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spiral78
Joined: 05 Apr 2004
Posts: 11534
Location: On a Short Leash
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 Posted: Thu Jul 26, 2012 1:20 pm Post subject: Chinese into Western Universities |
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The article below raises a few interesting points.
I expect that most of you guys here are already well-aware of all this, but I'm interested in what you think on the issues.
Numbers of Chinese students attending Western universities are spiking (the article is mostly focused on the US, but there are similar numbers in the UK and Canada, it notes).
They go for conflicting reasons: both that Chinese unis are considered inferior to Western ones, and yet sometimes because the students don't have the grades to attend the Chinese schools.
Cheating to get into US and other Western universities is apparently rampant (see estimated stats below) and some reasons seem justified to a degree - but many aren't, of course.
And then then there's the issue of using agents.
On that point, I really wonder why there's not a network of educated US/UK/Canadian teachers who run giant prep courses to help students get their documents and skills in order - it sounds as though they are using Chinese agents, which seems like a recipe for disaster from the start.
I really wonder what percentage of these apparently underprepared students make it successfully through their Western university programmes - that's a missing stat! If it's a reasonable number, then this obviously isn't such a big problem, but I'm doubtful....
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This fall, David Zhu will join an exodus of Chinese students boarding planes for the leafy, beer-soaked campuses of American colleges and universities. Zhu, currently a student at Shanghai�s prestigious Fudan University, will be enrolling at Oregon State University to pursue a bachelor�s degree in business � a dream his parents have had since they started saving a $157,000 nest egg for his education. But like many Chinese students who don�t speak English fluently, Zhu might not have been accepted without a little help. The 21-year-old hired an education agent in China to clean up and �elaborate� on the essay he submitted as part of his application. �Actually, the agency helped my application to some extent,� he says.
Stories like Zhu�s are becoming increasingly common as the ranks of Chinese students going abroad for college continue to swell. Because many Chinese students have only basic knowledge of foreign universities and have trouble making sense of complicated applications, a huge industry of education agents has arisen in the country to help guide them � and, in some cases, to do whatever it takes to get them accepted. This has created a thorny ethical dilemma in the U.S. While many American schools are elated by the influx of Chinese students as they�ve scrimped and saved to make ends meet in the economic downturn, some educators worry that the reliance of Chinese students on agents has led to some unintended � and troubling � consequences.
Although Chinese students have been going to America to study for decades, their numbers have spiked dramatically in the past few years. In the 2010�11 school year, more than 157,000 Chinese students were enrolled at institutions of higher learning in the U.S. � a 22% increase over the previous year and tops among all countries. (Second-place India had just 104,000.) The largest increase has been among undergrads: China sent nearly 57,000 to the U.S. in 2010�11, up from 10,000 five years earlier. For the wealthy, an overseas education is becoming almost standard. A survey conducted by China�s Hurun Report found that 85% of rich Chinese parents planned to send their kids abroad to study. The U.S. is their preferred destination, followed by the U.K. and Canada.
While there are a host of reasons for this explosion, money and prestige appear to be the most important factors. Not only can more Chinese families now afford to pay the tuition at a foreign university, they also view it as a better investment in their children�s future. Universities in the West are revered in China, and homegrown schools � even the best ones � fail to measure up. �I think the college education in China is not very practical,� says Vincent Sun, another Fudan student who will be enrolling at MIT this fall to pursue a master�s degree in finance. �When I will be searching for a job, I think a degree from a very famous [foreign] university is a huge thing I think that will put me into a very good place.� Ironically, a foreign university can also be a fallback for Chinese students who don�t do well enough on the national exam, the gaokao, to get into a Chinese school � there�s always an American college willing to take their tuition dollars.
But many of these students would probably never make it to America without a middleman to pave the way. According to a 2010 report by Zinch China, a consultancy that advises U.S. colleges and universities on China, 8 out of every 10 Chinese undergraduate students use an agent to file their applications. And with such intense competition among agents � not to mention ambitious students and their overzealous parents � cheating is rampant, the group says. It estimates that 90% of recommendation letters from Chinese students are fake, 70% of college application essays are not written by the students, and half of all high school transcripts are falsified. �The world of higher education is becoming extremely competitive, much more so than it was even 10 years ago, and I think the kids are looking for an edge,� says Tom Melcher, chairman of Zinch China. �Everyone is looking around and saying, �Well, everyone else is cheating, why shouldn�t I?��
(MORE: These Schools Mean Business)
Another issue that concerns some admissions officers in the U.S. is where the money is coming from. Not only are agents paid by families in China � up to $10,000 before bonuses, according to Zinch � some American schools also have contracts with agents that guarantee them a commission for each student they enroll. This practice constitutes a potential conflict of interest, says Philip Ballinger, head of a commission launched by the Washington-based National Association for College Admission Counseling (NACAC) to study the issue of foreign recruiting. �If money is first, then perhaps the interest of student or the person that�s involved is not first,� he says.
