I don't know where you got "no one does wrong" from my comments. Allow me to clarify.
Students are cheating. This is wrong.
Universities are institutionally indifferent to student learning. This is wrong too.
The latter is our point of disagreement. You make it clear in your first sentence that you don't think there's anything wrong with the university system, and that the institution is an innocent victim here. On the other hand, I think there's plenty wrong with the system.
> You make it clear in your first sentence that you don't think there's anything wrong with the university system, and that the institution is an innocent victim here. On the other hand, I think there's plenty wrong with the system.
American students already know by their college years that cheating has immediate negative consequences
Why should the college need to hold the hand of foreign students who haven't been taught this by their home countries?
New country, new laws, new culture. It's to be expected
Yeah, I'm not sure what GP thinks prevents rampant cheating from American students. It's not elaborate cheat detection systems — most students don't cheat simply because they choose not to.
And to act like this isn't a problem unique to Chinese students is a cop out. Culturally, there just isn't the same overwhelmingly negative view of cheating, and that difference is seeping through GP's justifications themselves despite GP ostensibly not being a cheater himself.
Sure a university should try to prevent cheating, and they do, but how far can they go? I don't want the costs of my education to skyrocket and the stresses on my professors to amplify just because some foreign students don't perceive an inherent wrongness with cheating.
I don't think anything prevents rampant cheating by American students. The difference is that American students do a lot of things that don't feel like cheating to them. For example, fraternities sharing libraries of old exams and problem sets, versus outright plagiarism and ringers sitting for exams.
> I don't think anything prevents rampant cheating by American students
The system prevents it. Cheating has consequences at lower levels of American schools. In China, for the most part, it doesn't. Gifts buy good grades. The whole idea of getting into a good school based on your merits is subverted.
The documentary Education, Education, about private colleges within China, shows what happens to poor families with this mindset [1]. They end up paying for schools that aren't really that good, and then they become part of what's become known as the Ant Tribe (蚁族),
> Lian Si (廉思), then a postdoctoral researcher at Peking University, coined the term "ant tribe" to draw a comparison between the lives of these college graduates and ants: "They share every similarity with ants. They live in colonies in cramped areas. They're intelligent and hardworking, yet anonymous and underpaid." [2]
The same thing happens in for-profit universities in the US. The film College, Inc documents this [3].
The degree of cheating by Asians is out of control. The entire SAT is being published. See the 3 minute video "Reused and Abused: How the test-prep industry games the SAT" [4]
The research establishes that virtually everyone cheats "just a little bit," and I think that sharing backwork falls under that "little bit" in most circumstances. At least at my school, backwork is demonstrably different seeing as one of the service fraternities officially, publicly distributes backwork for students to check out/scan/return. Some of the old exams are actually contributed by the professors themselves.
Crucially, the amount of effort necessary to combat backwork sharing, should a professor see it as a problem, is pretty miniscule. I've taken numerous classes that either had no backwork available (hand-counting the number of tests given to the class), or that had totally useless backwork (changing the test format).
Compare that to combatting students hiring test takers and paper writers?
I know tons of students who utilize backwork, very very few who use unauthorized resources (e.g. cellphones) during exams (I've seen it happen once maybe twice), and no one who would ever consider a ringer. Do you really believe that these are all of the same severity and total damage to academic integrity?
Regardless of whatever anecdata either of us can come up with, there are substantial cultural differences on this topic, isn't there? That's a serious question – I've always been led to believe that's the case, but I'm not an expert on Chinese culture by any stretch.
I think there's more than one cultural difference at work here. It's not just that there are cultural differences between the U.S. and China, but that there are generational cultural differences between you and me. It's been almost 20 years since I was an undergraduate. Back then, at my institution anyhow, sharing old exams that weren't publicly posted was considered deeply dishonest. As bad as having a ringer sit the exam for you. I was deeply shocked when, as a senior, I finally learned about the fraternities' libraries. Certainly, I was naive at the time. But my point is that, however you want to rationalize the practice of sharing old exams, it gives an unfair leg up to people who have access.
At any rate, I thank you for the discussion. I'm going to be away from the internet for the weekend, so I'll yield the floor and read any further responses later.
Students are cheating. This is wrong.
Universities are institutionally indifferent to student learning. This is wrong too.
The latter is our point of disagreement. You make it clear in your first sentence that you don't think there's anything wrong with the university system, and that the institution is an innocent victim here. On the other hand, I think there's plenty wrong with the system.