LA Mag: "Cheating Ring at UCLA Reveals an Industry Devoted to Helping International Students"

[warblersrule]

An interesting article detailing how students cheat their way into (and through) college.

https://www.lamag.com/citythinkblog/ucla-cheating

This part was particularly disturbing:

Cheating can self-perpetuate if unchecked. Chen tells the story of a student who faked his TOEFL score to get into Purdue University. Once there, he paid someone to attend classes for him. His (employee’s) grades were good enough that he got into Columbia University for grad school, but then, struggling, he hired someone to take his classes there, too. Hoping to land a job at Goldman Sachs, he sought Chen’s help. “I think his English was at a high school level,” Chen says. All told, the beleaguered Chinese student spent nearly $1.2 million on not going to school.

Some of my UCLA students show me their IDs when they turn in their exams, as apparently some professors here are requiring that these days.

[scholarme]

would have been interesting if he’d hired someone to interview as him for a job ?
I’m reminded of the movie Gattaca, where Jude Law basically rents out his credentialed identity to Ethan Hawk so Ethan can work his dream job.

[bluebayou]

Faking/cheating on TOEFL is as old as time.

[Undercrackers]

And so the dominos start to fall. Like the behavior that spawned #metoo, cheating in educational settings IS as old as time, but now people and institutions may feel emboldened to move the needle. However, as long as higher education means anything other than the pursuit and acquisition of knowledge/experience, there will be people willing to bend or break the rules - the siren song of those other motivators is just too strong.

[Scipio]

“would have been interesting if he’d hired someone to interview as him for a job”

And then even more interesting if he hired someone to go and actually do the job for him once he got the offer He could spend his whole professional life as a sort of ghost - with a series of paid surrogates actually living his school and work life for him.

[happymomof1]

Gotta wonder what the hired student who attended all of those classes and took all of those exams is doing now. He/she would have ended up with the knowledge, but no diploma.

[hebegebe]

That person should just change his name to match the degree.

[oldfort]

would have been interesting if he’d hired someone to interview as him for a job

This actually happened…We were looking for a developer with a specific technical skill. Someone on my team interviewed someone on the phone. The person sounded competent on the phone and was hired on the spot. When the guy showed up we noticed he didn’t seem to know as much as we thought. The interviewer pulled this developer aside to ask him, “Tell me few questions I asked you during the interview.” The developer was not able because it was someone else who interviewed for him on his behalf. The plan was for this developer to fake it and learn it on the job. If he didn’t know what to do then he would call his (consulting) company to get someone to help out.

[ProfessorPlum168]

Steve Jobs actually hired his friend Steve Wozniak to do his programming work at Atari.

[natty1988]

How do these people sleep at night? Geez, like my mother used to say…“Some people really have a lot of nerve!”

[Tanbiko]

I knew of programming bootcamps that included 2 years of fake experience. You were supposed to get very well versed in the project you “worked” on and people at bootcamp would provide references and technical help when you start your first job. It was in the nineties but probably still happening today.