Hundreds Expelled, Many Arrested, For Cheating In India's School Exams

Etherwalk writes Sources conflict, but it looks like as many as 300 people have been arrested for cheating in the Indian state of Bihar after the Hindustan Times published images of dozens of men climbing the walls of a test center to pass answers inside. 500-700+ students were expelled and police had been bribed to look the other way. Xinhau's version of the story omits any reference to police bribery, while The ABC's omits the fact that police fired guns into the air.

Comments

It is a start

[WindBourne]

Now, lets see China stop their massive cheating.

Re:It is a start

[InfiniteZero]

Predictable response when it comes to India and China. Check out the following article.. Hint: cheating, or at least the temptation, is something universal in human nature.

http://www.bbc.com/news/world-...

On an unrelated note, Chinese students dominate the prestigious International Science Olympiad competitions. You can't cheat in those.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/I...
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/I...

Re:It is a start

[blue trane]

The tests are the problem. When police are involved, your education has ceased to become about knowledge transfer. It is about control.

Tests aren't needed. They are a lazy, inaccurate way of assessing learning. Socrates needed no tests. Buddha never taught with a closed fist holding some knowledge back. Censorship promotes an effete monoculture, not innovation.

Re:It is a start

[twistedcubic]

You can cheat on the Olympiads. North Korea was caught cheating on the International Mathematical Olympiad twice.

Re:It is a start

[ShanghaiBill]

cheating, or at least the temptation, is something universal in human nature.

My experience is that most people will cheat if the following list of criteria are satisfied:

1. They think they will get away with it.

Re:It is a start

[ShanghaiBill]

You can cheat on the Olympiads. North Korea was caught cheating on the International Mathematical Olympiad twice.

My kids compete in the Math Olympiad, and I helped proctor the test for their school. There was about 60 students, and only one other parent present. Cheating would have been trivial. I could have easily slipped the answers to my kid, or to several kids. I didn't because I didn't know that America's honor was being threatened by NK. I wasn't even aware that NK participated. I will be ready next year.

Re:It is a start

[blue trane]

Let everyone get away with it. Try to transmit information. Information does not follow conservation laws: yoy can learn something as you teach it. You gain, the students gain. Use tests as voluntary exercises, where students are free to help each other, and can do the test ad many times ad they want without penalty.

Re:It is a start

[blue trane]

s/yoy/you
s/ad/as

Re:It is a start

[garyebickford]

Better idea - use sophisticated computer programmed learning + continuous testing. Since students are learning and continually being retested on the material, and the questions are rarely the same for two different students (or even the same student 10 minutes later), nearly all cheating other than just standing there and answering for the student becomes impossible or at least impractical - IOW actually continuously monitor the students progress and help them actually _learn_ instead of faking it.

Of course, the education establishment really doesn't want to know a student's real capability, as this would elicit questions of actual performance, and ability - completely politically incorrect.

Re:It is a start

[Anonymous Coward]

Sure, start with your Wall Street first, Mr Free Market.

Re:It is a start

[Anonymous Coward]

America, fuck yeah.

Re:It is a start

[gnupun]

Tests aren't needed.

How else will you determine whether someone is worthy of entry to the next level of education or a job? Aren't job interviews tests? Do you just ship software to customers without doing any testing?

Socrates needed no tests. Buddha never taught with a closed fist holding some knowledge back.

These people loved knowledge and were probably already well off. To other people, education is a means to getting a job and therefore, survival.

Re:It is a start

[ShanghaiBill]

What you describe is how Khan Academy works.

Re:It is a start

[Anonymous Coward]

Olympiads test the top five or six students of a population. It should be obvious to anyone with even a tenuous grasp of mathematics that countries with a large population to draw from will be favored. That does not provide any useful information on the overall level of education in the country, except that it is sufficient enough for preternaturally skilled students to be identified and coached.

China does well in the Olympics for the same reason, but that doesn't mean that Chinese people are overall more athletic.

Re:It is a start

[Mashiki]

It's trivial to cheat on those, there was a case back 15-20 years ago here in Canada were participants were caught cheating in it. The same happened in the pascal math tests. I'm sure that in cases in the last 5 years people have been caught cheating in those tests as well.

Re:It is a start

[invictusvoyd]

The tests are the problem. When police are involved, your education has ceased to become about knowledge transfer. It is about control.

what knowledge? 80% of these people are going to get government jobs in India through political connections bribes or reservation. 10% are going to buy a computer engineering degree and end up in the outsourcing business and help create the stereotype of the shallow Indian techie. 9% are going to be unemployed. 1% will do something worthwile in their life .

Re:It is a start

[Noughmad]

It's not only that. When adjusted to population size, India does very poorly, worse than China, Korea & Co. but also much worse that Russia and Romania.

As a former participant (from a small country, so it was easier to get in), I should note that IMO problems are not a good representation of general education in a country. They are very specific, wildly different from both high school and university mathematics. So success on the IMO is much more dependent on the individual's and the country's level of preparation for the specific event. IPhO, for example, is much more similar to the physics we learn at school, except the problems are more difficult.

Re: It is a start

[BlueTrin]

It is a bit of a straw man: you only demonstrates that you can get caught cheating.

Re:It is a start

[Anonymous Coward]

Slashdot: "News for racist and xenophobe nerds. Stuff that is fodder for ignorant rants."

Re:It is a start

[Anonymous Coward]

The tests are the problem. When police are involved, your education has ceased to become about knowledge transfer. It is about control.

Tests aren't needed. They are a lazy, inaccurate way of assessing learning. Socrates needed no tests. Buddha never taught with a closed fist holding some knowledge back. Censorship promotes an effete monoculture, not innovation.

I'm sure India would love to hear from the Slashdot keyboard warriors on what alternate solution would be suggested to educate a billion citizens in an impovershed country that has only had 50 years of freedom from colonial oppression to actually be able to build schools and a university system.

Re:It is a start

[MurukeshM]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/R...

Re:It is a start

[SuricouRaven]

2. They do not have confidence in the testing system (eg, 'I'm studying to be a technical writer, so it isn't fair that I need to dissect archaic character descriptions in Romeo and Juliet to pass this english course.')
3. They believe other people cheat ('It's only fair, I'd be at a disadvantage otherwise.')
4.

Re:It is a start

[Kjella]

Cheaters cheat at every opportunity, they're also the ones who become notorious shysters and con men of every variety, both inside and outside the law. But most people aren't naturally born cheaters. What really brings out the widespread cheating is the perception that the system is rigged. That's why it is so hard to turn a country full of tax fraud, corruption, bribes and so on around, why should I make an honest effort when everybody else isn't?

At least when it comes to certain crimes I think the culture among your friends and family are far more important than what the law says. If your dad is an old Woodstock hippie and your buddies would say "Sure, who hasn't smoked a little pot in college" it's different than if they'd disown you and your bible study group would expel you. Of course they wouldn't support your cheating but if they cheated too and got away with it they won't take the moral high ground, just the practical advice that the first rule of cheating is to not get caught.

Re: It is a start

[Anonymous Coward]

Is a date a test?

If that's the way you look at it, your dates will suck.
If that's the way you conduct an interview, your wasting a lot of people's time by not just giving a test.

They're supposed to be organic. That's the problem with tests, they aren't.

Re:It is a start

[Anonymous Coward]

Tests aren't needed.

They aren't needed when the students are self-starters with the appropriate background and know, or can learn, effective ways to master the material. And they'll make appropriate sacrifices in their personal lives to make sure they master it, even when there are no tests.

That's not typical in most classrooms.

Re:It is a start

[Anonymous Coward]

I've attended the International Mathematical Olympiad as a competitor. The coaches are all given the problem sets before the competition days to translate into the language of the students, and due to the need to fairly score partial solutions, the coaches need to know and discuss the solutions before the competition days. An effort is made to prevent coaches from telling the students about the problems and solutions, and I have no reason to suspect cheating is much of a problem, but clearly cheating isn't completely impossible. The olympiads are run by academic volunteers - they are not equipped to stand up to the espionage capabilities of a nation.

Re:It is a start

[Anonymous Coward]

I used to think that it should be mostly down to population size, but that's not it. I was surprised to find that as a competitor in the International Olympiad in Informatics (the CS olympiad) from a small country, I was able to do better than at least one participant from every other country, including all the large countries, and the training I received was just a few days in a bootcamp, which I then added to in my own time using only free materials from the internet. I'm in no way unique or even very special in that regard, as IOI competitors from smaller countries go. It's not because e.g. China doesn't care about these olympiads - when it was in China, the whole thing was rather high-class and there was a police escort for outings which included closing down high-traffic roads in Beijing so the busses wouldn't be stuck in traffic.

My best guess is that in some countries there are far fewer children who have access to programmable computers from an early age, with the free time to play with them and who later get the opportunity to enter into these olympiads within their country. I was about 8 when I started programming, so by the time I was eligible for these olympiads, I had already been writing code for quite a while, and the logistics for entering into the local competition to qualify to be in the olympiad were trivial. I did extensive travel for competitions around the world in high school and it was all paid for by the state. In many other countries I may have had none of those opportunities.

So I don't think it's down to population size by itself, it's down to the total amount of people who have the required opportunities. In some countries that might be close to 100%, while in other countries it might be 1% or 0.01%. That can make up for a big difference in population size. Then there is also adequate nutrition and upbringing.

Re:It is a start

[HiThere]

Yes-No. "Will you cheat?" isn't a black and white thing, and expectation of not getting caught isn't the only modifier. Also involved are how important it is, and what the expected consequences of getting caught are.

Would you cheat on a math test to save your life? Your parents life? Your children's lives? If you said "No" to all of those you're lying. But if you would cheat for a penny, then you're totally without morals...unless there are exceptional circumstances that I haven't thought of.

What about if you had to pay a lot for the opportunity to take the test, and if you passed you would have a good career, and if you failed you wouldn't? I'd wager that would strongly increase the amount of cheating. (And unless you answered no to all the above questions, you can't be sure that you wouldn't, because I purposely left a lot of the motivators vague.)

People not only have differing amounts of "honor", they also disagree about what the term means.

Re:It is a start

[AK Marc]

Buddha never taught with a closed fist holding some knowledge back.

What information do you assert the teachers in this example are holding back?

Re:It is a start

[Anonymous Coward]

Tests aren't needed.

How else will you determine whether someone is worthy of entry to the next level of education or a job? Aren't job interviews tests? Do you just ship software to customers without doing any testing?

In science, when you want to test something, you make multiple measurements, and you try to disturb the subject of your measurement as little as possible.

With tests like the one mentioned, you have ONE measurement, and the subject is HIGHLY altered from what would be considered normal, since they know that their future is inextricably tied to the result. Even in the US, people get nervous for midterm exams, since they can be a major portion of the class grade.

A test is the simplest way of evaluating someone's understanding, but the current concept/idea of testing as an evaluation of your knowledge is far from scientific.

Re:It is a start

[Taser]

Tests aren't needed.

How else will you determine whether someone is worthy of entry to the next level of education or a job? Aren't job interviews tests? Do you just ship software to customers without doing any testing?

