Are Chinese Students Forced to Cheat?

EUGENE, Ore. — Are Chinese students forced to cheat? Is the admission process broken for Chinese applicants to American colleges? Variations of that question came up again and again during sessions on Wednesday at the Overseas Association for College Admission Counseling [OACAC] conference. Persistent concerns about standardized test fraud, doctored transcripts and fake admission letters are everywhere.The role of agents in helping to “pollute” the application process (as one session description put it) — are causing some to worry that Chinese students might think cheating is their only choice.“We need to make it [the application process] safe for honest applicants,” said Terry Crawford, the chief executive officer and co-founder of InitialView, a video interviewing company based in Beijing.“There’s a perception in China that the system is rigged, that if you pay enough money you’re going to get the results that you want,” Crawford said. This way of thinking comes from the Chinese culture, which is becoming more and more dependent on financial status and the ability to pay for what student’s parent’s want and need for their child. At all levels of Chinese society, money will get you into the best schools, the best communities, the best job after college. He cited a recent China Newsweek  article laying out the process and prices for cheating on the Test of English as a Foreign Language (TOEFL) as just one example of the type of story that feeds into this perception (the reporter received test answers during the exam via a small, wireless-enabled watch).“What we’re seeing is no one’s paying a price — no one’s paying a price for cheating,” said Tomer Rothschild, the co-founder of Elite Scholars of China, a company that helps Chinese students apply to American colleges. “It goes unpunished.” Cheating is so acceptable in China is there any reason for international students to believe they should not cheat to get into USA schools?Click here to view the original web page at www.insidehighered.com