<p>Cellardweller, you entered a U.S. university as a grad student. The dynamics are quite different for undergrad v grad students. Grad students focus on their principal discipline, and much of their work is performed independently. And if they are lucky enough financially to not have to work as a teaching assistant, grad students (especially in the STEM disciplines) can get by fairly well without having to perform verbally in the classroom. </p>
<p>U.S. undergrads have a wide discipline curriculum that requires comparatively more English verbal participation. Your statement that “Until recently, international undergrads in the US were few and far between” is inaccurate. My undergrad university (not on the low end of the food chain) had a sizable community of students from Hong Kong who were smart and fluent (not merely proficient!) in English (albeit, the funny British kind), and that was decades ago when a 1.2 Mb floppy disk was a high tech.</p>
<p>My question is: is cheating actually more prevalent, or are we just more aware of it now?</p>