in the past. And they shaped a precedent which loosely states that you can't just say you need a degree for the job. You need to back that up with real data. This isn't common practice, but it's the law. So for a job where you need to do rudimentary work, there's technically quite a high burden of proof on the employer to require a degree for that.
The famous case is Griggs vs Duke Power Co[0][1]
There've been more cases since, it's not that hard to find. In any case, no it's not broadly illegal to ask for a degree at all. But there is precedent that unnecessary tests, e.g. a degree requirement for a telemarketing job, are indeed illegal.
I wouldn't know for certain how a judge would rule on the examples given by the person you replied to, like system admin or marketing, but I suspect the notion a degree would be required would be found entirely reasonable by a judge, like syst admin or marketing. But I get his point. I've got friends who work e.g. as a credit analyst, which is a job they say they and their peers could've done at age 16 without even finishing HS, yet it's a typical job that requires a degree and that a judge would probably be convinced of that it requires a degree.
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 is in the US, but where I live it's typically students in business, accounting, marketing, and management that do the majority of the cheating. Whether that's because how those subjects are assessed makes them inherently more suitable for cheating or because language problems make essays, but not software, harder to write is difficult to say.
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.
And, parents are told that their kids need this paper. Test-prep businesses, like the one mentioned in the article, tell them that in order to drum up business.
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 for HR types to apply, so they do).
GPAs and such probably matter in government orgs, or places that are very strict and hierarchical. You probably want to avoid places like these anyway.
Because the university and myself are assessing different sets of competencies. They are measuring academic performance, usually in mathematics or computer science, and I am looking for people who can help my company build better software. Those two competencies aren't always strongly correlated. Thus I must assess "chops" as well as I can.
Additionally, the farther out from a candidate's graduation the interview takes place, the less their GPA matters compared the work they have done since they left. If you have a great resume and come highly recommended I'm not very concerned with how well you did in your calc 2 or operating systems courses.
Because having chops in one area doesn't necessarily correlate to having them in another (i.e. student vs employee). Couple that with individual valuation and personality evaluation, and it seems foolish to accept the university's assessment. Maybe if you were hiring in groups and needed impersonal metrics it would be different.
Candidate A stuck it out for four years. They took all the right classes. But they didn't do much of anything else.
Candidate B dropped out after three years. But they've done some quite interesting side projects, they know a bunch of languages, and stuff outside the coursework, and the courses they took were the harder ones.
Generally, and for openers, 'A' is gonna struggle explaining what the heck an XOR is, while 'B' is going to toss off the answer in a couple of seconds. And their skills just keep diverging from there. I'll have confidence that 'B' will keep growing and learning, and they're going to be a handful, while 'A' is going to need to be told what to do, and that will be tiresome.
This ^^^ is kind of a parody, but you can tell what I'm looking for, early on. (People with more experience, I look for significant contributions to hard problems, and I'm really interested in how people decide what to work on).
I share your sentiment. My sibling did Dartmouth for undergrad, Harvard and MIT for graduate school. I bootstrapped and sold a handful of companies after dropping out of college.
People need information to judge and trust others by. Information about ones capabilities should be verifiable by your accomplishments. At the start of a career though you have no accomplishments.
Companies, especially larger more established companies with higher head counts, are often risk averse in their hiring so hey use prestigious degree programs to filter out other potential candidates.
This is absolutely true, but it's not only about being risk averse in hiring -- it's about outsourcing your selection process to the universities. If you had to find 100 young people to be the next class of analysts at your fancy consulting firm, where would you start looking? It just makes sense to go to the places where high-achieving young people congregate. There's not a better system (maybe standardized testing would work, but that doesn't solve the problem).
> I know its naive but I find it really hard to understand why people value the piece of paper more than the knowledge.
It's used as a filter. On paper, you look good, so you get an interview.
When many applicants are "fake" degrees, industries get the impression that there simply isn't good talent out there. Employers don't have a reliable means of knowing the likelihood someone is a good engineer. Employers could try to filter based on Asian-sounding last names, but that would be illegal and cheating themselves out of candidates who actually did work hard in school.
Sure you can cheat as a developer. I have had contract firm setup interviews with candidate A and then send candidate B on-site.
I have interviewed candidates on the strength of a resume only to find out that someone in the building at a previous position was working with a technology.
Once on the job, I have seen people pass off code from Java tutorial sites and StackOverflow as their own. Eventually, they find someone who will protect them and then they can collect pay while generating excuses and blame storming.
On the other hand, I feel bad that the broad generalization impacts tremendously negatively those Chinese visa students who did pursue their dream and passion which led them to a foreign university. I worked hard to graduate with distinction, and learned my stuff well enough to go on and have a successful career, but I always feel I have to go the extra mile just to prove myself; I have to go above-and-beyond just to gain equal footing. I cannot quantify the negative impact the those people cause, but it's incredibly unfair to be prejudiced just because I may look like those people.
Academic dishonesty is certainly not a Chinese-only problem. The media singling out a group such as the Chinese visa students is certainly a popular thing to do to gain clicks, but it's a little unfair.
</end-of-rant>