How an industry helps Chinese students cheat their way into and through U.S. colleges

Parents Forum
21

@Zinhead, UIUC actually keeps detailed breakdowns of each major by demographics (such as in-state and international), so there’s no need to guess: http://www.dmi.illinois.edu/stuenr/#race

Number of CS majors in COE:
2005:
Instate: 474
International: 44

2010:
Instate: 435
International: 210

2015:
Instate: 474
International: 275

So as you can see, there hasn’t been a long-term decrease in slots for in-state kids even in CS (there seems to have been a slight dip from 2005->2010, but that was rectified).

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@Gator88NE You surely aren’t suggesting that UC’s ever does anything “Rong?”

23

@gettingschooled - Of course they don’t all get caught and kicked out - neither do all of the US students who cheat. Educators do what they can to control the situation, but it is difficult (some would say impossible) to eliminate all cheating.

24

@PurpleTitan - You are looking at BS programs in Computer Science. If you look at all of the CS and CE programs UIUC offers, the picture changes dramatically.

Looking at the Fall 2005 spreadsheet, there were a total of 1,627 students enrolled in Computer Science or Computer Engineering. This includes BS, MS, BS/MS and PHD programs. Of that total, 928 were listed as Illinois residents (57 percent), with 699 being non residents of Illinois (43 percent). Of that total, 345, or 21 percent, were International students.

In the Fall 2015 spreadsheet, total enrollment in Computer Science and Computer Engineering was 1,645. Of that total, 539 or 33 percent were Illinois residents and 1,106, or 67 percent were non-residents. The spreadsheets indicate that there were 687 International CS and CE students, or 42 percent of total.

This means that at Illinois’s flagship, there are more International students studying their most prestigious major than Illinois residents.

Moreover, if you expand from CE/CS to the entire COE, you see a similar pattern. In 2005, there were 7,439 total students in the COE, 59 percent of which were Illinois residents. By 2015, the total number of students in the COE has risen to 10,732, or which 43 percent were Illinois residents and 57 percent were not. International students went from 22 percent to 42 percent of the total.

So in the COE, there are about an equal number of in-state residents as there are International students in Illinois flagship state university.

I don’t have an issue with International students coming to America to study. I do have an issue when the state flagship university turns away in-state students in preference of non-resident aliens for their most popular major. Earlier on CC there were posts by two Illinois residents who had been turned down from UIUC’s engineering schools for a CS major, and they were wondering what to do. These in-state kids scored a 34 and 35 on the ACT, and were stellar students. These scores are in the top 1 percent of test takers in the nation, and it is infuriating that UIUC rejected them in favor of more International students whose parents have not paid exorbitant Illinois sales, income and real estate taxes.

25

I thought it was interesting that UofT engineering started a video portion of their application a year or two ago, in part because they felt that the information they were getting on the English speaking abilities of some of their international applicants was not accurate. The video is timed, can’t be stopped or edited and forces you to respond to questions in real time, extemporaneously.

Obviously doesn’t do anything about students cheating on SAT or ACT or similar - or even buying essays. But it would indicate if your English speaking ability were over-sold in your application.

26

How do they know if it is really the applicant sitting on the other side of the video monitor?

27

Ask Ms Sun (UC applications counselor) commented about the article in the OP, "This more than likely explains the “optional” interview Berkeley put in place and the dramatic decrease in international admits (no official numbers yet, just hearsay for now). "

28

@jym626 I don’t know what kind of ID-ing they required. And of course you could hire someone to sit down and do your interview for you, but it becomes a bit more complicated than simply buying a transcript. And the interviewee has to do well - or they don’t get it.

Nothing is perfect, but my guess is it is small step to make jobbing the application a bit more difficult since (from what we were told anyway) some of the students were coming in with less workable English skills than advertised and it was making group work, in particular, difficult.

29

Cheating is far more common by students from certain countries that have codified it than it is in the US. Problems with writing are not limited to international students but are more common and much more severe among International students. In the schools I am most familiar with they rarely if ever speak English. Many say nothing in classes. This is not true about US residents. Yes, professors have complained about student writing forever. But the problems with writing for students who can’t speak the language bring the difficulties to a new level.

30

Agreed. It’s not perfect but it does hit the cheat factory business model where one anonymous tester can write papers or sit exams for large numbers of clients. With video interviews, universities can potentially grab still frames from each interview and put them in a database to compare with other applicants.

