<p>Call it what you want. People will take advantage whenever and wherever an arbitrage opportunity is available. When a testing agency leaves such a big loophole by administering the same test in different time zones, no one can expect otherwise. If the college board, along with you, does not understand that, the shame is not on me. </p>
<p>I do agree that the current admission approach as described in the Times article is highly dysfunctional, to say the least. Other than in-person interview as suggested by the Chronicle article, I believe to have an independent and national clearance house in China to verify credentials will also work well (cheaper and more efficient).</p>
<p>I partially agree with you. But how individual behavior is modeled is far more complex than what kind of government s/he lives under. Otherwise, you cannot explain why there are honorable and dishonorable people in the same family, same town, same country.
No single group has monopoly on virtues.</p>
<p>No, the shame IS on you. If my high schooler takes chemistry in 7th period, it’s not “ok” for him to get the answers from the kid who took it in 3rd period. How about some ethics? Sad.</p>
<p>And too bad these schools were taken in because they DID act in good faith and they trusted that people were, indeed, who they said they were and had the credentials they presented.</p>
<p>It is unethical for students to knowingly misrepresent themselves to gain admission. It does not matter that they pay full tuition. There are American students that pay full tuition and are expected to abide by the same rules for applying. Now if these students are being fed a line by these intermediaries that this is “how it’s done” <wink, wink=""> and the students don’t know any better it still does not make them blameless. It makes them ignorant, which is not an excuse. We all know this. The university should emphasize when they go on these recruiting trips what academic honesty means, and not be so eager to take people’s money and turn a blind eye to what they know is going on. They are doing a disservice to their existing students by saturating their classes with students that would not have been accepted had they known their poor performance and language skills. There is an entire industry in China based on teaching the Chinese English. The university should not be bending backwards to pull unqualified students to have them get stuck in ESL classes in the U.S. at 10x the cost of having it done in China.</wink,></p>
<p>A big number of HS kids in my very well respected HS are tutored by (their or another from same department) HS teachers to the tune of $40/hr. Considering our HS’s policy of testing using material that is 50% based on the textbook (*) and 50% not (almost went to the school board with this one) Is that any more or less unethical than ‘wink wink’???</p>
<p>(*) meaning that a student can answer each and every question in each and every section of the textbook, including practice tests, session reviews, homeworks, and study guides, and still encounter only half or so of the type of problems that will likely be on the test - meanwhile, the tutored kids have access to 100% from their HS faculty tutors.</p>
<p>Unbelievable how some try to rationalize blatant cheating. If a teacher, or anyone, tutors using the standard textbook with questions in teh back of each chapter, then there is nothing wrong with that. If the faculty make up tests using a portion of questions from the textbook, that is apparently their perogative. That is not cheating. In fact, some teachers will direct classes to what chapters or what sections they will need to kow for a test or quiz. So what. If, however, the teachers gave the students the actual tests they were going to administer in advance, and taught to the test, THAT is cheating. They are NOT the same, no matter how you try to spin it.</p>
<p>Being tutored in a subject is not the same thing as cheating, and it is appalling that some of you make no moral distinction. Absolutely appalling. Oh wellz, as long as you can get the right grades, the right name on your diploma and impress everybody, that’s all that counts, amirite?</p>
<p>I’m with jym626 here. I guess none of them want to go to Caltech, a honor code school. Any body wonders why Caltech produced/produces the most Noble Prize winners (proportionally)? No one can cheat to new discoveries. The United States is a leading country for a reason. Intellectual properties need protection now more than ever.</p>
<h1>126 Many schools have a rule that a teacher cannot do paid tutoring for a student who is in his/her class for a grade. If you have evidence that a teacher is providing the test to a paid tutee in his/her class prior to the test, you should go to the principal and the school board. That’s outrageous.</h1>
<p>Well, as the great philosopher John Lennon once said, instant karma’s going to get you, knock you off your feet. </p>
<p>Really, haddon, you’re honestly not ashamed that you think the blame for cheating lies on the college board who has to administer tests in different time zones, as opposed to on the scumbags who set up a system to take advantage of that? Unbelievable.
