“Zhang is also giving $750,000 to a University of Southern California research center that’s creating a program to combat fraud among Chinese applicants to American colleges.”
The corruption doesn’t stop with the ACT/SAT cheating scandals. Now we got members of the Chinese Criminal Cartels giving nearly $1 million donations to prestigious universities in the U.S. to fund programs to combat fraud among Chinese applicants, while admissions officers from many top-tier universities are happily accepting these bribes!?
WHAT IS GOING ON?
“Shame on the admissions people from these top schools who are doing this,” Altbach said.
It’s worth mentioning by name the colleges in the article. These are colleges that the article alleges took what is strongly implied in the article as possible bribes from Dipont to guarantee admission to their clients, who pay up to about $32K for their “services”. The possible bribes range from paid-for business-class flights to the seminars in Beijing, cash handed to people in bundles, research centers being set up on campuses, etc. The company, Dipont, was called in the article “a recruitment agency on steroids” by a Boston College person who commented on the article.
These colleges took some form of compensation fro Dipont.
Wellesley–I had heard this before from a good, independent source who worked in the admin office at Wellesley at the time of our convo, that Wellesley looks at, what this person called the “holistic” application. This person kept saying, as if I wasn’t understanding properly, they look at the “holistic” application, the “entire” person applying, that person said. It gave me chills at the time. Now I wonder if this is what this person meant.
Vanderbilt
Tulane
University of Virginia (UVA)
USC received $750K for a “research center” to combat fraud . . . ironically
Colgate
Harvey Mudd
Rensselaer (RPI)
Pomona
Syracuse
University of Rochester
Carleton
Lafayette
University of Vermont
Indiana University
UC Berkeley
Claremont Mck
Colorado College
Davidson
Texas Christian
Wesleyan
Hamilton
Stanford
Turning down the offer of $6K “compensation” and the free trip, was Tufts
Several schools refused to comment, which does not mean they chose the high road.
In one office of Dipont a reporter visited, there were “60 people” printing out essays for the applicants . . . .
Can another side be credibly defended here? For example, the dean of admissions at Pomona stated seemingly unapologetically, “We have a limited number of resources to recruit international students.”
I am not surprised by the news at all; I have taught my fair share of international (not just Chinese) students who should not be in my classroom at the first place. These kinds of things have happened for a long time. This is one of the reasons why international students’ (undergraduate) graduate rates are substantially lower.
Having said so, I do see a little bit of light out of tunnel. We, at least the faculty at my university, have voiced our unhappiness to the administrators and the admission office. My unit has also imposed a high GPA standard (> 3.0) on international students declaring majors within our unit. We cannot control inflow, but we can do something on outflow.
Shame on a company for blatantly cheating/forging applications and bribing others. I blame them more than the colleges, thought they are no angels either. The acceptance of cheating as the norm in some countries is stomach-turning.
@jym626 I couldn’t agree more. It’s time to shed light on the corrupt practices of the colleges themselves and send the message that you can’t just dirty yourself and dump your dirty laundry into some Chinese firm and expect nobody to notice.
TBH, the cleanup should, IMO, start with the massive cheating in countries like China and Korea. Kill this plant at its roots, not by cutting off some branches. While I blame the schools for accepting these “honoraria”, I blame the company more for its smarmy tactics.
If the massive cheating of which you speak constitutes widely publicized international cheating rings that come in the form of, for example, cheating on standardized tests such as the SAT or ACT, then yes, we can say with much confidence that significant progress in thwarting the cheaters has been made.
But if we’re to truly kill this venomous plant at its roots, perhaps we need to reassess the complex dynamics of what allows the plant to sustain itself before we’re so quick to dismiss the cheating as some sort of twisted cultural norm.
Either that or create a new law that enforces the death penalty in these countries and allows the authorities to cut off the hands of anyone caught cheating. =P
Nope- that sounds like a serious case of justification and rationalization. They need to own their own bad behavior and stop it. No excuse for unethical behavior.
The ultimate responsibility, IMO, rests with the US schools that accept students through this company. The only reason it exists is that American universities will bend their own rules regarding ethics in exchange for full-pay international tuition money.
That said, I don’t have a huge problem with a few rich Chinese flunkies subsidizing scholarships for deserving students, some/many of whom will be Americans. This has been going on at the Ivies for a couple hundred years. George W Bush John F Kennedy are two fine examples of flunkies who got into Yale/Harvard because of their family’s generosity. Now, they didn’t cheat to get in – their dismal grades weren’t a barrier for admission. I suppose that makes it a bit different, but not much. It’s still a nasty quid pro quo.
I agree-- no problem with taking some truly qualified, full-pay students. But NOT the one with fabricated transcripts standardized tests scores falsely inflated due to cheating or and ghost-written essays who have to take a cram course in English over the summer after admission so they can attend. They will flunk out. Its a lose-lose situation.
I bet most of them won’t flunk out. Many schools here provide so much support and tutoring that even the half-hearted students can pass. And if they flunk out? The university has gained tens of thousands of dollars without spending a whole lot on the kid in return. So much the better for the university.
Again, I’m not saying this is a good thing. But I’m not going to get bent out of shape if some foreign kid who’s hardly ever on campus because he’s too busy partying it up in come nightclub funnels a quarter of a million dollars to a school like Berkeley or Michigan - cash-strapped public university that, frankly, needs the money. And as I said, odds are JFK or GWB didn’t write their own essay to get into their schools, either.
The New York Times profiled a few Chinese students who have ventured to study at U.S. colleges. Academic capability and motivation appear not to be an issue for those in the article:
It IS a “small fraction” - as the article points out… and don’t forget that as many as 1 in 3 American students never come back for their sophomore year…
The preponderance of internationals coming to the US are Chinese. If these students are doing so with genuine transcripts, having written their own essays, have legit test scores and have a command of the English language, then the US schools, taking their (usually) fullpay tuition $, have a responsibility to help them assimilate, IMO. If, however, they are gaming and cheating the system, thats another thing.
Some schools might have limited money for international recruitment - but they have even less for policing international cheating. A fair question is why top schools take anyone from China? Why bother? I suspect that it would be impolitic to take more full pay domestic students and that the school might be accused of “discrimination.”
@jym626, most studies show there isn’t one single reason for college drop out rates, although finances are definitely among the top reasons. The others are poor academic preparation, lack of maturity/discipline, and others.