What�s desperately needed is greater oversight in China and the U.S. � something both sides are now trying to address. The Chinese government realizes that doctored transcripts are a problem: earlier this year, it launched a new service to verify students� high school grades for foreign universities. But because there are literally thousands of agents operating in China, cheating will persist. �The Chinese kids, when I talk to them, they sort of think it�s the schools� fault. The schools will say you have to have a recommendation letter from a guidance counselor, and Chinese kids don�t have guidance counselors,� Melcher says. Zhu, the student enrolling at Oregon State, says his agent didn�t falsify documents beyond the �elaborated� essay, but he believes doing so is sometimes a necessary evil. �Some schools in China test students by very hard questions beyond their abilities, so the scores students get are very low. So the students who want to go to the USA, they had to change their scores,� he says. �But the students are still very good students because they�re in the best schools in Shanghai.�
In the U.S., there are hopes that the NACAC committee investigating overseas recruiting practices will bring much needed clarity to a situation that has been a relative free-for-all in recent years. While federal law prohibits colleges and universities from paying commissions to recruit students in the U.S., there is no statute against doing it internationally. NACAC has a policy against it, but enforcement has been put on hold while its investigation is continuing. The group�s second meeting is set for this fall; recommendations are expected to come in 2013.
Read more: http://world.time.com/2012/07/26/forged-transcripts-and-fake-essays-how-unscrupulous-agents-get-chinese-students-into-u-s-schools/#ixzz21jZ3qKLN |
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Lobster
Joined: 20 Jun 2006
Posts: 2040
Location: Somewhere under the Sea
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| Posted: Thu Jul 26, 2012 2:30 pm Post subject: |
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It's ok. Let them cheat their way in, pay the tuition, and then flunk out during the first or second term. Money in the western uni's pocket.
RED |
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spiral78
Joined: 05 Apr 2004
Posts: 11534
Location: On a Short Leash
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| Posted: Thu Jul 26, 2012 2:56 pm Post subject: |
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| Yes, I'm wondering to what extent that IS the end of the story! |
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xiguagua
Joined: 09 Oct 2011
Posts: 768
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| Posted: Thu Jul 26, 2012 6:28 pm Post subject: |
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| Yeah, it's a whole new ballgame when they actually get their and think oh crap.......I can't speak English! Certainly would be a good statistic to see of how many are coming in vs how many are graduating. Just gotta wait a few years to see the results. |
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basbas
Joined: 21 Oct 2011
Posts: 116
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| Posted: Thu Jul 26, 2012 6:50 pm Post subject: |
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my step mom works in admin at a canadian university, from what she tells me a lot of them drop out, something like 30 percent of asian overseas students at her school drop out after a year...it's a big problem according to her because it makes the university look bad apparently...
maybe they just find it too tough, 'my god i actually have to do some reading and prepare for class! Do my assignment more than 30 mins before class! the indignity!!!!' |
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NoBillyNO
Joined: 11 Jun 2012
Posts: 1762
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| Posted: Fri Jul 27, 2012 2:41 am Post subject: |
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Withdrawal before the deadline could also be a way of moving money around. Way to fund terrorism or drug cartels.
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| Another issue that concerns some admissions officers in the U.S. is where the money is coming from. |
It would worry me as well. |
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slapntickle
Joined: 07 Sep 2010
Posts: 270
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| Posted: Fri Jul 27, 2012 8:45 pm Post subject: Re: Chinese into Western Universities |
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| spiral78 wrote: |
| Cheating to get into US and other Western universities is apparently rampant . . . |
But they don't always have to cheat . . . they can just rely on the course convener to get them through, if their teacher has failed them as happened recently at the University of Canberra in Australia:
Canberra U tutor �advised to pass failed students�
MATT SALUSBURY writes:
THE UNIVERSITY of Canberra (UC) in Australia�s capital has opened an investigation into allegations that its journalism school course convener had taken a �pragmatic view� with regard to fee-paying international exchange students, allegedly awarding pass grades to Chinese students with poor English, overriding their tutor�s assessment that they should fail.
The Australian newspaper reported that it had obtained email correspondence via Lynne Minion, a PhD student who was tutor to two Chinese students on a school of journalism exchange programme in 2010. The emails reportedly quote then school of journalism course convener Crispin Hull as telling Minion that the two exchange students �will return to China and never practise journalism in Australia � If these assignments had been produced by a native English speaker who might be let loose with a UC degree on the Australian journalism scene, I would fail them. But that this [is] not the case.�
Hull reportedly went on to advise Minion to tell her two students, on an exchange from the Shanghai University of Sport, that �their English expression needs a lot of further work. It is a question of grinning and bearing it.� Hull told the Austral ian he stood by his view that the 2010 exchange had been a �one-off� by Chinese students who had taken a few modules in journalism as part of an exchange programme, and that therefore the students should not have been punished if the standard of their journalism was �not up to scratch�. Hull also insisted that all other international students had �absolutely not� been passed for any assignments when they should have failed.
Minion said that any �ethical lapse� of the sort she alleges occurred with the two Chinese students in 2010 �must be eradicated�, and has since told the Australian that she had raised the issue with UC staff but that no action had been taken at the time.
The journalism course has been restructured since the 2010 incident. UC announced in late May that it had appointed Professor Graham Webb, a retired deputy vice-chancellor at both Monash University and the University of New England (in the territory of New South Wales), to carry out an investigation into �whether the university departed from accepted practices or its academic policies�, according to the Canberra Times. Professor Webb will be on the UC campus for four days in May to investigate �aspects of the students� assessments�, and UC is expected to publish his report in June.
Story can be found in the June, 2012, Edition of the ELGazette. |
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