This is so sad. The cheating has climbed to another level in Asia. Something needs to be done about it. Glad to see the ACT taking decisive action. But sorry to hear that this inconvenienced so many students in Asia.
I love how people think just because someone lives in another country they’re native to that country, especially in this century as people can travel from one side of the Earth to the other in a matter of hours. I also love how you fail to recognize that there are AMERICAN CITIZENS overseas who attend international schools. Should we ban them from attending colleges in the U.S.? If you’re so concerned about cheating, why not look inwards? There are so many students that take college admissions tests in their stead.
There are 600 public institutions compared to 1,600 private institutions in the United States. Even then, financial aid is paid back. Even then, students pay their tuition. Do you really think money falls from the hands of American taxpayers? No. International students pay for their own tuition.
American colleges require the TOEFL. South Korean colleges require you to be proficient in Korean to apply to Korean colleges. What is your point?
If you really think foreign governments condone cheating…
http://www.reuters.com/investigates/special-report/college-sat-two/
A South Korean investigation of an SAT leak has dragged on for nearly three years.
"In May 2013, the College Board, the organization that administers the SAT, canceled a scheduled sitting of the exam in South Korea. It was the first time the organization scrapped an SAT sitting across an entire country. The action came after South Korean authorities alleged that local cram schools had illegally obtained SAT “test papers.”
South Korean authorities said their ensuing investigation of the leak was slowed by a lack of help from the College Board’s security contractor, Educational Testing Service."
It just amazes me how people are so ignorant these days. Are Americans today really still prejudiced by history thinking that they’re superior to the rest of the world?
You continue to say “your country”. Is your country not the United States? I hold United States citizenship and I live overseas. Does living overseas make my citizenship null-and-void?
You say you have to “preserve the integrity of U.S. schools”. How about you as a taxpayer look to domestic schools instead of blaming the rest of the world.
http://schoolsofthought.blogs.cnn.com/2011/12/16/just-how-common-is-sat-cheating/
Cheating incidents aren’t isolated to outside the United States.
I hope your thinking about international students change. Not all international applicants are East Asian cheaters. And that group certainly does not make up the majority of international applicants.
@lostaccount @hhjjlala @jgoggs
@lostaccount: “US colleges need to stop admitting students from countries that can’t protect the integrity of the tests.”
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@jgoggs already pointed out that it isn’t necessarily the country that was host to the “potential cheating,” but it may be the larger numbers of individuals going to that country which lead to the cancellation.
- Making a blanket statement like this is a joke. There are many innocent students there including even students from other countries. Here in Hong Kong, for example, there are at least 55,236 whites (who @lostaccount would probably claim are the “true americans”). So, should we stop admitting these white kids who took the exam here?
- While I’m not proud of the fact that the cheating goes on in Asia, what was said was completely racist by the poster. It’s the same mentality that stirred up the anger leading to the Vincent Chin murder: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Murder_of_Vincent_Chin
@lostaccount: “I just wish that they’d do it now before more ill prepare and corrupt students enter US schools.”
This is assuming that the students in the US are not corrupt to start off with and they are supposedly “better than international students” in some ethnocentric manner that @lostaccount clearly exhibits.
@lostaccount: “To students who had planned to cheat-please stay in your country. We don’t want you in our universities.”
- These were NEVER your universities…just like the United States was NEVER your country. You just happened to be the offspring of some other immigrant at some point and now believe you’re “more American” than these people are or will become. Even if they don’t have citizenship now, they could eventually become just like you - hopefully, not your mentality though.
- Please read carefully what had happened, http://www.reuters.com/article/us-usa-college-cheating-idUSKCN0YX008, “ACT has just received credible evidence that test materials intended for administration in these regions have been compromised…” The test materials were compromised and there is no evidence that it was passed onto the students.
- How can you make the claim that students “planned to cheat?” Again, this is another hypergeneralization.
While the issue of cheating in Asia has grown to unprecedented levels, could we also possibly call this a racist conspiracy by western journalists to blame the higher numbers of Asian students entering US Colleges on cheating vs. what truly happens overall: students work harder in Asia and in general, the Asian academic work ethic is incredibly strong?
Oh please. Enough with the hyperbole. All “whites” (try Caucasians) are not necessarily Americans. Talk about overgeneralizations.
And trying to negate the fact that someone who is a citizen of a country cannot be described as “your country” or cannot feel an affiliation to call it “our universities” is a silly attempt at overreaching.
The cheating in several countries in Asia has reached outrageous proportions. It needs to be addressed. From the article you posted:
No one is saying the testing companies are blameless. They should do what they can to tighten their test process, but don’t deflect this discussion with the issue of recycling some tests Whether or not that is true, it is not the issue that contributed to the cancellation of Saturday’s tests.
So what really happened?
Perhaps I could provide some insight.
One month prior to the June ACT, unidentified individuals on Chinese websites (it’s no coincidence that these posts have been deleted recently) began advertising that they had copies of recent versions of the ACT administered in the U.S. These exams, they contended, had a high probability of being recycled in the future. Samples were provided, exams were sold and subsequently mass distributed throughout both China and Korea.
Apparently, the exam slated for use in June in both Hong Kong and Korea just happens to have been an exam used recently in the U.S. It was being sold for as cheap as $200 by the time the test was supposed to have been administered.
