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Chinese Students' Cheating Techniques - Don't Try at Home
corbettw writes "According to a wire report on Yahoo! news, competition for university admissions in China are so intense that people are coming up with new, and sometimes dangerous, ways to cheat. The methods include microscopic earphones and wireless devices. In some cases, students are required surgery to recover from their cheating attempts. If there are that many people that desperate to get into a university, the obvious question would be, why don't they just open more schools?"
" If there are that many people that desperate to get into a university, the obvious question would be, why don't they just open more schools?"
And why dont we just print more money to solve poverty?
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You hear that America! Now China is about to outdo is in another category: cheating! Are we going to stand for this?!?
Precisely why do we care? Admittedly, if China's colleges and universities get filled with these industrious but otherwise dim individuals, we won't have to worry about China being a technological force to be reckoned with.
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If there are that many people that desperate to get into a university, the obvious question would be, why don't they just open more schools?"
Maybe because in the real world resources are finite? Yes, in a free market situation, where the price that people were willing to pay would be higher than the marginal cost of production, more would be sold, and high profit margins would encourage even more people to enter the market, satisfying even more demand; however, education is (probably) highly subsidized, and as such, every additional student or school opened costs even more money. There is also the matter of very good or even decent teachers being a finite resources. Add in the matter of prestige (everyone wants to get placed in a top school), and the fact that it doesn't make much sense to graduate a lot more people than the demand for jobs (unless you want to depress wages by increasing unemployment or think that these people will be entrepreneurs who will in the future generate even more jobs), and the fact that graduating more sub-par students in addition to the best of the best is not really necessary or all that beneficial and you will come to realize that the decision is rather rational.
Uttering logically derived and empirically supported truths to the disciples of the orthodox establishment.
If you are from a poor Chinese family, this is the only chance you will have to get into get into a university, with the govt. paying most or all of the costs. It is a way out of poverty for a whole family; the pressures are enormous, and there are many suicides of students who failed to get high enough scores on the entrance exam (held just once per year, typically on a Thursday). So, anything goes. If you can't afford to pay a tutor, or are not quite smart enough in the first place, and don't have a Party member for a family friend to pull some strings, you are doomed to work in an IPod factory or even a rice paddy for the rest of your life. So, you do whatever it takes.
In the west, we have lots of opportunities and second chances, and China is doing better these days, but has much govt. control still. It's a developing country, with a huge gap between the 'haves' and 'have nots'.
I personally hope the Chinese govt. can keep things from boiling over at some point. People (over 1 Gig of people there) want more than the Govt. can supply, and it's a balancing act. Most of the top govt. officials are engineers, which (if you know engineers) is both good and bad.
Because some cultures beleive, that you should only go to higher school if you can perform there.
:)
...
Your society needs farmes, car repairmen, plumbers and people who clean the streets
HNow in other societies, you can "buy" into college, college that most people can actually finish, then you end up with a bunch of kids with a degree, who are othervise barely suitable for a simple administration job at the local fastfood restaurant, or price/wal/whatever-mart.
I personally grew up at a place, where even getting into highschool (4 yrs after 8yrs primary) was just impossible for some, because they weren't able to perform well enough to get admission..... university exams were kind of a bloodsport back then
Is that right? If you allow specialization, and have a good selection of importance choices between subjects: yes
In my time, my college points included literature and history, even though I was about to go to an IT school.....
Also in college we wasted a lot of time learning useless stuff because of the lack of specialization, and while I somewhat agree that a universal knowledge should be taught in schools (high, and some uni/college besides the obvious primary), in many times that amount of universal trash should be better considered.
"What's the point of opening more schools if people have to cheat to get accepted? That's the wrong answer; the reason there's a test isn't to find the best people, it's to find the qualified people. Some people just don't deserve better schooling."
Because if there are so few schools that the only way to get accepted is to have a passing score of 95% or better, it is no longer about qualified or not.
Although I don't agree with their cheating to get accepted, I do think opening more schools would decrease the problem and maybe even make a little money in the process.
It is not like other countries (especially the U.S.) where if you have a pulse you can get accepted because there are so many schools.