In science, when you want to test something, you make multiple measurements, and you try to disturb the subject of your measurement as little as possible.

With tests like the one mentioned, you have ONE measurement, and the subject is HIGHLY altered from what would be considered normal, since they know that their future is inextricably tied to the result. Even in the US, people get nervous for midterm exams, since they can be a major portion of the class grade.

A test is the simplest way of evaluating someone's understanding, but the current concept/idea of testing as an evaluation of your knowledge is far from scientific.

The above was posted by me; I forgot to log in as usual. My apologies.

How to REALLY lie with statistics

[SuperKendall]

Remember incidents like this when you see lists of countries supposedly being ahead of other countries in terms of test score results... without knowing how much cheating is going on, such lists are usually pretty worthless predictors of real-world results.

Re:How to REALLY lie with statistics

[ShanghaiBill]

Remember incidents like this when you see lists of countries supposedly being ahead of other countries in terms of test score results...

China is number one on most tests, and they openly and systematically cheat by excluding the bottom 80% from even taking the exam. Chinese people are assigned to a hereditary social class at birth, under the Hukou System. About 20%, mostly richer people, are privileged "urban" class, which entitles them free education, healthcare, subsidized housing, etc. The bottom 80% are assigned to the "rural" class (even if they live in a city), and aren't even entitled to food during times of shortage (99% of the 30 million deaths by starvation during the Great Leap Forward were people with a rural hukou). Since Chinese students only take the PISA exam in urban areas, where it is illegal for the poor kids to attend public schools, the results are meaningless. It would be like America only testing students from households with incomes in the top quintile. This is all well known, and there has been a lot of complaints about the way China cheats on these tests.

The houkou system is a profound injustice, requiring the poor to pay taxes to support a system that only benefits the rich. Most Americans know nothing about it, because Chinese immigrants to America come almost exclusively from the privileged class, and have no interest in criticizing a system that benefits their families.

Re:How to REALLY lie with statistics

[Anonymous Coward]

Remember incidents like this ... test score results... are usually pretty worthless predictors of real-world results.

What fraction of American parents would be willing to climb up the side of a building to get their kid a better test score?

Most American parents don't care about academics. Sure you could probably find a few communities where as many as 10% would make the climb but in many other communities it would be less than even a single percent.

It's not necessarily a bad thing that Americans can devote their lives to watching professional sports and pop stars and still live reasonably comfortable lives. But bear in mind that there are levels of poverty and human suffering in India that are incomprehensible to most Americans - which can be a very powerful motivator for those who can avoid succumbing to despair.

Re:How to REALLY lie with statistics

[garyebickford]

Cheating has been a serious problem among asian students at every grade level in Southern California, for at least two decades. Not only cheating but a variety of other ploys, such as harassing teachers into giving out extra credit assignments to those who pester them, which can be used to artificially increase their grades. (Extra credit improves grades more than poor test scores bring them down.)

Re: How to REALLY lie with statistics

[Anonymous Coward]

Ten years before, it is true. But now hukou is mostly outdated and not used, and where it used it is to keep cities not too population. Without it cities would be too crowded and more pollution, crime, and problems. But westerners keep to spread the lies to damage china reputation and image.

I was born here and I also live in "free" country (USA), and there is no big difference except both use the propaganda to attack the other. Foreign don't understand the chinese culture, jist as some chinese don't understand the western culture. And most chinese don't want the western culture that the west try to force on us.

Please try to have open mind when thinking different cultures.

Re: How to REALLY lie with statistics

[Anonymous Coward]

Your English skills suggest that it's not your first languages, by a long shot.

China PR man, I suppose? ;)

Re: How to REALLY lie with statistics

[Anonymous Coward]

I bet you were torn between this post and posting about my clean pc.

It's good to do service for the motherland, but my clean pc ads pay the bills.

Re: How to REALLY lie with statistics

[Anonymous Coward]

I live in China. Have lived here for 11 years as of this April.
Your claim that hukou isn't used any more is a bald-faced lie.

Furthermore, why would you claim it isn't used in one breath but in the next you claim that it's used to control population?

"But China has too many people"- the standard excuse used by any fenqing when trying to justify a shitty government policy.

Re: How to REALLY lie with statistics

[ShanghaiBill]

Ten years before, it is true. But now hukou is mostly outdated and not used

This is a flat out lie. I have nieces and nephews that live in Shanghai, and have to attend private school because their hukou makes it illegal for them to attend the public school in their neighborhood. My father-in-law had to travel over 1000km back to Sichuan for surgery, because he is ineligible to use the hospitals in Shanghai.

Re: How to REALLY lie with statistics

[Anonymous Coward]

Good news! Due to the inharmonious thoughts which were evidenced by your posts, your IP has been tracked and you have been scheduled for mandatory reeducation via repeated application of electricity to genitals. Please lie on your stomach with your arms at your sides. A reharmonisation associate will arrive shortly to collect you for your glorious reeducation.

Re:How to REALLY lie with statistics

[Oligonicella]

What fraction of American parents would help their kids cheat by climbing up the side of a building to try to ensure their kid a fake test score?

Fixed that for you.

Re:How to REALLY lie with statistics

[JustOK]

they would repel down from their helicopters

Re: How to REALLY lie with statistics

[anonymous_echidna]

Even assuming everything you say is true, it takes far longer than ten years to turn the impoverishment of a class around.

Re: How to REALLY lie with statistics

[Anonymous Coward]

You can certainly love a country you criticize for certain massive failures like the unjust Hukou system.

Re:How to REALLY lie with statistics

[Bengie]

One of the first things told during freshmen inauguration was plagiarism almost always resulted in academic probation for 1-2 semesters depending on the severity, and cheating got you banned for life from all state Universities, and any degrees you may have gotten from them will be revoked.

Re:How to REALLY lie with statistics

[Anonymous Coward]

The houkou system is a profound injustice, requiring the poor to pay taxes to support a system that only benefits the rich.

Ah. So THAT's where the USA got its tax strategy from!

Re: How to REALLY lie with statistics

[St.Creed]

True, but the reverse can happen as well.

My in-law's cousin was top of his class in a city about 150km from Shanghai. Scoring high on tests, he made it into Shanghai university where he also scored pretty high. This got him and his parents a Shanghai Hukou and a job as finance manager after graduation at the same time.

But yeah, if you're of average intelligence you are ordered to stay where you are. Only the very gifted will be mobile both up and sideways.

Totally different from the USA, where every poor kid attends Harvard, of course.

Re: How to REALLY lie with statistics

[AK Marc]

I note, you can't attack the message, so you attack the messenger. What he says is true. The system no longer exists in practice, but exists on paper to scare people away from Shenzhen and such. If the system were ended tomorrow, the expectation is that there would be millions flooding the more prosperous cities. As it is now, it's used to prevent a homeless problem in cities. If you are in a city and homeless, then you don't have permission to be there. They ship you out to the country to hide the poverty in the countryside, where the foreigners rarely go. I've seen the country side, and the city, and talked with people who live in both. The rural people are given no chance to advance, and the city people are competing so heavily that advancement is hard.

It's not "worse" than the US, just different. China has more poverty and less homelessness. There are other things that are similarly confusing.

Re:How to REALLY lie with statistics

[Anonymous Coward]

they would repel down from their helicopters

Quite difficult. I suspect the static electricity caused by the downdraft would cause the small feathers to stick.

Re: How to REALLY lie with statistics

[WindBourne]

wow. That is wicked. Sorry to hear that.

Re:How to REALLY lie with statistics

[WindBourne]

There is a real reason why the GOP is good friends with Communist China.

Re: How to REALLY lie with statistics

[Anonymous Coward]

No one mentioned the US except you. I guess when you can't provide a solid argument, deflect to someone else.

Re:How to REALLY lie with statistics

[sociocapitalist]

Remember incidents like this when you see lists of countries supposedly being ahead of other countries in terms of test score results... without knowing how much cheating is going on, such lists are usually pretty worthless predictors of real-world results.

And yet these people are qualified to take away local jobs.

Re:How to REALLY lie with statistics

[neurovish]

This devastating raid resulted in the expulsion of 0.00025% of India's students.

The H1B mills will put a stop to this

[wierd_w]

How can they crank out "qualified applicants" at bargain basement prices, if they cant get ahold of disreputable young people with dodgy diplomas for bargain basement prices?

Re:The H1B mills will put a stop to this

[Anonymous Coward]

Right, because companies can make sooo much money by hiring crappy employees from india who cheated on exams, and paying them western level wages.

That's such a profitable approach.

Re:The H1B mills will put a stop to this

[hey!]

Having worked with a number of H1Bs from India, I'd say their level of technical competency was pretty comparable to what you'd expect from Americans. Some were horrible, a few were outstanding, most were OK.

There were two big differences. The first was the large number of masters degrees. This is obviously helpful in the visa process, but I don't think a CS or IT master's degree obtained right after college without any intervening work experience means much in practical terms. This is the kernel of truth in the "dodgy diploma" complaint, except there's nothing wrong with the diploma. It's often from a perfectly good program at a US university, it's just gilding the inexperienced lily.

The second big difference is culture. I don't think either culture has an overall advantage, but Indian engineers tend to be can-do and highly conscientious but are often conflict-averse and reluctant to convey bad news. Americans tend to be more assertive in the face of authority and somewhat less likely to tell the boss what they think he wants to hear rather than what he needs to hear. But it's important to realize that engineers are individuals, not cultural automatons. Some Americans are door mats and some Indian engineers are firebrands. And overall engineers from either country are more like each other than they are like ordinary people.

While I think the economic arguments for H1B are bogus, I am grateful to the program for having introduced me to so many interesting people.

My take on the issue of cheating in India is that the stakes are so much higher for some Indians it'd be surprising not to have scandals like this. We Americans see being middle class as a birthright. There isn't a bottomless bit of poverty waiting to swallow us up if we're a few points short of par on our SATs, the way there is for many Indians trying to climb onto the lower rungs of the middle class ladder. But even so *we* cheat plenty. Remember the Air Force officers who shared answers for tests that were supposed to measure their ongoing competency to handle nuclear weapons? That was sheer laziness.

Re:The H1B mills will put a stop to this

[Bruinwar]

My experience is the same. H1Bs are pretty much just like American engineers, good & bad. One guy I worked with was really good but I couldn't understand a thing he said. Another spoke great English but couldn't do anything without being micromanaged.

I used to teach a CAD class at a local community college & what I learned was people are the same no matter where on this planet they are from.

Re:The H1B mills will put a stop to this

[Anonymous Coward]

A masters degree should not have any bearing on getting an H-1B. It was created (ts stated purpose) to fill a 3-6 year period until employers and schools train enough residents to take those jobs. The O visa is for highly skilled (exceptional) workers and there is not cap.

It won't change.

[Anonymous Coward]

I hate to sound ignorant but from everything I've heard a lot of pressure is put onto school kids to get a good education and get married (particularly males)
I doubt it's something they can really change with a law or some arrests, it's seems like a deeply rooted cultural thing.

Re:It won't change.

[wierd_w]

No, CHEATING is a cultural thing there. Many feel they have the RIGHT to cheat.

