In my undergrad days, long ago now, cheating was rampant throughout the (overwhelmingly white and male) CS student body.
One professor, whom I admired, got fed up with this. He handed back a particular assignment to his class, ungraded, with the code of conduct stapled to each student's submission. He then pointedly told the class that if anyone needed to come and tell him anything after class, he would be in his office. This move was the talk of the dorms for weeks.
But nothing really came of it. This stern warning no doubt caused some fear and anguish among those affected, but that was the extent of it. Nobody got expelled, flunked the course, or had their record damaged in any way.
This is just an anecdote. I certainly don't have any data on the prevalence of cheating, or on differences in attitudes toward cheating, among Chinese versus other students. But I'd be surprised if there is a measurable difference. In my experience, everyone is completely shameless and nobody faces any real consequences even when they are caught red-handed.
That's why exams exist. Make them hard. People who do the homework will succeed. Others won't.
We're too afraid of making people fail.
I’m ideologically against exams. For many they are stressful, and they don’t represent any real life scenario as you will always have access to reference material on the job.
Good. They should be stressful. I don't want people who can't handle stress being doctors or engineers. Out in the field they will have to make decisions that will not just be "look it up in the reference manual."
And it's not like you can't have reference materials on exams. All of my engineering exams were open reference. It didn't matter.
However, I only ever TAed for undergraduate courses, where a much larger portion of Chinese students were from the subset with international educations / who were better able to culturally assimilate. And going to a school that was hard to get in to, typically you need to be very impressive to get in as a Chinese international student (or from a powerful family, preferably both) regardless.
At a similarly selective program for graduate school, the Chinese students were, for lack of a better term, more "Chinese" culturally and more insular. I wouldn't be surprised if cheating were worse. But there's also the fact that graduate CS programs are less discerning of international applicants' credentials/pedigree
(Another anecdote) I just finished my CompSci bachelor (majority white) and everyone talks about copying each others work like it's casual conversation. Only friends share work with each other when they can be sure to alter it enough. Everything you said there, being widespread, blatant, not caring, shameless, were the exact same descriptions of those in my program.
If anything, it sounds like it's more politically incorrect to generalize white people as having these traits because I've only ever heard people generalize Asian/Chinese students. Why is it when one group does it it's okay, but another it's wrong?
>Students from China were singled out by many faculty members interviewed. “Cheating among Chinese students, especially those with poor language skills, is a huge problem,” said Beth Mitchneck, a University of Arizona professor of geography and development.
https://www.wsj.com/articles/foreign-students-seen-cheating-...
and the second quote is anecdotal. it might be easier to spot the cheater who doesn't write english well if their papers are obviously better written than the student speaks.
it would simply be more difficult to catch cheaters who speak and write english fluently.
it's possible that chinese students cheat more in school, even a significant amount more, even their style of cheating may be drastically different, but I still find it somewhat strange that that gets so much focus in a system that is like what cycling used to be:
https://www.cleveland.com/metro/index.ssf/2017/02/cheating_i...
And everyone talks about it! Why else would we, on an article about _industrial espionage_, get to uni students copying homework?
Acting like this is some sort of chinese predilection instead of a thing that happens all the time everywhere is not intellectually honest.
I'm simply saying that it shouldn't be framed as a problem with Chinese culture because it is a problem in all human cultures. That's all.