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Chinese Students' Cheating Techniques - Don't Try at Home

Posted by ryuzaki0 on from the smart-people-bad-government dept.

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?"

4 of 555 comments (clear)

  1. Chinese Education Reforms & Conundrum by eldavojohn · · Score: 5, Interesting

    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?

    I certainly hope you are joking about that last statement.

    I should start by saying I am an American and therefore have probably been exposed to much propaganda against the Chinese government. Despite this, I have tried to educate myself on the current state of China & would like to point out an RSC article that talks about the history of higher education in China. Here's an excerpt from it:

    A brief history of higher education reform in China

    1949

    China's education system was based on the Russian model. Universities and colleges were divided to form specialist institutes and many universities were moved into rural areas to even out provision. These institutes were controlled by central government which also controlled the distribution of graduate students.

    1966-1976

    All formal education in China was stopped during the Cultural Revolution. During the later years, people entered university as students only by a process of recommendation. Many subjects were discontinued.

    1977

    The education system was restructured to give the system that operates today. The national university entrance exam was reintroduced and a comprehensive range of subjects became available with unified curricula for university degree courses.

    1986

    The government introduced the structural reform of higher education. Many institutes merged to form more comprehensive units. Mergers of centrally controlled institutions led to 72 'national' higher education institutes (HEIs). Mergers of locally controlled institutions led to 257 new HEIs.

    1999

    Tuition fees introduced for all university students. Fees are in the range Yuan 3000-6000 (£200-400), depending on the subject studied.

    2001

    Following China's entry into the World Trade Organization, new types of higher education establishments were introduced. These included independently funded universities and colleges, independent university-affiliated colleges for specialist subjects; and cooperation colleges that use foreign investment or foreign universities to set up an affiliated college or international university.

    Wikipedia offers a much longer explanation including the criteria by which you were eligible for aid:

    • * top students encouraged to attain all-around excellence;
    • * students specializing in education, agriculture, forestry, sports, and marine navigation; and
    • * students willing to work in poor, remote, and border regions or under harsh conditions, such as in mining and engineering.

    The most important change is the one from 1999 where tuition fees were introduced. It is my understanding (though I could be wrong) that money is often tight and your standard laborer in China makes roughly $50-$100 USD per month. Can you expect them to afford tuition rates of £200-400? Not really.

    I guess it would require a miraculous grant to get a higher education in China and I'm certain that those are a limited number that is quite small compared to a population of one billion. Even then, the best place to find secondary education is abroad as most of the world's leading universities are in the United States.

    This isn't how a Communist country is supposed to be run. There isn't supposed to be any "tuition fees" for education. There isn't supposed to be competition dividing people into two classes (one worthy of secondary education, one not). In a perfect Communist society, I was born to do something and as long as I work hard and do it, I get the exact same education you get. I ha

    --
    My work here is dung.
  2. The big problem with competition. by damburger · · Score: 5, Interesting

    For years its been quite stylish to voice an ideology of bringing competition into all aspects of life. This situation demonstrates the horrible flaw in the idea.

    The question you've got to ask yourself is what about a person is actually being measured by the competative system? In educational systems like this one, what is being measured is the ability to pass a test. Cheaters score very highly on this scale, so you end up distilling the most ruthless cheaters from society.

    Don't get too comfortable mocking China for this though - most western countries include extensive testing in their high school education systems, in the pursuit of the almight 'competativeness', and this leads to the same kind of thing.

    --
    If we can put a man on the moon, why can't we shoot people for Apollo-related non-sequiturs?
  3. If you got only one chance, you do what you can by Opportunist · · Score: 5, Interesting

    You only have one shot. How far would you go?

    Imagine this: Studying is your ONLY chance to get a well paying job. There is no such thing as having THE killer idea, gathering some venture vultures and getting rich that way, you study, or you're assembling Furbys for the rest of your life.

    And you only have ONE shot. ONE try. ONE single chance to prove that you're "worth" it. It's not like "write to a billion colleges and even if MIT rejects you, the university of Wallawalla will accept you". Studying abroad is also not necessarily an option.

    You have to succeed. If it costs your life.

    How far would you go? Personally, I'd sacrifice a virgin should I find one, just for the odd chance that this might appease some kind of deity I don't believe in.

    --
    We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
  4. Re:More schools by posdnous · · Score: 5, Interesting

    Chinese Universities ARE MOST definitely not a meritocracy.

    In fact it is probably the most unfair admissions process out of all the countries I have ever seen.

    The system is heavily slanted towards major cities such as beijing and shanghai. Each university has a quota system for students from each of the countries provinces. So in US terms, it would be like Harvard having a quota for high school students from each state, so if Harvard takes in 1000 students each year, it would allocate 10 students to texas, 10 students to rhode island, 20 students to california, etc....

    Now the problem is that the Major cities in China like beijing and shanghai hold most of the universities, and most of the Top universities in China, such as Peking university, Tsinghua University, FuDan university, etc... And each of those universities allocate a HUGE number of positions to students from it's local municipality.

    What this means in reality is that Beijing with a population of 18 million people will end up with like 100,000 university spots per year, and a poor, rural province like AnHui with 50 million people will end up with 5,000 university spots. This is reflected in the entrance marks too.

    A university in china does not just have ONE entrance mark, it has multiple entrance marks, one for each province which it accepts students from. This means that it will have a low entrance mark for places like beijing which it allocates the most quota to, and an extremely high entrance mark for places which it has a low quota for, like the previously mentioned anhui province.

    In education terms this means that the rich get richer and the poor get poorer, not a MERITOCRACY at all.