Having just been to Beijing and Moscow, I'd say it certainly feels like China has deregulated a lot more than Russia. Talking to a Chinese friend from home I learnt that economic reform has been going on for a lot longer in China than Russia, despite Russia 'turning away' from Communism. But in the same breath I note that a local commented that in China it's a communist country for the ruling elite, but not the general population. But that's the joy of implementation vs specification.
jh
I think that the government would be against opening more schools. It seems that the more educated a society as a whole becomes, the more political opposition to oppression there would be. I met quite a few graduate students from China when I was in school and I will always remember something this one TA told my EE2 lab. He said that almost no one in the higher education system supported communism. They all had to take classes and tests on the subject and that was the only area where everyone was completelty disinterested and large scale cheating was completely overlooked. I'm not saying that everyone who goes on to university will automatically fight the government but I think there is a history of more education leading to that sort of thing.
Seriously, how can you get away with saying something like this. Try talking to a 17 year old American applying to college, now make it so they can only take their SAT's ONCE, then lower the available colleges and acceptance rates, you'd see the same thing in America. "Oh, but it must be because they are Chinese!" I'm surpised someone can get a +4 by making broad generalizations like this. If parent was talking about Linux, the post would be a troll!
So how does one identify who should be assigned these higher-education-requiring jobs? That's what the testing is all about. The idea is that the tests are fair as can be, since everyone is on equal footing when faced with a written examination.
In this case, you're a person who exemplifies why the system doesn't work -- you ascribe different values to the roles that workers take based upon their education. The janitor should be as highly esteemed as the doctor, provided they both do their jobs to the best of their abilities.
I think you're missing the biggest issue here -- China is no longer a Communist state, if it ever was one. Capitalism is taking over, with the State bing the largest source of capital. This makes it more of a fascist system (though the word has become 'dirty' from its association with certain European governments of the 20th century).
As to tuition:First off, you're using two different currencies there. Second, compare that to US tuition. Say, for China:' $75 US per month = $900/yr. Even converting GBP to USD, tuition of $680/yr. So you've a ratio of 1.32 median income to tuition in China, using your figures (source?).
In the US, the median income is just under 44,400 for a family of four, while the same year, the average total cost of college was 11,354. So the ratio is 3.91. However, consider that the median US family has 2 kids -- and your ratio is now 1.96. Now, also consider the fact that US citizens pay for a lot of services that Chinese citizens do not (either because the services are not available, or because the Chinese government pays). Finally, consider the fact that a college education in China (due to the selectivity) is the equivalent of a top-notch education in the US, where you can expect the costs of a year of top-notch college to be in excess of $30,000. In this light, the US ratio would be 1.48, which is remarkable close to the Chinese ratio.
The difference-make here might be scholarships and grants, and I don't know if the equivalent exists in China. But the culture of sacrifice for one's child means that most parents whose child is accepted to university in China can, and do, afford to send the child -- whereas in the US, kids go to state schools even when they qualify for better education, simply because it is more easily afforded by the parents.
"Trolls they were, but filled with the evil will of their master: a fell race..." -- J.R.R. Tolkien on Olog-hai
You seem to be speaking as if such as a 'perfect communist society' or anything close to it is possible.
Over 100 million people dead in the last century due to communist governments, and the fact that only misery can be found where communism is even close to properly implemented, tells us all quote well that COMMUNISM IS A FAILED IDEOLOGY.
Just to be clear, history has show us quite well that IT CANNOT WORK.
I don't even know why communism is even seriously debated as a possible form of government. History has shown us otherwise quite clearly.
Btw, China is communist in name only nowadays.
Communes can function perfectly fine, as small, relatively isolated self-selected and enforced societies. Anything tried on a nationwide scale- we've seen the results of that time and time again, and it's not good.
Expected response from communists:
The right people haven't been in charge yet!
Yeah, sure, keep thinking that's the only problem.
BTW, i am perfectly aware of the flaws of capitilism, but that's not really the subject of debate right now.
Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms should be the name of a store, not a government agency.
There's probably something to di with the Chinese administration's longstanding conflict with acadameia. The Tiananmen Square incident, as much as they've done to conceal it, still echoes in the minds of those old enough to have the skills and knowledge nessecary to become a professor. An old neighbor of mine was a professor from China (Mathematics, I think); he came over about five years after Tiananmen, which is probably close to how long it takes to officially immigrate to the States once the paperwork has been started.
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was there ever some "guarantee" that people in schools in the USSR were bright. Take off those rose colored glasses (once you do, you can see the 50 million people "Uncle Joe" killed) and you'll realize that children of high government officials, party members, and celebrities were regularly given spots a top-notch Soviet schools. Money might not have played as big a role as it does in the US, but a parent's political connection is no better arbiter of scholastic success than their financial success.
Put your little red book down and come back to reality.
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