Cheating on university exams produces inferior quality graduates, that only make the system cumbersome and unpleasant.

However, there are whole industries that capitalize on this phenomenon. H1B visa mills are just one such industry.

Crackdowns on Indian cheating will directly affect their financial bottom lines. Expect hard pushback.

Re:It won't change.

[perryizgr8]

No, CHEATING is a cultural thing there. Many feel they have the RIGHT to cheat. [bbc.com]

Bullshit. This is BBC's shoddy alarmist reporting. Some random whackjobs saying some stupid bullshit does not mean "many" in the entire country of 1.2 billion humans feel the same way. It is NOT a fucking cultural thing. The culture here is to get marks, and people usually work hard for that. Some thugs in some remote parts may cheat like in the linked article. It is not a widespread phenomenon by any means.

Cheating on university exams produces inferior quality graduates, that only make the system cumbersome and unpleasant.

True. Most graduates out of university here are stupid and un-trained and basically worthless. That is not because of cheating. That is because of bad curriculum, bad testing and a general lack of focus on research. Even the best engineering schools (IITs) have a dismal record in research.

However, there are whole industries that capitalize on this phenomenon. H1B visa mills are just one such industry.

Almost 1 in 3 H1B visas are granted to people who have attained a master's degree from an American institute. So you are saying that Indians are so good at cheating that they cheated in GRE, cheated in the American university they attended, and still got the degree? LOL.

However, there are whole industries that capitalize on this phenomenon. H1B visa mills are just one such industry.

There are always hard crackdowns happening on cheating here. Incidents like these happen once in a while, but they are not prevalent enough to be a big problem. The bigger problem right now is that the entire education imparted in our colleges is absurd, inadequate and favors dumb people. For example, 50% of college seats are reserved for the dumbest of the dumb because hurr durr caste system. It helps nobody, only creates disgruntled people, and reduces the worth of the degree.

Re:It won't change.

[Anonymous Coward]

Typical American attitude. "We're the best, and anyone who seems to be doing better than us is cheating!"

I'm not Indian, but your implication that people who come here on H1B's are liars and cheats just ain't true.

Re:It won't change.

[wierd_w]

It's a little late to reply here, but I worked for a fortune 500 doing remote technical support for high end storage controllers.

A very alarming number of the people maintaining these controllers that were from India were quite simply not competent, and it did not matter if they were physically IN india at the time, or were working outside of india.

We are talking "You take control and do it for me now?" kind of incompetent. You know, the kind that dont know what the ls command does level of incompetency.

In stark contrast, the support personel from pretty much every other country knew what they were doing, and just needed a little assist with oddball quirks of their controllers, and did not expect our support staff to do their jobs, in addition to our own.

So you can take your "Oh, you must be a priviledged american!" attitude, and shove it. No-- this is very specific to Indian tech workers. An alarming number of the ones I interacted with should never have been hired.

I Don't Understand

[Dutch Gun]

Have you seen those pictures? So... this apparently isn't some sneaky "we couldn't tell they were cheating" issue. This was the examiners apparently not caring at all about blatant cheating going on right in front of them. I mean, you really can't miss this, right? That being the case, why wouldn't the students just hide the crib sheets on them somehow, or cheat in a way that's not quite as likely to involve a family member falling to death from outside the building's third and fourth story windows?

Can anyone give a plausible explanation? I'm genuinely curious.

Re:I Don't Understand

[supabeast!]

India has some of the most corrupt local governments on Earth. The examiners were either bribed or just can’t be bothered to deal with this on their own. Either that or they’re the ones who got the police and media involved.

Re:I Don't Understand

[TWX]

Someone had interviewed some people that were supposed to be proctoring exams, and basically it came down to a combination of carrot and stick. The carrot in the form of bribes, and the stick in the form of violent retribution for those that would attempt to stop the cheating. Basically the proctors had no incentive to stop the cheating and every incentive to let it continue.

Until there's an outside influence that causes it to stop, like employers engaging in their own independent tests where the testee is surprised and must perform without having an opportunity to set up the framework to cheat, or where other countries stop engaging Indian firms because of it, it will simply continue.

Re:I Don't Understand

[bayankaran]

The explanation is that there is no 'plausible explanation'.
Bihar is THE poorest state in India by many metrics. The way out of poverty and squalor for a majority is getting a good score in the Secondary School leaving exams - or minimum pass the damn exam - where you qualify for state / central recruitment, military, admissions to college and so on.
Just like BRICS, India got BIMARU states - Bihar, Madhya Pradesh, Rajasthan, Uttar Pradesh to signify 'sick' states - BIMARU in Hindi means 'unhealthy condition'. Think of a BIMARU state as Appalachia or Louisana, but more downtrodden and poor.
Here is an anecdote from my uncle - who did his MSc in Physics way back in the late 1980's from Kanpur, a big city in Bihar's neighboring state Uttar Pradesh - another basket case. The college he studied is DAV College, Kanpur, next to the big cricket stadium Green Park.
During the exams students were three types of service by the local strongmen - mostly wannabe politicians, with support from the caste based political parties...the cheapest tier will allow you to copy from your notes during the exams. The middle tier will allow you to write the exam from your hostel room. The topmost tier they will find someone else who is an expert in the subject to write the exam for you.
These wannabe politicians later represent the state and its constituents in the local and central governments. And now you can understand where are how the criminality of the typical North Indian caste based politician comes from....its inbred. Only the toughest and the most criminal will survive.
I am from Kerala - an entirely different world from the BIMARU States. Think of upstate New York or Pennsylvania - but more tropical. The world described above is alien to us...just like its alien to you.

Re:I Don't Understand

[blue trane]

You've gone way beyond the true purpose of education in your draconian proposals. The true task of the educator is to help everyone get to an A+ level. Quoting Sebastian Thrun: "Grades are the failure of the education system."

http://singularityhub.com/2012...

Re:I Don't Understand

[blue trane]

Give up testing altogether. Help everyone get to an A+ level.

Re:I Don't Understand

[Anonymous Coward]

Have you seen those pictures?

Back in the day when I took the SAT and ACT (exams used in the USA as one component of college admissions), most of the other students who took the exam really just didn't care. They made a pretense of taking some of the test and then left as soon as possible. There's no way they or their parents would have climbed up the side of a building to get a better score. On one hand, it's nice that American kids can afford to not care about college entrance exams. But it's also a reminder that there are a lot of people out there in the world who are much more motivated.

Re:I Don't Understand

[Anonymous Coward]

I have to interview these goddamn morons for my company. They're cheaper than domestic employees so there's lots of pressure to bring them on. Whether they're outsourced or H1B'd, they're pretty much a bunch of backwards dumb twats who can barely put a command together. How we end up with them is no surprise. We bring on someone like Cap-Gemini or IBM and they in turn outsource to these dumb shits. I'm so fricking sick of having to fix their dumb mistakes in everything from code to spelling to putting together an awk script to search for a regex. They're useless. This week I have some dumb shit from IBM, another H1B, that is constantly replying with "I'll get back to you" or searching through manuals to find simple answers.

The cert mills have sprung up all over in India have absolutely no incentive to curb the practice.

Re:I Don't Understand

[ami.one]

And leave out all the thrill and excitement, the sense of purpose & team spirit, bonding etc ? Nah.

Climbing up 3-4 floors from the side of a building and surreptitiously solving and providing answers to your best pal while hiding from teachers, cops etc. balanced on a tiny ledge. Who wouldn't want to do that during their teenage years ?

Re: I Don't Understand

[Anonymous Coward]

+1

So true.

The H1-Bs where I work are a fucking plague. They can't do basic things in *nix and spend their days posting to sites looking for scripts and solutions to the tickets they've been assigned. Sucks but they're cheaper than onshore hires.......l

Re:I Don't Understand

[Anonymous Coward]

If they have so much motivation, then maybe they should study more.

Re: I Don't Understand

[Anonymous Coward]

Your description of Kerala as a place where cheating is endemic is a no-true-Scotsman argument. Doesn't ring true, sorry.

Re: I Don't Understand

[BlueTrin]

It is a genius model: you outsource to Cap Gemini who outsources to cheaper labour from overseas who outsource to free labour from Stack Overflow who does it for brownie points.

Re:I Don't Understand

[perryizgr8]

Haha, motivation is a funny thing. In the right person, it can create a Stephen Hawking, or a Bill Gates. In some other people, it creates people you see in the pics.

Re:I Don't Understand

[Oligonicella]

It's the difference in being motivated to *get* a high score and to *achieve* one.

Re:I Don't Understand

[Anonymous Coward]

My high school had a graduation requirement: Take either the ACT or SAT. (I'm guessing it was so they can say ~100% of our students are planning on going to college!) There was no requirement to do good, or get a certain number, just proof you took it. Most really shouldn't go to college. It is a bad thing that it is almost a requirement to pass through the automated world of employment these days.

The one time to RTFA is now.

[sound vision]

This link to the fucking article:
http://www.hindustantimes.com/...
Has a fucking hilarious picture that you fucking have to see. Made my fucking day.

Re:The one time to RTFA is now.

[Hognoxious]

Perhaps they mistook it for a train.

http://www.google.com/imgres?i...

Re:The one time to RTFA is now.

[Anonymous Coward]

Reminds me of a certain scene from World War Z.

Re: The one time to RTFA is now.

[Anonymous Coward]

From the point of view of someone unfortunate enough to be standing in the area, I'm not sure which would be worse: the crowd of zombies or a few hundred unwashed sweaty Indians.

Re:The one time to RTFA is now.

[Krishnoid]

On a more positive note, everybody aced the parkour part of the exam.

NO WAY, CHINA GONNA WIN THIS ONE !!

[Anonymous Coward]

You think China is going to lose out to India?

NO WAY!!

They gonna stage an even BIGGER cheating scandal that makes this Indian episode looks so pitiful !

Just wait man, just wait !!

Re:NO WAY, CHINA GONNA WIN THIS ONE !!

[Anonymous Coward]

Wannabe
Poser
Big Phat Phoney
!!

Ask Wallstreet

[Anonymous Coward]

Of course many feels that they have the right to cheat ...
 
We only have to look at what happened in Wallstreet to remind us that cheating is MASSIVELY PROFITABLE and if they can cheat, why can't we?

Is anyone that went to college surprised?

[Anonymous Coward]

I know I'm not. My Indian students would always be shocked during their first test that they were caught cheating. Some were honestly surprised that I wouldn't allow it.

White Man's Method

[Greyfox]

I Misinterpreted The Rules

Maybe we do have something in common with India, after all!

uh

[Anonymous Coward]

Hold exams in rooms without windows?

gotta compete

[Anonymous Coward]

with them asian kids. up north. never mind the pakis. and introducing. tubular bells.

C'mon

[maseo126]

Lol...wut?!

And before we get too excited here

[Anonymous Coward]

Pretty sure universities here in the West are just as bad. After all, universities are nothing more than a business these days, and the human race hasn't changed much, it's difficult to believe we're all scientists and engineers now.

Re:And before we get too excited here

[Oligonicella]

You just displayed the level of logic won by cheating all your tests.