I guess we’re noticing something eerily similar to what had happened with the cancellation of the January SAT in China and Macau, and the breach that supposedly occurred was one that should and could have been prevented well in advance by simply STOPPING THE RECYCLING OF TESTS.
@jym626 Perhaps you should avoid using red herrings to understand the point of my post was to identify how silly and racist @lostaccount is in his/her remarks.
Are you in support of the same comments?
Perhaps that’s why you need to nitpick at some minor point in order to avoid answering the other real question: is this truly an “Asian” or “non-American” issue and even if it is, what’s the point of making such ethnocentric comments like “…stay in your country. We don’t want you in our universities.” ???
As I’ve already admitted, (please read again) I’m not “…proud of the fact that the cheating goes on in Asia.” I didn’t say it doesn’t need to be addressed…whether it be in Asia or another region in the world.
This rampant cheating has been tolerated for way to long. Time to shut it down, from both the side of the test companies and the countries that allow these cheating rings to persist and seem to turn a blind eye, or worse, collude (don’t know, don’t care). Perhaps the test companies should allow the cheaters to think that the booklets sent will be the ones used, allow the cheaters to waste time and $ reviewing them, and then the night before, fly in the official booklets under lock and key with vetted, bonded reps from the US to monitor and distribute the official tests. Would serve them right. Of course this assumes there isn’t collusion from some on this side of the pond too.
SAT and ACT should no recycle tests. Cheating can be reduced by:
1-Don’t recycle tests
2-Give exams in US only. If students want to go to US universities they can come to US and take tests in US.
3-Give exams at the same time. Exams should start at 1PM eastern, 12 central, etc. This would eliminate any time zone advantage.
It would not eliminate all cheating but would cut down on opportunities.
Don’t steal test booklets and sell them.
@Proudpatriot I like your suggestions 1 and 3. But with suggestion 3, it would eliminate the time zone advantage, but what about the sleep advantage? I’m not too sure about suggestion 2, foreign students might not qualify for a student visa unless they get an acceptance offer, not sure. Perhaps a separate version of the test for foreign students? That and locked test materials boxes until test day (both overseas and domestically). I’m guessing the ACT test officials have already thought of all this and more. Cost is probably a large factor for them, and market share considerations (they do have a competitor).
@proudpatriot I agree.
Most importantly, give the tests on US soil.
@CorpusChristi there is no sleep advantage. It’s each person’s responsibility to get enough sleep.
I really don’t care about making it easy or fair for foreigners. I think it’s fine for US admissions to favor US students. US citizens living overseas don’t need a visa to come to the US. Most foreigners coming to the US don’t need visas for short stays. The few that need them will have to plan for that. I don’t understand why the US has to make college admissions easy for foreigners. I don’t see a need to ban foreigners from attending but I don’t have any problem with making them jump through hoops.
If they are going to continue to compromise test booklets when they arrive overseas (to certain countries) and have to be checked for accuracy/completeness/misprints or whatever, then yes, not allowing them to be given in those countries might be worthy of consideration. Perhaps there are other international sites that are not abusing the system where these students could travel to take the test.
Amen.
@Proudpatriot I’m not overly concerned about how easy or hard it is for individuals coming from other countries either, although I definitely see the positives that result from having smart, ambitious students coming to the U.S. I see that the various factors determining ease of access and cheating possibilities as basically entirely within the control of the entities running ACT, SAT, the educational institutions who set their admission standards, and the government insofar as it sets policies that affect ease of access to persons from abroad. I assume the testing entities and the universities have a financial incentive to maximize the amount of qualified students who test and gain admission even though they are nonprofits. I’m also sure they want to spend some efforts to root out cheating students because those students will probably not be as successful – to a point – depending on how it affects bottom line and overall program.
It occurs to me that if SAT and ACT were suddenly to decide only to test in the United States,
A. families from other countries with money would send their kids to test over here;
B. a black market in tests would still “try” to surface here–where there’s a demand and tight supply there’s a way; and
C. colleges and universities would still likely admit just as many applicants from overseas: they would just develop different criteria for foreign students not involving the ACT or SAT. They have no reason to suddenly try to cut off qualified applicants from overseas.
If the CB and ACT stopped offering tests internationally, some other test company would step in to fill the void. Colleges want international representation (and representation of Americans living internationally) and want a test to help them make their admissions decisions.
This simplistic “solution” is completely impracticable.
I also see positives from having talented foreigners in the US.
A. So what? Why this concern about people with money?
B. It might. I still think a large chunk of cheating could be stopped with US only test administration. Just because you can’t stop all cheating doesn’t mean you shouldn’t stop what you can.
C. I don’t have a problem with foreign applicants. I have a problem with foreign applicants who cheat.
I expect, then, that you’re probably also opposed to the test administrations in [Long Island](On Long Island, SAT Cheating Was Hardly a Secret - The New York Times).
@marvin100 ,
Surely you are not com[paring the rampant, ongoing, organized cheating rings that have been ongoing in several countries to the one kid who set up a business taking the SAT for other kids on LI. That article is from 5 years ago. What he did was wrong, and now they require photo IDs for test taking. What that kid did was wrong, and he paid the price, but that is like comparing a hole in the ground to the Grand Canyon.
Draw lines where you want (we don’t have to see eye to eye on that), but it’s a difference of degree not of kind.