Well, now I know why some of my overseas clients play games with the payments that are due to me – because they aren’t ethical and it’s more fun to pretend the payments “must have gotten lost” than to actually pay them like honest people.</p>
<p>Most people know that driving in Mexico and Brazil is hazardous. People in those countries go through red lights, speed, make illegal turns. They have traffic rules, but they don’t enforce it, so people break those traffic laws all the time. They are also used to bribe policemen when they are caught.</p>
<p>I asked some people I know from those countries if they get ticketed often when they travel to the US because of their driving habit. They would always look at me like I was crazy, “Oh no, we don’t go through red lights when we go to the States, we would get caught and it would be very expensive.”</p>
<p>Same people behaving differently, depending where they are and how laws are enforced.</p>
<p>My dumb a* H, when driving in Mexico, would sit at a red light until it turns green, with all the locals honking at him.</p>
<p>I think if the Collegeboard would do a better job of making sure students cannot cheat, it would help in changing people’s behavior.</p>
<p>I think College Board has a responsibility to ensure the integrity of their exams, just like businesses are expected to have sufficient financial controls in place to limit the opportunities for embezzlement by employees. This is not saying that cheating is ethical.</p>
<p>They are no less unethical than anyone. We are making judgments based on one article using American standards. Like Haddon #121 said People will take advantage whenever and wherever an arbitrage opportunity is available.; and it will not stop unless something is done about it. It like everyone is doing 80 mph on a highway with 55 mph speed limit. The cop sits there and does nothing. Will you slow down to 55? </p>
<p>It is obvious that college knows about the problem and seemed to be doing very little to stop it for whatever reason they may have. The article mentioned some universities do interview their applicants. The college I attended required all foreign students to meet English proficiency during freshman orientation by meeting the dean and taking a writing test before the dean would signed off on course selection for the semester. Some students were required to take as many as three English classes the first year. The make the needed class for graduation by either going to summer school or an extra year. Other just left. Why are these colleges not doing the same and why would they bring down their standard to meet students who cannot keep up?</p>
<p>Some these students and their parents do not know what they are getting into. It is a scam and promise by the agents that they will provide full service application process. Pay the fee and they do everything.</p>
<p>Many of these students are very intelligent. Just because they may not have gotten into Chinas top universities does not meet they are third tier candidates. It is not different than tops students here who did not get into Harvard or MIT. They just need more time to adjust conversational English. It is not easy to think in one language and then translate it to another, especially Far East languages that do not follow the same English grammar structure.</p>
<p>Are American more ethical? Read about SAT cheating all the time. SAT prep classes using past exams. Medical school interview questions are post online right after the interviews. There are lots of essay writing services are available. College students study past exams easily obtainable from fraternities. What does one say about our government if you are a foreign and read about embezzlement by city employees in Washnington, Marion Barry, Rod Blagojevich, and John Edwards?</p>
<p>Read the article but do not generalize and pass judgment. Universities are aware of the problem. They can fix it or at least reduce the amount of unqualified students if they wanted to.</p>
<p>This thread is about fraud among the Chinese in applying to American universities. If you want to talk about fraud among American politicians, then create another thread. Don’t lay down the whole moral equivalency argument here – it’s what they teach, I know, at LACs as a rejoinder to anything whiffing of the controversial or un-PC, but just because John Edwards gets videographers pregnant while his wife suffers from cancer doesn’t mean that all Chinese fraudsters get a free pass. Really, universities clearly have to set aside whole admissions department subsections to deal with fraud and abuse among the Chinese, to the point where their applications need first to be submitted to some sub department in China where they all can be fingerprinted, interviewed and tested separately. Otherwise, they will continue to game the naieve Americans, as per usual, and not even snicker while they do it. They say, “you want morals? Have at it! We’ll take your admissions slots and you can have your morals.”</p>
<p>When my department began conducting business in China about five years ago, 3 or 4 employees at our firm who are immigrants from China each warned me that Chinese companies almost always try to cheat their business partners and customers. You see that reflected in those big adulterated food scandals they’ve had over there.</p>
<p>The way one of the people who were warning me put it: “In the US you go into a business deal or negotiation knowing that the other guy may not be showing all his cards, but he at least is basically honest, is bargaining in good faith, and will usually deliver on his end of any agreement. You have to watch out for the few dishonest American businessmen who are exceptions to that. In China it’s just the opposite. You should assume that all businesses you deal with are dishonest, are bargaining in bad faith, and will cheat you if they can. You search for the few honest firms you can trust. And then stick with those gems for the long term once you find them.”</p>
<p>In the subsequent years we found that my Chinese friends had been correct. We completed the projects eventually, but it was with far more surprises, broken promises, and curve balls thrown than we ever encounter in the US or Europe - or Japan for that matter.</p>
<p>I don’t know whether this culture of fraud, cheating, and cutting corners extends to the Chinese seeking education, but it wouldn’t surprise me to find that it did.</p>
<p>@chashaobao,
Thank you for posting the translation from the article about LAUSD and other school districts recruiting students in China to attend high school here. I wonder if CA taxpayers would be less resistant to property tax increases if they realized that school districts have had to resort to soliciting wealthy foreign nationals to subsidize their budgets? Given our trade deficit with China, I guess our educational system is one of the few things that can’t be outsourced. As a CA resident, I remain concerned that the influx of foreign students to our high schools will increase their access to the UC system and decrease the availability of spaces for CA residents. This is even more of a concern when the foreign students are here as legal visitors with the financial means to pay higher tuition rates. These are just the students the UC system is actively recruiting.</p>
<p>For the thread topic purists, this is how my comments are relevant to the cheating theme:</p>
<p>As with any Darwinian process, cheaters will succeed until the negative consequences of their actions exceed the advantages. The prevalence and methods of cheaters is now so well documented that they will find their access to desirable college campuses increasingly limited. One alternative to cheating is actual mastery of English accompanied by an American high school diploma.</p>