Well, this explains a lot.

[Anonymous Coward]

This means all those morons I had to speak to when I called any company because they outsourced to India, really were morons.

Neither shocking nor new...

[Anonymous Coward]

Yep, These are larger systemic issues which are well known, so while the picture may seem shocking, it is not new, unfortunately.


Basically, a lot depends on these exam results, which lead to admissions to universities, and further along (mostly-govt) jobs. Corruption is generally high in India (which I'm sure you know), but U.P. and Bihar (where this happened) generally take the cake in these matters.

It's the traffic jam analogy: If you're stuck in a traffic jam for an hour, and finally find an open stretch, you're more than likely to drive faster-than-usual in a fit of frustration and not pay any attention to rules, especially if they are loosely enforced (do observe this when you're in India the next time).

Sadly, the economic changes taking place also reinforce the inequalities between the haves and have-nots, and the usual problems of people migrating to cities. A systemic solution is to create better incentives at learning skills than earning certificates. Better access to information and communication tools can help society move forward and make better use of their cognitive surplus in a more democratic and transparent manner.

Just my 2 cents.

P.S. It is nevertheless quite funny to see this being linked to H1B visas in this thread. You know why? Because the H1Bs you'll see are not from some cheating-for-a-govt-job scandal. They're usually from the very top universities, the kind of which, even if there is talk of reservation for 'minorities', let alone cheating, can lead to people 'self-immolating' in protest. Saavy?

Re:Neither shocking nor new...

[perryizgr8]

They're usually from the very top universities, the kind of which, even if there is talk of reservation for 'minorities', let alone cheating, can lead to people 'self-immolating' [wikipedia.org] in protest.

He was protesting against the Mandal commission reservations in jobs, not universities. We have 50% reservations for low caste people and minorities in every government educational institute. And though many people have complained, most support it.

Cheaters never win?

[Runaway1956]

Remember, the best cheaters will be arriving on our shores (United States) within a few short years, thanks to the H1B programs!

Re:Cheaters never win?

[Anonymous Coward]

Well I suppose after these cheaters have to do actual work where cheating is not an option, it'll eventually become obvious they are not competent.

Re:Cheaters never win?

[Runaway1956]

And, that means what? You've already lost your job, the H1B is filling your position, and even IF he is fired, he'll still be here in the US, applying for jobs where HR files YOUR application in the circular file. Because he was a successful cheater, he got to America, and you lost your job. You're going to feel better somehow, because he got fired from your job? You ain't getting it back!

Re:Cheaters never win?

[Anonymous Coward]

People will learn from the mistake. Hopefully.

It's a shame others will need to get hurt before this is obvious. Same with climate change. We'll do something about it, but not before people get hurt.

Re:Cheaters never win?

[Runaway1956]

I'm not as optimistic as you are. The steel industry has been mostly offshored from the US since the '70's. The construction industry has been taken over by illegal aliens. Ever more of our industrial capacity is being sold off and/or offshored. The education system is designed to churn out mindless burger flippers and warehouse workers, instead of engineers, philosophers, authors, doctors, or much of anything else.

A lot of people have already been hurt, but those who haven't been hurt YET simply don't care. They believe themselves to be above the common masses, and immune to the New World Order. They want to believe that they are so important, that THEIR portion of the wealth won't be redistributed around the world.

About the time that starvation becomes almost common in the United States, then people might stand up to reclaim their heritage. Of course, it may be to late then. China is forging ahead to become the next world leader, and China will have little incentive to improve conditions in the US.

Re:Cheaters never win?

[tlambert]

H1-B's can not be transferred. The new employer has to file an H-1B petition on behalf of the applicant, all over again. The difference is that this does not count as an application to which the H-1B cap applies. This only applies for a period of 60 days, after which they are subject to deportation.

Getting fired for incompetence if you are in the U.S. on an H-1B is a really bad thing, since the new employer is probably going to wait out the two month clock to make sure that the applicant is still working, rather than having been fired. Unless they can demonstrate a general layoff, and disclose this up front to get the ball rolling on the re-petition at the new employer.

So the situation is nowhere near as dire as you are making it out to be.

Re:Cheaters never win?

[gatkinso]

Sadly, the horse has left the barn at that point.

Re:Cheaters never win?

[perryizgr8]

This cheating is not common in the institutes from where H1B visa people are selected. But I guess it's easier to spout bullshit like a dumbass than find out the facts.

Re:Cheaters never win?

[Runaway1956]

Perhaps you haven't noticed that DHS/ICE or whatever they call themselves these days are about 25 million cases BEHIND on deportations. They are actively lobbying to legalize all the illegal alien residents so that they don't HAVE TO deport anyone.

If you care to quibble numbers, you may cite the administration's figure of five million, or you may cite the previous administration's figure of twelve million, or you may cite various other sources. No matter how you slice it, the government is millions of cases behind, and they will never catch up.

Whether you're form India, Pakistan, or Mars, if you fail to meet the terms of your entry into the US, you have little to worry about regarding deportation. Just don't break any major laws to get put into the "legal" system, and you'll be fine.

Or, did you think that the cheaters were ignorant of the current state of affairs?

Re:Cheaters never win?

[Runaway1956]

Oh, really? Well, instead of calling names and passing out insults, you might have told us exactly where H1B candidates come from. You might even have supplied some source which helps to verify the integrity of those sources. To me - it sounds like YOU are spouting bullshit like a dumbass. "Cheating is not common" probably means that cheating is less flagrant than the instance being reported here.

Re:Cheaters never win?

[perryizgr8]

This is a freaking 10th class test. It's inconsequential in every way. The exams which do matter (like the IIT entrance exam) are very well administered. There is zero cheating in them. The tests themselves can be said to be useless, but there is no cheating involved. Also, a large number of H1B visas are people who have a master's degree from USA. Their degrees and accomplishments are NOT the products of cheating.
Cheating is not common means that events like these are outliers and they are dealt with very harshly. Look at the article. They expelled ~500 students and some parents have actually been arrested and are in jail. When I was in school, and taking one of these board exams, we were really scared of getting caught doing anything during the test that might construed as "cheating" by the invigilator. People are literally not allowed to bring cellphones/bags inside the testing room, let alone keep them on their person. They make it very hard to cheat and the punishments are very severe.
There are some government institutes where cheating is a common thing. But any qualification from these places is considered useless, especially in companies which would send people to the US. Connecting such cheating with the quality of people getting H1B visas is just plain ignorant.

Re:Cheaters never win?

[Runaway1956]

"just plain ignorant"

You DO realize that ignorance can be corrected. Unfortunately, stupidity cannot be corrected.

That said, I'm not sure that I believe your assessment. We are talking about a nation with some very backward views and attitudes. Have you watched the movie, "India's Daughter"? I'm not a movie watcher, and I probably wouldn't have watched this one, but the Streisand Effect kicked in when India's government tried to kill the movie. Of course, I don't base my assessment on just the movie - there have been a large number of high profile rapes in India over the past - ohhhh - five years I suppose. Key words, "high profile" - the rapes have always been there.

You can imagine that a rational person might suspect that a nation that harbors this rape culture might also harbor an ingrained cheat culture as well.

In a nation where court cases for traffic cases, murders, and tax assessments routinely took longer than a natural lifetime, cheating might be viewed in a different manner than in most of the industrialized world.

Re:Cheaters never win?

[aardvarkjoe]

This is a freaking 10th class test. It's inconsequential in every way.

If that were true, then there wouldn't be so many people trying to cheat.

Re:Cheaters never win?

[tlambert]

Whether you're form India, Pakistan, or Mars, if you fail to meet the terms of your entry into the US, you have little to worry about regarding deportation. Just don't break any major laws to get put into the "legal" system, and you'll be fine.

Fine.

So get a job working in a kitchen, because if you want a $90K/year job in software engineering, you're going to have to demonstrate elegibility for US employment as part of the application process. And if you can't, you will need to petition for a brand new visa which *is* counted against the cap, and if you petition after the fact of illegal status, you will need to do it from a U.S. Embassy outside the U.S., or the petition will be denied, and you will not get employed.

Do you seriously suggest that people are posing as software engineers just to get into the U.S. in the first place, become illegal aliens, and take low paying jobs which U.S. citizens are unwilling to take?

Re:Cheaters never win?

[Anonymous Coward]

and India has some serious issues as well!

Re:Cheaters never win?

[AK Marc]

The steel industry has been mostly offshored from the US since the '70's.

Yes. A time that coincides almost exactly with Nixon's EPA. The EPA killed steel mills. They were dirty poisonous endeavors. So we shipped them to China. We still mined iron, then shipped it to China for processing, then shipped steel back to the US for final shaping and sale. It was the EPA, and not the labor market that killed steel in the US.

Re:Cheaters never win?

[Runaway1956]

I am seriously suggesting that a cheater who finds that he is incompetent has little reason to return to wherever he came from. He is HERE - he isn't going to willingly return to where he came from.

I also seriously suggest that these H1B's are NOT any more qualified to perform any given job than crowds of US citizens. The ONLY thing that makes a US citizen unattractive to the H1B employers is, a citizen knows his rights, and will often times insist that his rights be respected. The guy flown in from Buggeristan isn't so likely to insist that any rights are respected.

Re:Cheaters never win?

[Runaway1956]

I'm a little curious about your age. You learned that bit about the steel industry in school, right?

I grew up surrounded by the steel and iron industries. My little region of the world was a major coal producer, and the steel mills located close to the coal supply when THEY were established. I witnessed the stupidity, sometimes, up close and personal.

The EPA nonsense was tangential and contributory at best. The real issue was labor.

Youngstown Sheet and Tube is a very good example. The union had a TERRIFIC contract. Virtually everyone in the area wanted a job there, unless they were willing to relocate to Pittsburgh for an even better job. Or Detroit. The contracts effectively made modestly wealthy people of broom pushers.

YS&T bargained for a contract, and the union INSISTED on a raise. Like the rest of the steel mills, YS&T informed the union that the company was already losing money, and that there could be no raise. If they couldn't avoid raises, they would shut the doors, and relocate.

Union workers told the company that no one in the world could make iron and steel like American workers - they couldn't relocate outside the country.

A year and a half later, steel was being produced in Belgium, and soon after, iron and steel were being produced in India. China is something of a late comer to the game, but today they produce a lot of iron and steel. Most of it is junk, but I suppose that given time, the Chinese can learn to make the same quality that Belgium and India are already making.

Unions vs the redistribution of wealth is the whole story behind the steel industry off-shoring. The EPA is merely an addendum at the back of the book.

Re:Cheaters never win?

[tlambert]

I am seriously suggesting that a cheater who finds that he is incompetent has little reason to return to wherever he came from. He is HERE - he isn't going to willingly return to where he came from.

Why not? If the only skill he has is cheating, and cheating doesn't work here, but cheating does work there, then he can go back there with the cachet of having been here, lie about what he did while here, and be completely unlikely to be found out as a fraud. It would be a huge step up in a culture that he already understands how to get along in, compared to the one here where he barely scrapes by. Going back could be a fantastic deal for him to elevate his social standing.

