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Comment by whack | Hacker News Reader

Cheating is and always should be a pox that needs to be eradicated. But let's not turn a blind eye to what's happening here locally. Parents in the 1% spend an extraordinary amount of money and resources on college-prep companies, many of which tell the kids exactly what extracurriculars to take, what to do after school, and virtually write the entire outline of their admissions essays. It's little wonder that schools like Harvard are playgrounds for the ultra-elite.

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Give me a break. I went to a big state school that wasn't a playground for the elite, but you'd see these Chinese students who could barely speak enough English to order a pizza demonstrating supposed mastery of written English in core classes.

The "ABC" Chinese students who were pissed off about the blatant cheating, reported one group of foreign students were openly sharing answers during the test in Mandarin. The ethics committee's investigation was "undetermined" and no action was taken.

The reasoning is pretty clear -- foreign students pay more and pay in cash.

Interestingly, I go to a big state school that is somewhat a playground for the international Chinese elite. It's very common to see chinese international students driving $80,000+ cars and many of those same students cheating in classes. In a grad stat/software engineering class I took, most of them shared the same code for the assignments (in front of the professor). I hate to generalize because some of them are honest, but cheating is a terrible part of the subculture

>>most of them shared the same code for the assignments (in front of the professor). [...] cheating is a terrible part of the subculture

Which is terrible - your particular university's subculture of cheating-condoning professors, or a Chinese student subculture of cheating?

Chinese international subculture of cheating, I assume.

I assumed that too, but the additional implication I'm reading into the parent comment is that the professor might be in on it too.

The professor should be held responsible for letting the cheaters get away with it. Not that hard to find cheaters in a programming class if he/she cared.

More likely scenario is that the professors have been told by the school to turn a blind eye.

No.

The university administrators tell the faculty that cheating is a really big deal, that they take very seriously. They will not tolerate it, and will severely punish any student they catch cheating.

Of course, it is essential that the university treats students fairly when they are under such terrible suspicion. Therefore, any complaint of cheating should be made on the approved 15 page form, handwritten in quadruplicate, and submitted for the Vice-Chancellor to consider in her copious free time.

Professors aren't what they used to be. Many schools have dramatically reduced the number of tenured faculty.

They the newer folks young and dumb, and they cannot fight the administration like faculty did in years past.

It's extremely unfair to characterize them as "dumb". They have the same credentials as the tenured faculty did when they start, but they don't have tenure.

There used to be a section of Commonwealth Ave around Boston University known as a supercar parking lot, mostly driven by internationals. Cheating of the sort above was rampant. But I figured since they were paying full fare they were subsidizing us rubes so it was worth it. Ultimately college is about what you learn, not your classmates, and what happens after.

I saw a couple of kids like this come through our "homework interview" assignments intended as a phonescreen-lite, and they invariably bomb the in-person interviews.

> Ultimately college is about what you learn, not your classmates

Some would beg to differ. The veracity of that statement is certainly variable depending on your field of study.

Society does not reward you for what you've learned though, they reward you solely on credentials.

That's way different than these companies producing fake transcripts and even taking exams on behalf of students. Everyone has right to do college-prep as much as they like and everyone would get help in essays from friends, parents and professionals. But flat out lying, making up your grades and having someone else take exams for you is whole different ball game.

Wait, what? You don't see the difference between "here's what you should study to pass the test" vs "here is the answer for that specific question"?

Careful with the strawmen; it was never stated that there is no difference. The point I read was that unfair advantage should be discouraged in all forms, no matter how insidious or subtle. I think it's a very valid point: You don't need to be a moral absolutist, but it's only fair to keep an eye on the nuanced avenues of unfair advantage as well as the explicit ones.

If someone has a subtle point they want to make, they should make it explicit and as obvious as possible. The principle of charity doesn't require me to invent arguments for them.

If someone doesn't say what they think the difference is [1], and they ask me to apply all the implications about one to the other, it's not a strawman to say they are equating the two.

[1] between "doing Y would help improve your score" vs "the answer is X"

YES!

And I don't want to piss of the uhh, bros among us, but it was extremely unfair as an international student to see mediocre fraternity brothers party through the semester, and then using their 'frat-connections' (basically the DL on all the old questions sets, collected over decades, and detailed coaching by fellow brothers on likely questions and answers) due exceedingly well in the exams, and then use their frat connections to land exceedingly awesome jobs. Blame the Chinese all you want, it hurts because they're the 'other'. (/rant. Sorry. Makes me really mad. I WORKED HARD TO LEARN AND ENJOYED CLASSES.) Funnily enough, I did exceedingly well in those exams that were open book (instructors knew the 'sharing of past papers happened, so they changed questions types) to which I didn't any scrap of paper. /humblebrag. But yeah, the system is unfair as it is.

Having said that, dear Americans, as broken as things are (despite those gosh darned 'cheatin' Chinese', as Trump would say), the system is better than anywhere else. Thanks for that : )

> and then use their frat connections to land exceedingly awesome jobs

That happens everywhere though. It's not endemic to "frat bros"—a lot of people find jobs through connections rather than only grades. Most of the time it's through a family friend or family member, or in CS through open source or meet ups. It sucks when you don't have any connections but it's not unfair; it's just how it is. Should I not tell an undergrad friend that my company is hiring interns and recommend her?

Of course an international student will have less connections which is why they sometimes struggle getting internships.

But yeah, the cheating stuff is messed up!

"it's not unfair; it's just how it is"

It kind of is unfair. Why should someone get preferential treatment just because you happen to know them? Also there's a difference between recommending someone for a job and "Hey this is my buddy, don't look at her resume and we can also skip most of the interview process". There's different degrees of nepotism, they are all usually a bit 'unfair'. But then, life is unfair and so you just deal with it and do the best with whatever resources you have.

> Why should someone get preferential treatment just because you happen to know them?

Because I know what sort of work they will produce, their attitude towards work, and their general behavior/personality and whether that will fit into the team without causing disruption or loss of productivity. That's why.

Business isn't about making everyone feel loved and accepted, business is about making money as efficiently as possible by providing a product or service that your customer want/need. Anything which furthers those goals is absolutely fair, especially things which are discriminatory only on the basis of knowledge.

Most business owners don't hire an employee 'just because you know them'.

They try to find the best candidate through the people they already know.

It's all about risk/reward. A random candidate will most likely be a higher risk than a know candidate.

Would you rather be roomates with a random person on craigslist or a friend of a friend?

After my first job after college, my personal social network is how I've gotten all my jobs, and I wouldn't have it any other way. When I get a new job, the company hiring me knows what I can do, because someone they trust told them. No silly technical interviews required.

Sometimes those frat bros are just exceptionally smart, too. My fraternity president got blackout drunk nearly every day playing pong, and graduated with a 4.0. Another guy who had a similar dedication to pong paddles and Keystone Light scored a perfect score on the MCAT. We had no super-secret archives of past homeworks or exams.

That is what's known as a Category Error.

Are you arguing that "rich kids tend to have more resources" is justification for cheating, or is it the case that you reflexively comment on articles that don't explicitly criticize the "1%" with a non-sequitur about what you wish the article had been about?

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