31

Colleges should retest English profiency of international students when they arrive. If students don’t pass then they should be required to have additional and intensive training in English. If the scores are too low, inconsistent with the submitted test scores then colleges should have the right to send them home (if the application has that condition). It’s reasonable to ask international students to take English only during the first one or two semesters.

I think the problem is many colleges just admit international students but don’t have the resources to train them in English. They don’t have instructors with specific skills to teach international students.

32

I notice that the TOEFL requirement at many US colleges is lower than the requirement at some US boarding high schools (70, 80 vs 100, 105).

33

Lots of colleges have mandatory English placement testing for all entering frosh; those who score low enough are placed in remedial English courses (where there may be different ones for non-native English users). For example: https://english.clas.asu.edu/admission/first-year-composition-courses/faqs

However, if the student’s English skills are really awful, the college may not have low enough level remedial courses and may otherwise not be that well equipped to handle the student (e.g. the student may have difficulty in many other courses, which would make it difficult for the student to be a full time student). Also, if the external standardized tests that are targeted for gaming or actual cheating are accepted for placement, that can circumvent such placement procedures.

34

^ Asking international students to sit in English 101 designed for American students is not very effective.
That is the big part of the problem.

35

At UIUC “almost 20 percent of undergraduates are from overseas. And when it comes to graduate students, it’s almost half.” according to Crain’s.

@zinhead
928 Illinois residents in 2005
539 Illinois residents in 2015

Plus UIUC has cut the number of in-state CS admits almost in half, and reallocated them to international students. Then they will wonder why in-state residents oppose providing the school with additional funding. It is crazy.

36

@Zinhead and @Much2learn,

It’s rather disingenuous to use numbers that include grad students (including a professional masters program that serves as a cash cow) and then argue that in-state students are being denied spots to the bachelors program due to internationals when I have shown that the number of in-state students at the bachelors CS program has stayed roughly constant over a decade.

Yes, admission to UIUC CS is must more competitive than before, but that’s because CS is much more popular than before and all elite schools/programs are much harder to enter compared to before.
Do those folks with 35 ACTs feel entitled to admission to Northwestern as well?

Also, @Much2learn, it’s because IL has cut funding to UIUC that they are admitting so many full-pay internationals. In fact, considering that the money IL provides UIUC likely has gone down over the past decade, IL residents should be happy that the number of in-state slots has even stayed constant.

37

I have nieces and nephews at both Illinois and Michigan State, two Big Ten U’s that have seen an explosion in Chinese students (esp. in engineering and business colleges). They say cheating among Chinese is rampant, and even worse, Chinese TAs teach the courses and give 100% scores to fellow Chinese students while dinging others’ tests for nonsense which the students have to see professors about for corrections. You have to assume the Chinese TAs share exams before test date, too.

And here’s the thing: NOBODY cares. NOBODY ever gets punished. All hush hush so administration can continue flooding the college with international money. Disgusting.

38
39

UIUC is not Northwestern. It is a public university that is supposed to serve state residents.

Actually, other than the recent budget battle between Rauner and the legislature, funding for Illinois colleges has gone up. See the following document:

http://sheeo.org/sites/default/files/project-files/SHEF%20FY%202014-20150410.pdf

Page 34 shows that higher education funding in Illinois on a per student basis has risen 66 percent between 2009 and 2014.

Page 36 shows that public spending on higher education increased by more than 58 percent between 2008 and 2014.

Page 45 shows that Illinois spends about 30 percent more than the average state on higher education.

Page 46 shows that Illinois ranks 10th out of 50 states in terms of support for higher eduction.

All of this for a system that has seen an 18 percent reduction in the number of students between 2009 and 2013 as students flee the state.

40

Well, this is interesting…

On Friday (they always like to make these type of announcements on a holiday weekend…), the University of Mississippi announced that it would punish itself for violating NCAA rules, including falsifying ACT scores for football recruits.

https://www.insidehighered.com/news/2016/05/31/u-mississippi-announces-penalties-ncaa-violations

This is the interesting part:

All it takes is one ACT supervisor at one exam site…it happens in the US, so how often is it happening overseas?

Better yet, the school is suing ACT over the invalid scores. I don’t know how strong of a case UL-Lafeyette has, but this may be the most effective way of getting the ACT and CollegeBoard to respond to the widespread cheating. It up to the schools to pressure these testing organizations to improve their process, but they haven’t seemed motivated to do so…but pull in big league athletics (and millions of $$$) and things may change.

Then again, maybe not. A lot of folks have reasons to look the other way, while this type of cheating goes on.