I also seriously suggest that these H1B's are NOT any more qualified to perform any given job than crowds of US citizens. The ONLY thing that makes a US citizen unattractive to the H1B employers is, a citizen knows his rights, and will often times insist that his rights be respected. The guy flown in from Buggeristan isn't so likely to insist that any rights are respected.

Certainly not the H-1B's who've cheated their way through school are not as qualified. They aren't the only H-1B's available, however...

There are a handful of universities in the U.S. that turn out better software engineers than the rest of the world, and for the rest, I'd probably hire a German, Pole, Australian, etc., over someone educated in the U.S. in the last 15 years. The U.S. higher education system is seriously broken in a lot of ways, and while you can get a great education at a university, it's not going to be because of the curriculum, it will be in spite of it, unless you are going to Stanford, MIT, Brown, Rice, or a few others. Even at those, you have to take a particular emphasis in your major in your departmental contract, one that requires additional accreditation-optional courses that the standard coursework won't get you.

Seriously, I'm going to hire someone who learned to write software using Java or Python, or another interpreted, pointer-less language where they know absolutely nothing about pointer arithmetic or explicit memory management -- or worse, someone who only really knows ActionScript (Flash) programming because they thought they were going to be the next God's gift to video game design?

When the alternative is one of the people from Karlsruhe Institute of Technology who worked on L4 and was explicitly taught C and assembly language programming, and didn't have to learn it on their own, outside of class?

Which would you hire?

Unless you are doing nothing but front end web site work, you take a pass on the most common U.S. candidate, if you have an alternative.

And before you tell me "You should hire the U.S. candidate, and train them!", why do I have to train the U.S. candidate, if I don't have to train the German, Australian, Czech, Pole, or even Russian candidate? What did they do right that the U.S. candidate did wrong, such that I have to correct it with additional training before I can get useful work out of them?

That's right: they went to a U.S. university, and did the minimum required to get their degree, and while they likely didn't cheat, they skated by because the accreditation standards in U.S. universities are an outcome-based joke.

Re:Cheaters never win?

[Runaway1956]

No, Sir, I won't tell you that you should train the American - but you really should.

I will tell you that there are Americans with the background, the knowledge, the education to do what you need. They may not have some very specific set of classes that you've cherrypicked as a "required curriculum". There are any number of individuals in this nation who have experience with anything you care to mention - but you won't consider them for an "entry level" position.

Re:Cheaters never win?

[Anonymous Coward]

What is this crap about these cheaters making it to the US shores? Stop being a dumbass. It is highly unlikely, if not totally impossible, that the guys that do come to the US on H1Bs are from this pool. Most of the people that end up there are from the urban areas, where exams are taken seriously. It's not as if these people magically get to go to the US just by clearing these exams. There are many more hoops they have to jump through, and not all of them are rigged. In fact, most of them are not rigged. The rest of India is just as horrified seeing this. So again, stop being an a*****e. Stop stereotyping and generalizing.

Re:Cheaters never win?

[tlambert]

No, Sir, I won't tell you that you should train the American - but you really should.

You just did. I'm hiring for OS level or embedded systems work. Why would I intentionally hire someone who doesn't know assembly and C, and then tie up one of my resources who *can* do the work for three months to train someone who *can't*, in the hopes that at the end of the training, they'll be proficient?

At the end of three months, I will be three man months behind. It will take me another three months, assuming the training took, just to reach parity with where I would have been, had I not hired anyone new. So I will start to benefit after six months, assuming I can live with a three month schedule slip.

If, on the other hand, I hire someone else, someone who is capable, at the end of three months, rather than being three months behind, I will be three months ahead. At the end of six months, rather than being at parity, I will be six months ahead.

You are asking me to accept six months of schedule slip in order to hire the person who requires training.

Economically, this makes absolutely no sense. I lose six months of salary for the new person, and I lose six months of lead time on my competition.

I will tell you that there are Americans with the background, the knowledge, the education to do what you need. They may not have some very specific set of classes that you've cherrypicked as a "required curriculum".

The classes I've "cherrypicked" are:

CS 203 Programming in C
CS 207 Programming in Assembly Language

The problem I have with the accreditation standards that recent graduates have studied under is that they do not teach the people about the tools they will be using. A craftsman must know his tools!

At best, hiring a new graduate from the average U.S. university, I will get someone with a smattering of self-taught C because they took a course called "CS 302 Database Programming in C". Probably, instead, they will have learned java (again self-taught, but Java is a trivial language, and therefore easy to learn.

If they go to Brown or Rice, and they pick the right degree program they will have actually been taught how to use the damn tools.

It's like teaching someone "furniture theory", and then throwing them into a woodshop with a joiner and a bandsaw and a drill press and ..., and then asking them to make a chair. Someone is going to lose fingers, because the damn idiot doesn't know how to use their tools!

There are any number of individuals in this nation who have experience with anything you care to mention - but you won't consider them for an "entry level" position.

If you are talking about people who are not degreed, then, I will happily interview them, but I will tell you 95% of them will be disqualified because they will be unable to work on a large team with other qualified persons.

The will not know about time complexity (Big "O" Notation), and they will not know the formal names of various algorithms and data structures. They may have actually used this information before to make decisions; I'm not saying they're stupid. But they will lack the vocabulary necessary to communicate quickly and effectively with their peers.

In other words, they will be great people to hire into a one or two man shop, but they will drag a 50 or 300 person team down with them when they bog down team communications, because they lack the formal education necessary to get them on the same page with their teammates in a conversation, or a workgroup meeting, or a general team meeting.

These people should either go to work in a small shop, or they should become consultants. They need not apply to Twitter, or Apple, or Google or Facebook or SnapChat or WhatsApp or ..., where the emphasis is on working within a team. Again: I'd rather hire an educated Eu

Re:Cheaters never win?

[Runaway1956]

I'm not asking you to accept anything. I'm TELLING you that there are Americans who can do the job. I'm TELLING you that if you DO institute a training program, it will pay off in the long run. I'm TELLING you that you will have a healthier work environment if you hire the best Americans you can find, and at the same time start an apprentice program with which to train your FUTURE programmers.

Right now, you are putting yourself at the mercy of foreign schools. You think that those schools will continue to cater to your needs far into the future, but there is no reason to believe that they will.

Just as you are now cooperating to cripple America's work force, one day you will find that you are crippled by foreign interests who see no good reason to supply you with a workforce.

Or, in more common street language, what goes around comes around.

Of course, I understand that you, and all of "management" in America tend to look at short term benefits and profits. There is only a very small handful of managers left who can take a long term approach. Yes, training your own apprentices is a long term investment, but it pays, and it keeps on paying, far, far, far into the future.

Re:Cheaters never win?

[tlambert]

I'm not asking you to accept anything. I'm TELLING you that there are Americans who can do the job. I'm TELLING you that if you DO institute a training program, it will pay off in the long run. I'm TELLING you that you will have a healthier work environment if you hire the best Americans you can find, and at the same time start an apprentice program with which to train your FUTURE programmers.

Look, if your university did not train you properly because it accepted the minimum ABET curriculum, and failed to institute additional classes, sorry: you are buying your education from the wrong vendor, and perhaps you should have considered that when selecting a vendor in the first place. Perhaps then, the ABET standards would be changed.

But I am damn well not going to institute an "apprenticeship" program! Any such program which is not nationally organized and administered is going to be worthless and non-transferrable to another employer, so if you end up unemployed, you are going to be back in the same boat of needing training at a new employer in "their way of doing things".

Consider that if you take a "Management Training Course" at GE or Addison Wesley It will not mean anything to IBM when you go to apply there after you are laid off from your job. It's simply non-transferrable.

Apprenticeships are normally associated with trade unions. The training programs of which are nationally organized and administered. If I hire a Journeyman Electrician, I can be reasonably certain of their skill set. What the hell is "Journeyman C Programmer, 3 years time in grade at Joe Blow's Software Company" supposed to mean to me?!? What's it supposed to mean to Google?!?

Get a damned CS degree!

Right now, you are putting yourself at the mercy of foreign schools. You think that those schools will continue to cater to your needs far into the future, but there is no reason to believe that they will.

Then I'll shop elsewhere. Until then, they have the best product, and that's where I'll buy.

Just as you are now cooperating to cripple America's work force, one day you will find that you are crippled by foreign interests who see no good reason to supply you with a workforce.

I agree. I am cooperating in crippling America's work force. I'm cooperating with the ABET (Accreditation Board for Engineering and Technology). I'm cooperating with all the universities out there that implement the absolute minimum programs to get their stamp of approval, like SJSU (San Jose State University) and Georgia Tech and ... you get the idea.

I'm a little guy. How the hell am I supposed to impact ABET and get them to change back from outcome based programs?

Eureka! I will give them negative reinforcement in the form of not hiring their graduates!

Oh look! It's the situation today! Yay! I'm sure ABET is learning their lesson! I see them addressing the problems with their accreditation standards next Tuesday! I see all the universities falling in line! I see thousands and thousands of employable graduates!

Or, in more common street language, what goes around comes around.

Yes. It's been "coming around" since at least 2001, when things went truly to crap in U.S. higher education, although we can trace the origins of the problem to some changes that were initially made in 1985 and 1992.

Of course, I understand that you, and all of "management" in America tend to look at short term benefits and profits. There is only a very small handful of managers left who can take a long term approach. Yes, training your own apprentices is a long term investment, but it pays, and it keeps on paying, far, far, far into the future.

Millennials are fickle. They will be gone in a year. Where is my long term investment then? If I'm going to be training people only to have the

Sadly, it's cultural

[msobkow]

Sadly, it's a cultural thing. The first Indian I met was caught with a forged degree from a University he never went to. Over the years as I've gotten to work and know more Indians, I found an endemic culture of cheating on taxes, cheating on business deals, ripping off customers, degrees bought from diploma mills, and most recently, refusing to honour their own restaurant's gift certificates when you tried to cash them in.

Worse, every single one of these individuals bragged about how they "beat the system."

They don't worry that cheating is wrong, just about getting caught. :(

Re:Sadly, it's cultural

[Anonymous Coward]

Well, we have an island with a whole bunch of Indians called "Cuba", just wait til you deal with a bunch of surly Latino cheaters with no funny accent...

Re:Sadly, it's cultural

[Anonymous Coward]

Did his lack of diploma actually interfere with his ability to do his job?

Re: Sadly, it's cultural

[Anonymous Coward]

Riki Ricardo had an accent.
And he was quite funny.

Re:Sadly, it's cultural

[msobkow]

If by including the line "#include <stdio.ht>" before each and every call to a stdio function leading to hundreds of compile errors "interferes" with the job of a programmer, then yes. He was the single most incompetent fraud I've ever encountered in my life.

Re: Sadly, it's cultural

[Anonymous Coward]

I don't know about this

Re: Sadly, it's cultural

[Anonymous Coward]

I don't know about this stdio.ht file of yours :)

Re:Sadly, it's cultural

[50000BTU_barbecue]

I'd say the person doing that hired him was an even bigger fraud.

