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Comment by mettamage | Hacker News Reader

I am curious if any of this would happen in my own country — The Netherlands. I would think not, but then again, neither did I know about US universities.

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I guess I'm part of academia in the Netherlands, doing a PhD and teaching students. I have seen students who 'game' the system, but our job is not on the line if we refuse to play ball. This is likely only so because our universities are publicly funded, and don't require rich students and alumni for funds. In the case of disputes on grades and extracurriculars, the commission of exams will nearly exclusively side with the teacher. Except when it can be shown that the teacher dropped the ball severely. Another factor in this matter is that once you have reached your second year, you can do your coursework for as long as you like, so there is little consequence in failing a course other than extending study time.

That being said, I work in a field that is not as sexy as some others (medicine, psychology), and I would guess the issues are bigger there, due to the kind of students that are attracted to these types of majors.

Yes, in Holland students know they can simply fail an exam and usually know that’s on them.

In the US, students can literally complain to the dean who then puts pressure on the professor. And they do, so professors know to err on the lenient side.

In fact: the average grade at Harvard has been an A- for some years now. So grades from Harvard are basically meaningless.

> the average grade at Harvard has been an A- for some years now. So grades from Harvard are basically meaningless.

I won't deny grade inflation, but Harvard allows students to drop classes very late in the semester. For "hard" classes, it wasn't uncommon for less than 25% of the students present in the second week of class to still be around to take the final. I never saw anything like that at the public university I went to as an undergrad.

Some amount of the high average grade is because the students not doing so well in the course drop with little to no penalty.

Rich parents setting up their kids using tactics at various degrees along the ethical-unethical-illegal spectrum is not a US centric phenomenon but a basic human condition.

Not being able to survive the vacuum of space is a basic human condition, too. Yet we developed space suits that allow ourselves to operate in there.

>> Rich parents setting up their kids using tactics at various degrees along the ethical-unethical-illegal spectrum is not a US centric phenomenon but a basic human condition.

Over the past 20 centuries we saw enough events that implied literally killing those who were abusing their positions of power, and I am pretty sure poor people are absolutely capable of doing so again today.

History is periodic, but lack of ethics isn't a basic human condition.

Nobody is killing anybody. We need a peaceful, sustainable solution to let those who abuse power fall and those who have the good interests of people at heart to rise.

That's what they want you to do so they can maintain power. The threat of violence is what keeps people in line. Don't like it? Go talk to the police about it (you know... those people who use the threat of violence)

But different cultures look differently at that spectrum. I would expect to find differences from one country to another.

True. But the university-as-a-business, alumni-as-donors, and non-grades-based-admissions are famously strong at US universities.

A university that was government-funded well enough that it didn't have to solicit rich alumni could employ traditional anti-corruption/anti-cheating mechanisms, like blind admissions based on grades alone.

Blind admissions based on grades alone sounds like a terrible way to prevent cheating or select college applicant in general.

But that’s because I believe strongly in the power of outliers and that systems need to support and foster those outliers to achieve the best outcomes.

The smartest and most qualified applicants often don’t have the best grades. In fact I think a purely grades based system would be far from optimal, select for the wrong strengths, and miss many of the best applicants.

Of the top 10 universities ranked by number of Nobel prizes, the US holds 8 spots. US is doing something right.

It's been a few years since university, but there are only a few numerus fixus studies in The Netherlands AFAIK. For those, bribing yourself in would make sense, but I also doubt it happens and you would be found out soon I suppose.

But it could..

When this story first broke, I wondered if there are much bigger occurrences in Asian countries where getting into the "right" school is ultra competitive?

Most Asian countries use high stakes testing as the 'fair' way to admit students, so most of the cheating/bribery is on the testing side.

Educational corruption used to be much worse in Asian and African colleges (I don't know if it still is. I have been out of the loop for a long time.); it was a near-continuous source of amusement at the department level when new grad students arrived expecting to continue to get by on money or contacts.

On the other hand, most of those students didn't take up an excessive amount of faculty and TA time. Instead, they kept their heads down. Most of the class time I saw wasted was due to fully-qualified students who wanted to argue with the instructor or who thought they should be teaching the class.

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