I wonder how their driving skills are. China has some 260K traffic fatalities per year. A comparable rate per population would put ours at 62K. On average, they have far less driving experience than Americans.
The rapid increase in Chinese students getting their undergraduate degrees in the US had surely increased the pressure and incentive to cheat. UC Berkeley, for instance, had 42 undergraduate students from China in 2005. In 2015 Berkeley had 1246 undergraduate students from China.
At UCSD from fall 07 to fall 11 the number of Chinese students SIRing to attend UCSD went up from 2 to 191, a 390% increase. If those kinds of numbers held true for all US universities, the rise in demand (and competition) from within China has been explosive. No wonder it’s spawned it’s own industry.
But I think that the US universities (Like Davis) are inclined to turn a blind eye if possible. It’s just easier to admit the students, take their money and figure they will hire tutors (or ghost-writers) to get them through successfully.
When schools like UCLA promote themselves to the point they get over 100k applicants for 5600 slots, it is, of course, impossible to vet the applicants properly. Students are basically taken at their word for most of their application and if the test scores are suspect, there is little independent verification.
By which metric/standard and are we talking admission to any university…including open/minimal selective institutions or highly selective/elite colleges?
Just wondering as many of the current Chinese undergrads who are cheating and attending OOS universities just a couple of decades or more ago would not have been considered “academically capable of attending a university” by Mainland Chinese or many other nations’ standards. Instead, they’d have likely been placed on one of the many vocational tracks, apprenticeships, or even expected to join the workforce as an unskilled laborer at the end of middle school.
Granted, the great economic boom which elevated many Mainland Chinese families to the newly emerging upper/upper-middle classes…including a large number with parents who themselves never attended college or in some cases even finished their middle/high school educations* resulted in a situation where college aspirations outstrip the actual academic capabilities of many of these applicants…or the abilities of their parents to provide good advice in the area of college admissions/handling college academics.
There are also an increasing number of college aspirants from rural families where they’d likely be the first in their families to finish middle school…much less academic high school/college.
- Many of their parents/grandparents came of age during the Chinese Cultural Revolution and had their educations from elementary through university disrupted for a decade. The worst affected were the kids whose educations were disrupted in the middle and high school years.
“At UCSD from fall 07 to fall 11 the number of Chinese students SIRing to attend UCSD went up from 2 to 191, a 390% increase.”
Going from 2 to 191 represents a 9550% increase. A 390% increase starting from 2 would be 7.8. An even 400% increase would be 8.
Is the media being unfair with these articles? There is a glaring lack of criticism in cheating for students from countries.
What??
@scipio - yes, I copied the year to year % increase, not the 07 - 11 increase.
The correct figures are
FA 07 to FA 08 - 300% increase
FA 08 - FA 09 - 50% increase
FA 09 - FA 10 - 225% increase
FA 10 - FA 11 - 390% increase
http://icenter.ucsd.edu/_files/ispo/show_the_data_201206.pdf
@calicash not sure what you meant, but if you mean does the US media give China more attention while ignoring cheating in other countries, I certainly don’t know. But it seems pretty clear that SAT cheating does occur in China. It occurs in the US as well, of course. A kid in Long Island a few years ago took multiple SATs for other students, I recall reading. And there was the brilliant pen marking #2 pencil/time zone scam run a few years before that, so of course it is not restricted to 1 country. But there seem to be a persistent number of cases and even a vibrant industry trying to job the admission system in China - and the SAT folks seems unable (or uninterested) in fully dealing with it.
http://www.reuters.com/investigates/special-report/college-sat-one/
Disappointing to get another history lecture without a tale of a single relative from the old country coming for their degree.
In China and Korea it the cheating is often done by officials. It is organized corruption-a whole different ball game than the long Island example.
@OldFashioned1, did you see the fb page called “SUNY Cars” ? Outrageous! International students boasting $100K cars. Those whose students were rejected from one of the 4 SUNY Centers-you should consider that those cars are being driven by the children of people who do not pay NY taxes! and they have slots in the NY university system.
@OldFashioned1 you are using then word “communist” as though this forum is some kind of political ranting place instead of a place to discuss college issues. Having been to China, you might be surprised to know that people do not walk around in grey Mao jackets and that capitalism is very much alive and well. Here in the good old USA, there are disgustingly expensive cars in the student parking lot at our high school. Who cares what kind of cars anyone drives? It’s okay for an American college kid to drive a Mercedes, but not for a Chinese college student?
^^^Anyone parking an expensive car at the local high school’s “parking lot/demolition derby” is CRAZY. Just saying… 8-|
@sylvan8798
Sweet stereotype you put there!
Have you considered confounding factors such as significantly less regulations for road conditions, automobile safety, seat belts, etc. in China? You’re comparing apples and oranges.
^Actually, I read a study on that subject sometime in the past year. The governing factor seemed to be that the overall experience level was a lot less.
ETA: Not sure what stereotype you are referring to.
Does anyone know, where you sign up for the “cheating industry”? (joke). I am sure that it is much cheaper than the $40,000 that the top college admission consultants are charging in US.
@californiaaa The difference between the two is more like running a marathon race in which the cheater rides in a car most the way while the 40k kid trains with a team of coaches. I have no experience in either as my kids are more like poor Africans (hopefully good ones).
Agree with Eiholi. While $40K packaging isn’t the best thing to do, it’s a far cry from blatant lying, cheating and having someone else do your work for you.
I would be very surprised if 40K packages do not come with multiple essays “services” included.
Those companies self select top students whose resume/grades/scores make them very strong candidates and have a higher probability of acceptance into top schools. They don’t take on people who do not speak the language and write everything for them. Well, there is one very expensive west coast guy whose ethics are questionable, but I conveniently forget his name.