One day I'd like to understand why a company with 30 people needs THREE human resources "people".

Re: Sadly, it's cultural

[msobkow]

It was a weird language called "C-HyperText". :P

Nah, typo of course. But the first thing I thought after hitting submit was ".hypertext". :D

Re: Sadly, it's cultural

[BarbaraHudson]

That's why it produces so many errors :-)

Re: Sadly, it's cultural

[Anonymous Coward]

It was a weird language called "C-HyperText". :P

Which made me think about a cross between C and XML.

Then I slapped myself silly until I forgot about that abomination.

Re:Sadly, it's cultural

[GrumblyStuff]

Worse, every single one of these individuals bragged about how they "beat the system."

If only they were talking about taxes, then they'd be wholly embraced by the Republican party. ...except for the brown skin part anyway.

Re:Sadly, it's cultural

[Krishnoid]

That's rather baffling. He:

• felt he should include stdio.h before each such function,
• yet was familiar enough with stdio to identify the functions that came from that header file to include it prior to them,
• and the header #include guards didn't kick in

I'm sure your description was necessarily brief. It's just odd where the gaps in his knowledge show up.

This should not be a surprise

[Anonymous Coward]

Anyone who has worked with the "brown mafia" knows they routinely cheat and with hold information from non-Indians. They form a little clique and share information with one another on the job. In academic settings they are notorious cheaters who see nothing wrong with copying off one another. Unfortunately when they are caught our University sees fit to give them a "second chance" where theyw ill go on to continue copying off one another.

All fair where life is worth Nothing

[Anonymous Coward]

Well, at least not worth as much as passing a high school exam, according to the completely reckless behavior in the pictures.

Once again...

[Anonymous Coward]

...India proves what a colossal pile of shit it really is.

Perhaps this has not occurred to you...

[tlambert]

I hate to sound ignorant but from everything I've heard a lot of pressure is put onto school kids to get a good education and get married (particularly males)
I doubt it's something they can really change with a law or some arrests, it's seems like a deeply rooted cultural thing.

Perhaps this has not occurred to you...

But if you have to cheat in order to get a good score you don't have a good education.

So they have failed in their task, and no amount of cheating will make them any less of an abject failure.

Re:Perhaps this has not occurred to you...

[sjames]

The education system has also failed them. In some cases the teachers were ineffective and didn't know the material they were supposed to be teaching. Combine that with a single test that makes or breaks your future and mass cheating is an inevitable result. When that many students have friends and family that willing to help them cheat, it's an indication that the test or the surrounding educational system has huge and obvious defects.

Re:Perhaps this has not occurred to you...

[tlambert]

The education system has also failed them. In some cases the teachers were ineffective and didn't know the material they were supposed to be teaching.

If the education system gave them access to textbooks and other course materials, the teacher is irrelevant. The education system did not fail them, they failed themselves.

Re:Perhaps this has not occurred to you...

[sjames]

What makes you so sure the course materials weren't crap as well? Why would you believe that the same education system that doesn't care if the teacher is qualified or not would suddenly get conscientious about the textbooks?

Re:Perhaps this has not occurred to you...

[tlambert]

What makes you so sure the course materials weren't crap as well? Why would you believe that the same education system that doesn't care if the teacher is qualified or not would suddenly get conscientious about the textbooks?

Besides the fact that everyone was blaming the teachers until I brought up the possibility of autodidactic learning and ignoring the teachers?

Mostly that economies of scale dictate that mass produced textbooks are significantly cheaper than those produced in much smaller quantities, so in order for your assertion to be true, there would have to be an intentional conspiracy to produce shitty text books, and then dump them below cost in order for the shitty text book theory to hold water.

Do you honestly want me to believe that there is a well-funded conspiracy to fund useless textbooks anywhere but Texas and Oklahoma textbooks on evolutionary biology? What's the motivation? I understand, even if I don't sympathize, with a religious motivation in the Texas and Oklahoma example.

The idea that you should blame an externality, like a teacher, for your lack of education, seems to be a shirking of responsibility on your part to participate in your own education. We don't "side load" knowledge into kids brains, they actually have to put forth some effort to internalize information. And if they're demonstrably unwilling to put forth that effort -- for example, they are caught cheating -- then that's not on the teachers or the standardized course materials, it's on them.

Re:Perhaps this has not occurred to you...

[sjames]

Do you know one characteristic that can be counted on for inferior goods? That's right, they're sold off in bulk for cheap to get rid of them.

In other cases there's a kickback behind the sale and the book was never meant to be actually useful. You tend to see that in places where there is a lot of government corruption like ...(drum roll please)...India!

And I don't blame (or credit) the school system where I grew up in the U.S. for my education, but then I had easy access to good libraries, my dad's college books, and a few exceptional teachers.

Re:Perhaps this has not occurred to you...

[tlambert]

Do you know one characteristic that can be counted on for inferior goods? That's right, they're sold off in bulk for cheap to get rid of them.

In other cases there's a kickback behind the sale and the book was never meant to be actually useful. You tend to see that in places where there is a lot of government corruption like ...(drum roll please)...India!

And I don't blame (or credit) the school system where I grew up in the U.S. for my education, but then I had easy access to good libraries, my dad's college books, and a few exceptional teachers.

You know what's cheaper than writing and printing an inferior textbook in order order to get a kickback? Running a printing press to knock off a textbook someone else has already written, and not paying the royalty on it, and getting a kickback.

Absent evidence to the contrary, such as an analysis of the textbooks from one of the schools in question, I think I will stick with Sir William of Occam on this one.

PS: If you were personally interested in obtaining copies of the texts and course materials used in one of those schools for an analysis, I'm sure you could find a corrupt government official in India to send it to you in exchange for payola.

Re:Perhaps this has not occurred to you...

[sjames]

Since you're making the extraordinary claim (that poor people have all the resources they need), I'll let you do the proving.

Re:Perhaps this has not occurred to you...

[tlambert]

Since you're making the extraordinary claim (that poor people have all the resources they need), I'll let you do the proving.

They had the resources available, or the would not have the crib sheets in hand - the same resources that got them the crib sheets *could* have imparted the information *prior* to the tests, and they would not have been able to read the test questions or use the crib sheets, had they not been sufficiently literate to read, and sufficiently versed in critical thinking skills to be able to understand them.

If they had the resources to cheat, they had the resources to learn instead of cheating. Ball is in your court.

Re:Perhaps this has not occurred to you...

[sjames]

So you're saying the answer key would tell them everything they need to know?

Re:Perhaps this has not occurred to you...

[tlambert]

So you're saying the answer key would tell them everything they need to know?

You're replying to yourself rather than me (again).

If you watched the video, they aren't getting the answer key, they're getting a worked out version of the answer for a single problem on a scrap of paper at a time so they can write down the worked out steps.

Re:Perhaps this has not occurred to you...

[sjames]

I'm guessing you've been confused by the /. interface (it stops indenting after a while) since I'm certainly not replying to myself.

I'll have that apology now...

Re:Perhaps this has not occurred to you...

[tlambert]

I'm guessing you've been confused by the /. interface (it stops indenting after a while) since I'm certainly not replying to myself.

I'll have that apology now...

I'm sorry we have to live with such a crude interface.

Are you going to reply to the fact that the video demonstrates that they are getting specific answers to specific questions, rather than an answer key?

Re:Perhaps this has not occurred to you...

[sjames]

There's little point. Specific answers to specific questions still implies that those answers could not have been used as educational material, only for cheating.

Knowing that the correct answer to question 52b is 28 (even with the steps to copy down) really isn't that helpful for general knowledge. It's still just an answer key, it's just not a complete answer key.

Re:Perhaps this has not occurred to you...

[tlambert]

There's little point. Specific answers to specific questions still implies that those answers could not have been used as educational material, only for cheating.

Knowing that the correct answer to question 52b is 28 (even with the steps to copy down) really isn't that helpful for general knowledge. It's still just an answer key, it's just not a complete answer key.

No, it's a worked out long form math problem unique to the test that was passed back out the window, and an answer received. The educational material was there.

gosh that would never happen here

[sir_eccles]

Only those funny foreigners cheat. Never happens here in the US...

  http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2...

Re:gosh that would never happen here

[Anonymous Coward]

Pretty sure their parents weren't scaling the walls of the institution. Cheating is cheating, of course, but let's face it. There are civilized ways of cheating, and then there are the barbarians.

Re:gosh that would never happen here

[Anonymous Coward]

Only those funny foreigners cheat. Never happens here in the US...

  http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2...

Does every article have to circle around to a conversation about bashing the USA? Seriously, this seems to be an extreme fetish on Slashdot lately.

Re:gosh that would never happen here

[itzly]

Apparently, cheating is rare enough that a single event is worthy of its own wikipedia entry.

Re:gosh that would never happen here

[Oligonicella]

SJW infiltration.

Re:gosh that would never happen here

[Anonymous Coward]

I am sure its not that rare, the Wikipedia entry is because its Harward. Also Wikipedia is heavily unbalanced when it comes to geographic coverage Wikipedia Geographic Bias

Re:gosh that would never happen here

[Anonymous Coward]

Insightful yet you will never be voted higher than the OP merely thanks to the appeal of US bashing popularity.

Re:gosh that would never happen here

[Anonymous Coward]

implying that Harvard was in any way respectable towards the end of the last century

Not surprising

[roc97007]

It would explain some of the "experts" hired on H-1B visas recently.

Re:Not surprising

[sjames]

Sounds like a perfect match with employers who post literally impossible qualifications (5 years experience in a 3 year old technology for example) and then when they don't find a local qualified applicant, miraculously find the literally impossible H1-B candidate.

Re:Not surprising

[roc97007]

Sounds like a perfect match with employers who post literally impossible qualifications (5 years experience in a 3 year old technology for example) and then when they don't find a local qualified applicant, miraculously find the literally impossible H1-B candidate.

It is, and serves the employers right. The problem is, there are other employees who weren't party to these decisions (or were vocal against them) who have to live with them, after said decision makers have collected their bonuses and embarked on book signing tours.

Some people are ineducable.

[tlambert]

Give up testing altogether. Help everyone get to an A+ level.

No amount of education is going to cram an understanding of calculus into the head of someone who is incapable of learning calculus.

How do you propose we get those people "to an A+ level" in calculus? This is not something you can "give" someone, so it's not like we are "selfishly withholding" an understanding of calculus from them. They are just incapable of learning calculus.

So your suggestion is rather naive at best, and lacking in critical thinking skills at worst. It's like asking society to help someone with no arms and no legs "get to an A+ level" in juggling. It's just not going to happen, ever.

If you had critical thinking skills, you'd recognize that equality of opportunity does not guarantee equality of outcome, no matter how much time, effort, and money you pour into trying to make it untrue.

Re:Some people are ineducable.

[Anonymous Coward]

The person you replied to could have been a Robin Williams having a bad day. You don't know. So stop already with the dragging them down to make yourself feel superior. People who come to a forum of intelligent debate don't come there to be insulted by the mensa wannabes and if they are having a bad day could take your rejection more seriously than you intended.

Re:Some people are ineducable.

