<p>In Sunday's Education Life section there's a long article about Chinese students at US universities, focusing heavily on UD: The</a> China Conundrum</p>
<p>When the semester began, my freshman D mentioned several times about the large number of the Chinese students at UDel. At first I tried to encourage her to befriend and talk to them (I had studied Chinese in college centuries ago) but she told me that it was very difficult; that they all lived and moved around campus together and didn’t associate with other students much. At the time I thought she might be being insular herself but this article bears that out in several respects. I can see a lot of reasons why the University would want to bring in Chinese students, but part of process should also be programs which would bring together Chinese and American students socially and encourage interactions between them. Both sides are missing out on something which could be valuable and exciting.</p>
<p>President Harker appears to have a major interest (almost an apparent obsession) with China. UD has been establishing multiple various connections with Chinese Universites and other instituitions over the last 4 years. This certainly is understandable (to a degree) as China is becoming one of the major players in international economics, industry, business and commerce. I don’t believe tuition income is really a factor in bringing in a large number of Chinese students to UD as UD could easily fill up its student body with qualified US students who would also be paying full tuition. So is this due just to the larger number of applications from Chinese students or is there some other reason? I suspect so. The NY Times article does seem to infer that there are concerns about the credibility of admission data from at least some Chinese students. This certainly is a concern. The cheating/plagiarism issue reported in the article is also another concern. The success rate of the Chinese students at UD does seem to mitigate against these concerns to a degree, however.</p>
<p>I certainly don’t have any problem with qualified Chinese students attending UD. Pres. Harker appears to justify the numbers based upon an interest in increasing diversity at UD; again an admirable goal. However, trying to solve this issue by just admitting a large number of students from one specific nationality/ethic origin seems to me to be a little suspect. So there probably is some other reason as well. Its unfortunate that Pres. Harker does not appear to be willing to be more specific about what it is. I suspect it has something to do with the affiliations UD has been trying to set up with Chinese Educational and Business Institutions to promote both educational and business opportunities for all involved. I don’t believe most people would have a problem with this, so why not just admit it also is part of the reason for accepting so many Chinese students to UD.</p>
<p>Finally if you are going to admit so many students with significant cultural differences from a majority of the student population it would seem to be appropriate to initiate a comprehensive orientation (well beyond just language education)to help integrate these students into the rest of the student body. I agree with mch48 that the rest of the student body would also benefit from these types of programs. With this being said I would guess UD has attempted thru various means to do this but has met with limited apparent success so far, probaly due to the fact it is new to them, especially with the rapid increase in numbers in the last several years. Actually you see this problem at many major universities, not just at UD. Hopefully we can all work together to address this issue with benefits resulting to all concerned (thats what a top notch university needs to do). Just my thoughts.</p>
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<p>It thought the whole article reflected really poorly on the University. I mean, professors are changing the way they teach because of this. That’s bad. </p>
<p>Cheating is always bad. Acquiescing to cheating by the University is really bad. </p>
<p>The fact that you say that they are successful at UDel makes me wonder if anybody is scrutinizing their work at UDel, or are they buying papers and having others take their exams at UDel too.</p>
<p>I hope somebody starts paying attention on all fronts.</p>
<p>ClassicRockerDad:</p>
<p>I was just paraphrasing from the article which reported that the success rate of Chinese students at UD was equal to other students. Obviously if cheating has been involved this would be a faux fact. I do believe we need to be very careful here because I think it would not be very productive to stereotype one sub-group of students as cheaters based upon some suppositons with little definitive data reported to support them. Obviously faculty/staff need to be on the lookout for cheating from any student (unfortunately I do not believe this behavior has been previously absent at UD). All of the cheating behaviors you have concerns about have already been done at UD by non-Chinese students. I did not read anything in the article which indicated to me that UD was actually tolerating/allowing cheating by any specific group. I agree faculty should not have to change their teaching methods because of the Chinese students. I do agree as well that unfortunately the article overall does not reflect well on UD.</p>
<p>It’s worth reading the same article in the Chronicle of Higher Education. The people that subscribe to that are mostly professors, and some of their comments are quite enlightening.</p>
<p>I asked my son about this. He said that one of the Chinese students was just caught cheating on a test in a calculus class in the past week. He also said that if you see a student driving an Audi (poorly) around campus, it is likely one of them.</p>
<p>I’m wondering where they are eating. Are they eating the normal cafeteria food or have managed to get some good Chinese food on campus?</p>
<p>D said they are building a huge International housing complex near where she is living off campus. She said since she began in 2008, the international pool is getting very noticeable. One of her friends lives near the Center for English language learners(not sure of the exact title of the center) she said there is some negative vibes that circulate in and around the area. Not from the US kids.
My daughter had an international student tutor her in Chem her freshman semester, he unequivocally told her females do not belong taking chemistry or any math/science classes. She ended those tutoring sessions after the first session.</p>