Hacker News Reader

Comment by knn | Hacker News Reader

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

View on HN

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.

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.

>>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.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com