[sjames]

Apparently, the problem is that nobody can learn calculus from a teacher that doesn't know calculus. But those with aptitude can hope that if they cheat their way past the arbitrary cutoff, perhaps they will get the opportunity to actually learn the material later. If they don't cheat, they will have no such opportunity to make it right later, through no fault of their own.

Re:Some people are ineducable.

[tlambert]

Apparently, the problem is that nobody can learn calculus from a teacher that doesn't know calculus. But those with aptitude can hope that if they cheat their way past the arbitrary cutoff, perhaps they will get the opportunity to actually learn the material later. If they don't cheat, they will have no such opportunity to make it right later, through no fault of their own.

An education is not something you are given.

An education is something you TAKE.

If your teacher sucks, that's too bad for your teacher, but presumably the book you are using was written by someone who didn't suck. And yes, it will require more work on your part to TAKE your education from the system in that case, but it is *possible*, if it's possible for you to understand calculus in the first place.

The problem in the news article is all the people attempting to shortcut putting in effort, in order to get to the point where their certifications prove that they are worthy to participate as a cog in a corrupt system. They have absolutely no interest in actually learning the material (either that, or they lack the capability), because a teacher is neither a necessary nor sufficient condition of learning something, if one is capable of learning it at all.

The idea that an education is something that is "given" you because you show up, like a lollipop for showing up at the doctors office, is part of the problem which makes cheating a viable option for getting ahead: when you cheat, you are "given" a certification that you have learned something, as a result of passing the test, but it's worthless a hell for proving whether or not you've actually learned the something, it's just a piece of paper you can wave at a gatekeeper.

In other words, the certificate is a union card, not a demonstrator that you have the knowledge that the certificate claims you have. It might as well be written in Aramaic, for all the value it has, other than as a train ticket that gets you past a gatekeeper whose job it is to keep out those with train tickets. Or the gatekeeper whose job it is to keep people off the construction site, unless they can show their union cards, etc..

Re:Some people are ineducable.

[tlambert]

The person to whom I was replying had already posted that same comment multiple times in multiple places in this discussion thread, each time in response to a statement which, in context, makes their statement imply a feeling that people are entitled to an equality of outcome.

I'm sorry (especially if you are Robin Williams having a bad day) that you were unaware of their other postings, or having a bad enough day that you couldn't infer this yourself from the multiple posting locations for their statement of entitlement.

Re:Some people are ineducable.

[sjames]

Many text books are actually not that useful without a lecture from a teacher that knows the subject. If you have a half decent library or affordable book store nearby, that problem can be solved readily enough. If not, you might find yourself stuck. Your best bet might be fake it till you make it. That is, get past the test any way you can and then use the increased income or the better school with an actual library that follows to buy or borrow the books you should have been able to read in the first place but couldn't.

I'm not claiming that is what all of them are doing but likewise a claim that none are doing that is unlikely.

Beyond that, let's face it, here in the U.S. where cheating is not so rampant, cram and forget is common and in many cases a degree really is just a piece of paper to wave at the gatekeepers in HR.

Cram and forget really should be considered cheating since it is in no way a proper measure of understanding (no more than memorizing your grocery list long enough to go shopping is) but since it is "within the rules" it is not only accepted but applauded.

Re:Some people are ineducable.

[Livius]

It's like asking society to help someone with no arms and no legs "get to an A+ level" in juggling.

It's quite astonishing the number of people who believe that that kind of idiocy is some kind of fundamental human right.

Re:Some people are ineducable.

[tepples]

It's like asking society to help someone with no arms and no legs "get to an A+ level" in juggling.

Possibly not juggling. But would you accept a gymnast with no legs?

Re:Some people are ineducable.

[tlambert]

Your best bet might be fake it till you make it. That is, get past the test any way you can and then use the increased income or the better school with an actual library that follows to buy or borrow the books you should have been able to read in the first place but couldn't.

Any increased income you receive from such a strategy will be ephemeral. You will be fired due to incompetence, and then when people in management within that industry sector get together for lunch and talk (and they will) and you come up in conversation (which if you applied for another position within the same industry sector, you will), and your incompetence becomes generally known, you will be blackballed and unable to find work.

You are much better off resorting to criminal activity with a low probability of being caught, successfully prosecuted, and convicted, if you want ephemeral income.

At least that way, you can get a job later, whereas if you are blackballed, you will likely never work in that sector again.

As far as "cram and forget", I don't believe the "forget" part. Something will most likely stick, and compared to cheating, where *nothing* sticks, you are a better candidate for the job than the cheater, even if you did engage in the practice.

Even if *nothing* stuck, you are a better candidate for the job because:

(A) you are unlikely to explicitly cheat me or my customers, having no track record of having cheated in the past

(B) you have demonstrated an ability to learn what's needed for the task right in front of you; at worst it makes you slow, rather than completely incompetent

Re:Some people are ineducable.

[sjames]

If your manager got where he is the same way, he's not that likely to bust you. Meanwhile, you have time to actually learn the material. Finally, do you really think the cheap outsource ops in India won't hire pretty much anyone with the right paper?

I have worked on joint projects in the U.S. where a whole department's worth of people obviously didn't retain anything from their education. None of them were fired even when the project failed due to them not accomplishing any of the project goals.

Re:Some people are ineducable.

[tlambert]

If your manager got where he is the same way, he's not that likely to bust you. Meanwhile, you have time to actually learn the material.

Yes, but why bother, if you can just continue cheating your way through life? And what internal motivation would there be for doing this, since they obviously lacked a work ethic or other internal motivation to better themselves? They were more interested in bettering their position via cheating, then they were at actually learning the material.

And if the idea doesn't appeal to you, or you want to blame the course materials again ... is it therefore your claim that *everyone* who passes these tests in these regions has done so solely by cheating, rather than by putting in the effort required to actually *learn* instead?

PS: I won't speak to your anecdote without some evidence, since it's rather racist, among other flaws.

Re:Some people are ineducable.

[sjames]

That's a nice strawman you have there. You clearly picked your conclusion and then endowed the subject with the characteristics you felt would prove it.

Re:Some people are ineducable.

[tlambert]

That's a nice strawman you have there. You clearly picked your conclusion and then endowed the subject with the characteristics you felt would prove it.

I'm confused; why are you calling out foul on your own strawman? Have I missed something here?

Re:Some people are ineducable.

[sjames]

Perhaps you can get someone to slip you the answer. Ask around and flash some cash.

Re:Some people are ineducable.

[tlambert]

Perhaps you can get someone to slip you the answer. Ask around and flash some cash.

I'm already aware that you are replying to yourself rather than me, which avoids the notification, so that you can expound, and it will look like I had no ready answer to the retort. I will continue to monitor this discussion until comments are closed in order to make up for your social deficiency.

Re:Some people are ineducable.

[sjames]

I have no idea what you're talking about here. I will have to assume your cheese has slipped off the cracker.

Qualifications don't mean shit...

[Anonymous Coward]

...when you end up driving a taxi or cleaning toilets. But whatever! Integrity don't mean shit when you hit the immigration jackpot...for the win suckers!

hold your horses

[shakuni]

before any of you start saying India this and India that, ban H1B, nuke em all etc. Just remember this is one image and India is 1.3 million Sq mile in area with 29 states, 7 Union Territories, 122 major languages and 1599 other languages, 3 sign languages, 6 major religions, oral literature dating back to 1500 BCE, some of the richest and the poorest people, at least 14 different ethnic groups, 6 national level political parties, 1800 total political parties... etc. India is not " is" India "are". So please take a nuanced approach to everything. Read, learn, present arguments with humility that you know only a small fraction of what needs to be known to even take a position on this country.

Re:hold your horses

[sound vision]

Not to mention, India's got a few nukes of their own. I don't know if they have a delivery system that will work after a first strike though.

Re: hold your horses

[Anonymous Coward]

Well if everyone cheated on tests to get their jobs, India won't even know how to launch a damn nuke to begin with. XD

Re:hold your horses

[perryizgr8]

It doesn't matter. We do not have an ICBM yet that can reach North American territories. We can cover the entirety of China though.

Re:hold your horses

[goose-incarnated]

Not to mention, India's got a few nukes of their own. I don't know if they have a delivery system that will work after a first strike though.

I'm not sure they have a delivery system that will work *before* a first strike.

Xinhau

[31eq]

I wondered what this "Xinhau" was. An Indian rip off of Xinhua? But, no, it's somebody who can't spell a word correctly when it's sitting in front of them. Reminds me of some of my students, in fact.

Re:Xinhau

[Etherwalk]

I wondered what this "Xinhau" was. An Indian rip off of Xinhua? But, no, it's somebody who can't spell a word correctly when it's sitting in front of them. Reminds me of some of my students, in fact.

This one wasn't submitted for credit. :)

Xinhua is also a proper noun from outside my usual lexicon and is transliterated from a language I am unfamiliar with, so I am comfortable with getting it wrong once or twice in an informal context. I actually found "The ABC" more interesting, because it took me a little while to realize the site was The Australian Broadcasting Corporation rather than an Australian branch of the American company ABC.

In any event, please excuse the misspelling. But whether you do or not, I found the story interesting and wanted to share.

Kind Regards,

Etherwalk

Re:Xinhau

[Anonymous Coward]

new good?

Re: Xinhau

[Anonymous Coward]

Why the FUCK would you think there's an Australian branch of the US ABC company in operation ??? I mean...shit.....that is about the dumbest thing I've read today.

Re: Xinhau

[BarbaraHudson]

Why the FUCK would you think there's an Australian branch of the US ABC company in operation ??? I mean...shit.....that is about the dumbest thing I've read today.

I guess the concept of foreign correspondents is foreign to you :-)

Re: Xinhau

[Etherwalk]

It's a very big company, much, much bigger than "The ABC," and the Australian site called itself "ABC," not "The ABC." Without previous knowledge of "The ABC," it was a logical belief. The fact that the trade symbols were different made me double-check.

But by all means, continue calling me names until you're tired of it.

That's part of it

[phorm]

And that's a big part of it, because - apparently - until this because a big, embarrassing news story, they likely were getting away with it. Either due to bribes or just a generally broken system. Yes, cheating happens in "western" countries too, but it's certainly not this blatant, and there's an expectation of certain consequences if one is caught.

Calculus is trivial

[Etherwalk]

No amount of education is going to cram an understanding of calculus into the head of someone who is incapable of learning calculus.

Calculus is trivial. Anyone within a standard deviation or two of median intelligence should be able to learn it if they have a teacher who understands it. The widespread lack of understanding is just a reflection of how badly we fail, as a society, to educate.

Blatant cheating

[phorm]

OK, so the students somehow got the exam answers. The University actually caught it because SOMEBODY WAS DOING THEIR FUCKING JOB, and reporting it. It went up the chain, and the students got dealt with. It's embarrassing, but it doesn't appear that the university condoned the cheating in any way. I'm sure some people do cheat, and manage not to get caught, but at least they system is set up so that they have to be lucky/sneaky to do so.

Now compare to this situation. People are climbing the walls. It's BLATANTLY FUCKING OBVIOUS that it was happening, so why didn't the institution deal with it before it became a viral web sensation?

I'm sorry, but when parents in Harvard, Oxford, or even NoName U are scaling walls and passing notes to the kids in plain view... then you can make a comparison against the host countries. The "well, other people do it too" explanation has got to be one of the worst type of enablers for sort of behavior, and even so there's simply no comparison.

Re:Blatant cheating

[Anonymous Coward]

I am sure if someone looked more carefully, more cases of cheating will be discovered almost everywhere. Here is an example: FreakonomicsIt took some data mining by some economists to expose this. Why wasn't that somebody doing their job in this case? Why did academic economists had to expose it?

Also using all caps words is moronic yelling and weak.

Re:Blatant cheating

[Krishnoid]

Now compare to this situation. People are climbing the walls. It's BLATANTLY FUCKING OBVIOUS that it was happening, so why didn't the institution deal with it before it became a viral web sensation?

Donor visit day?

So...the case had to be internationally exposed

[ruir]

For them to do something about it and save face. Sweet.

Never happen here

[Anonymous Coward]

Usually those funny foreigners cheat,never happens here in the TURKEY..http://www.manolyasesli.com

Re: Nice PR post

[Anonymous Coward]

The sad reality is that he very well could live in the usa. Chinese come to the usa, and then stick among themselves, never bothering to learn English and anything about American culture. If this is what they are going to do, they should just stay in china. But they know how fucked up china is, and for this reason they come to America.

What has become of Slashdot?

[Anonymous Coward]

"News for racist and xenophobe nerds. Stuff that is fodder for convenient generalizations."

Re: What has become of Slashdot?

[Anonymous Coward]

Clickbait

Re:Nice PR post

[loonycyborg]

Actually, his language skill is in line with USA's average language skill..

But What About The University Test Scandal

[magusxxx]

I remember quite well Slashdot had an article about cheating on India's university exam tests. Some statistician made a graph and proved the huge spike were people who cheated. Which then brings up the question...how many of these "college bound" students and parents were arrested? Because I don't remember ever seeing that being mentioned as a punishment for them.

Re:But What About The University Test Scandal

[Anonymous Coward]

Only a fascist would propose arresting children for ethics violations. But it takes a liberal to extend that punishment to the parents.
  Here in america, all we care about is the people that avoid the cigarette tax. Smoking kills. Sometimes by strangulation, and sometimes by emptying a clip into you for stealing cigars, sometimes by governments poisoning crops. But still, a larger percentage die on a VA hospital waiting list. Because in an Orwellian world the unalienable right to death is paramount. After that, it's up to the pope.

Fraudulent degrees...

[tlambert]

Fraudulent degrees are grounds for immediate deportation, because it means the H-1B petition was perjured.

Hah!

[tlambert]

So we have them beat on square miles, number of states, number of territories, number of sign languages, number of major religions, oral literature, number of ethnic groups, and richest and poorest people!

Obviously we are falling behind on total languages and national level political parties (we could fix that last by getting rid of the electoral college) and total political parties.

Truly, we need to close the "Tower of Babel" gap, the better to not be able to communicate effectively, but you can't always be the best at everything...

It's funny

[perryizgr8]

10th class exams are the easiest exams ever! Also, they are TOTALLY inconsequential. In fact, they are optional if your school is affiliated to the most popular board (CBSE). So we are talking about a test that is of so less consequence that you can say "fuck it, I don't need this shit" and everybody is fine with that. And even if you decide to take it, it's so easy that most students cram the entire yearly syllabus in about a month and get decent scores, sans cheating. I really cannot understand why such a huge cheating effort seemed appropriate to these people.

Re:It's funny

[ThePhilips]

I really cannot understand why such a huge cheating effort seemed appropriate to these people.

Somebody tried to automate the exam taking? Without ever stepping inside a school?

Incentives to cheat

[Anonymous Coward]

Whenever there are incentives to cheat, anyone will cheat, this is not limited to Indian schools. There are well known cases of teachers cheating when the stakes are high http://www.propublica.org/article/americas-most-outrageous-teacher-cheating-scandals. For example, a data mining experiment by Freakonomics authors exposed cheating teachers in Chicago.

Poach

[tepples]

employers who post literally impossible qualifications (5 years experience in a 3 year old technology for example)

Are you sure they aren't trying to poach someone who worked at the company producing the technology during the two years before release?

Re:Poach

[sjames]

Yes, I am.

I have to agree, it is cultural

[Ecuador]

I did my MS in a top-30 US program. It was a state school and roughly half of the students were from India. This also made roughly half the TAs Indian. Although I come from a country where cheating is common (and professors know it so are out to prevent it), I had never seen such mass-scale cheating and collusion before. You see, the Professors did not expect any academic dishonesty - especially large-scale one and trusted their TAs as colleagues.
Example: in a database class as homework for one week we were to implement a flight booking system that given departure/arrival airports used sql queries to find the appropriate flights with up to one interim destination. You were given the database contents and the test cases you were to perform to confirm your project works properly. I left it for the last minute (naturally) so in my hurry the java UI had a minor bug. I don't remember exactly, but it was not something of consequence, the point of the exercise was the sql. I got 95% and I thought it was a bit strict, but anyway. A few days later while I was browsing my home direct on the student server, I noticed that many students still had world readable home directories. You were expected to manage it yourself, so if you wanted to put stuff there you were supposed to secure it. One of the accessible ones was of the TA that had given me 95% and I checked it out. Sure enough, he was putting stuff there without bothering to change the permissions , and one of the "stuff" was an excel sheet with the results of the exercise. I opened it and found out that every Indian had 98-100%. You might say the were the great students and it was not that hard of an exercise, but I knew at least some of those 100%s as weak students. So I went back to the home directory list and found one of the 100% people that did not look 100% material with an accessible directory and their homework right there :) I opened her java file and what do I see: no db stuff at all! No connection to the db, no queries, nothing. Hard-coded in java were the test cases...
By the time I finished the program I knew very well that Indians considered cheating and plagiarism as the norm, as was helping out each-other with that stuff. Also bullshitting came naturally. For example I was representing an office at the job fair and was accepting CVs from graduate students for a position. I was supposed to give my boss the best candidates for an interview. I was surprised to find out that most of the Indian resumes were almost identical. They had all finished an IIT with a great grade (meanwhile back in my home country the top undergrads could perhaps hope for close to 8.5/10 final grade), had all been placed first in a Mathematical Olympiad of some unknown place (town? village? cricket club? who knows?), had some great professional background in an Indian company, some of them who were in my class had developed a "robust airline reservation system" that was presented as being in line to replace the software at Delta... I could not tell them apart. At all. I mean, I knew we had some Indians who were amazing students. I mean, half of the students were Indian, so about half of the top students were also Indian. But their resumes looked the same, based on them I would either send all of them or none for an interview. In the end, I sent the ones that from our brief interaction seemed to have the best communication/interaction skills, but in any case it is indicative.
A year after I finished, an Indian was caught cheating on a test for the second time by a Professor. He told the student he was getting an F. His reply was "why give me an F when all the class submitted the same course project?". The Professor asked the TA for the submitted projects and found out that almost all Indian students in the class (the number was about 20 IIRC) had submitted a copy of the same project, and the TA had dutifully marked all with an "A". There was talk about expelling all of those involved, but in the end they allowed them to continue with an F in that course. Perhaps after that they started checking up on them...

Re:I have to agree, it is cultural

[Anonymous Coward]

That's very similar to my experience at a private university in upstate NY (an ivy wannabe that just got slapped by NCAA). Professors did not notice / did not care about institutionalized cheating by predominantly Indian students. It was so transparent, you'd have to be blind to not see it. Cheating on homework and projects were rampant.

Several professors would go over homework on the day you handed it in, with an "honor" system of handing it in before they entered the classroom. Of course, there would be a few students that didn't come into class until shortly after the homework was gone over in class, and they'd drop fat stacks of freshly printed homework into the bin on their way into the class.

Midterms and finals were an utter joke. In all but one class, they were proctored by TAs that allowed students to "discuss" things in groups during the exams! Now, I cannot say that they were cheating (I don't understand more than a few words of Urdu, Hindi or Chinese), but I doubt they were discussing their plans for after the exam.

Complaining is useless, it's all a wink and a nod that cheating is rampant, but there's no will to do anything. Say something and get slapped down by professors and TAs that "saw nothing", get alienated by other students. Say nothing and get your rubber stamped diploma.

Re:I have to agree, it is cultural

[neurovish]

This sounds similar to my experiences in an engineering program at a state school, just replace "Indians" with "Chinese", and instead of the TA either being in collusion or just didn't care, it was the professor that didn't care. Same sort of project, except the program was run during class on the screen during project evaluation day where we could see what everybody came up with. There was a project from a previous semester that got an A which every group had passed around. Of the 10 or so teams, probably 3 delivered what looked to be original projects, a few more looked like they had changed the UI a bit, some took the UI and and just changed the font/color, and the 3 teams of Chinese students all turned in the same project unaltered in any way. The project was 80% of our final grade, and they got As.

Re:I have to agree, it is cultural

[Taser]

My own story as a TA/Instructor of Record as a grad student:
I received a multitude of projects, but three stood out as way too similar; going through the printouts, I could see that everything except for some minor values were identical, down to the margins, the function definitions and the jagged right of the code. The project was worth 100 points, so I gave it to them as a group, and since it took three people to complete their version, they each got 33 points.

In English, it is written as English.

[Anonymous Coward]

In English, the names of languages are capitalized.

Well, I guess the Princeton Review was right

[Anonymous Coward]

ranking them 5th in the 2014 list of top party schools ;)

Re:Nice PR post

[HiThere]

FWIW, I'm a native English speaker, and I still get rules about capitalization mixed up. (I suppose taking German didn't help things, though...)

pretty much

[WindBourne]

Back in early 90's, I went back to school to pick up another BS, but in C.S. Because I had already coded professionally for 10 years, I helped out on the CS 101, and 201 classes. Regularly, you would have 1-2 Americans that were cheating. However, the main group that we caught over and over was the Chinese group (interestingly, only a very little bit in the Indian group ). If we pulled in individuals from these groups, they could not answer the questions or analogs to them.

It was obvious even back then that the amount of cheating that went on was enormous within the chinese group.
Now, what I find interesting, is that I am modded as a troll, even though I had out and out worked with this.

Please Mod Bill up

[WindBourne]

In general, what you say is dead on.
However, the other issue that will make ppl cheat is if the rewards are high and they have NOTHING to lose.
As I mentioned earlier, I dealt with Chinese students (amongst others) cheating at CSU. It was obvious that by cheating to get to America, they had little to lose and everything to gain.

Re:Nice PR post

[phorm]

Capitalization wasn't the issue though, it was phrases like
    where it used it is to keep cities not too population
    westerners keep to spread the lies to damage china reputation and image
    Foreign don't understand the chinese culture

There are also lots of missing pronouns etc, which is common for Chinese ESL speakers who don't really use English in real life (except to make stupid posts on /.)

Shoplifting;

[NewYork]

Shoplifting;
http://www.rediff.com/business...