4 ms·

I am student at UC Irvine. I genuinely believe there is a back-door allowing these kids to buy their way in. You can't believe the lack of skills and extravagan

by mk00 11y ago

I am student at UC Irvine. I genuinely believe there is a back-door allowing these kids to buy their way in. You can't believe the lack of skills and extravagances you see. I saw someone offering $250 for anyone to drop a specific class, so that room would open. I suspect fake degrees. There has been numerous instances of Paid Test Takers. Most classes we literally now have to show our ID when we turn in a test, as a result of this cheating

anoncoward123 11y ago
Not sure why this is getting downvoted. I'm guessing there must be a big PC crowd on HN today. From my experiences at two separate colleges (neither of which is UC Irvine), this story is exactly true, and many of classmates took note of this as well. It seems to me that most Chinese (and not Chinese-American) students spend their time tinkering around with $100k sports cars than focusing on their studies while in the US. Personally, I'd prefer to see them rejected outright, and have more hard-working Americans take their places at college institutions
- fennecfoxen 11y ago
  > I'd prefer to see them rejected outright, and have more hard-working Americans take their places at college institutions Even if these lazy Chinese kids' rich parents are subsidizing the hard-working Americans' education? (You can bet a Chinese billionaire's paying the full tuition without financial aid.)
  - adventured 11y ago
    That influx of rich Chinese money is, if anything, slightly inflating the cost of education and punishing your referenced hard-working Americans. Identical to what it's doing in the real-estate market in, for example, Vancouver. Influx large sums of money into an especially finite system, and what you tend to get is inflation. Taxpayers are mostly the ones doing the student loan subsidizing. Whether the loans are funded through the Treasury or semi-indirectly via the Fed, it overwhelmingly comes out of US taxpayer pockets one way or another.
    - eru 11y ago
      The proper response would be to increase the supply---in real estate as well as in education. There are lots of people who'd like to be professors and teachers. Just hire more. Why do you say it's a finite system?
- proksoup 11y ago
  Rich kids cheating in college is maybe old news, is maybe why the downvotes for saying "it's these rich kids over here that created this problem".
  - beachstartup 11y ago
    instead of rich degenerate wasp-y kids in elite private east coast schools, it's rich degenerate chinese-y kids in elite public west coast schools. personally i don't see much of a difference. i know plenty of both types and they're basically the same except for skin color.
    - deleted 11y ago
      [deleted]
    - Balgair 11y ago
      The effect is the same, but the key issue is private vs. public. The funding for a private school is, well, private. No tax dollars are paid by the government for educating a student. In California, the public UC schools take in tax dollars to help educate the students. Therefore, the cost of education is de facto a political issue. In California, the taxpayers give each student ~$10,000.00 per school year to attend in 2011-12[0], down from ~$16,000.00 in 2007-08. I believe this includes international student. The reason for this is long and goes back to the California Master Plan [1]. Essentially the point of the Master Plan was "anyone from anywhere in California could, if they worked hard enough, get a bachelor’s degree from one of the best universities in the country (and, therefore, in the world), almost free of charge." You can see how this legacy of the Master Plan clashes with the current tuition issues and influx of Pacific Rim scions. People grew up in California with a good chance of, though being poor, working hard and making a great life. We all knew mothers and uncles that studied their butt off and made it out of Salinas' fields, out of the camps in the Sierras, or out of the ghettos, all by working hard. No small part of the meme that 'if you go to college, you will escape poverty' came out of the Master Plan. And it WORKED! People really went to Cal or Davis or Chico or Bakersfield and made it out of poverty. All because the tuition was cheap and the plan worked. And California became what it is today. Silicon Valley, Hollywood, the Salinas agriculture sphere, Napa Valley, the dairy and forestry, all these places exist in California in some way due to the success of the master plan. The UCs are THE Jewel of The West's crown because the people of California put their money where their mouth was. They believed that education was the way to good living for their children. Assemblywoman Dorothy Donahoe, for whom the Master Plan bill was named, believed in the children of California. She was a person that planted trees whose shade she knew she would never sit in, and she did for her love of the people of California. And California grew mighty for those sacrifices. The UCs are THE BEST universities that have ever existed, by nearly any measure. The people of California, for decades and generations, paid into this with their taxes and knew it was good. And now, now we have the scions of the Pacific Rim are cheating and buying their way into these places. They are taking the seats from hard working sons and daughters of farmers and loggers, dentists and doctors, mechanics and architects. And they flaunt their wealth! They don't care that the janitors who dream that their daughters will attend Santa Cruz and UCLA see them do doughnuts in Lambos. The influx of wealth strikes at the core of the Master Plan and the hopes and dreams of the people of California. The UCs are seen as just another playground for the elite in this way (not strictly true yet). But for some reason the people of California are stuck footing some of the bill. [0]http://www.ppic.org/main/publication_quick.asp?i=1119 http://www.ppic.org/main/publication_quick.asp?i=1119 [1]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/California_Master_Plan_for_Higher_Education https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/California_Master_Plan_for_Hig...
- benten10 11y ago
  1. Duude, I'm all along with you except your hate of the "PC crowd". Stop complaining, start working. Not helpful to the conversation. 2. I used to be uhh a foreign national in the U.S (as I still am), and assumed it was a known fact that Chinese nationals often buy their way through college. Somewhat related: Northeastern and their special- Chinese-student program that gives 4-year US degrees with 0 knowledge of English. 3. It is not necessarily something to complain about, as long as it doesn't COMPLETE dilute the value of the degrees concerned. AFAIK, Chinese students (NOT Chinese American, mind) are the only students who will often pay 100% of the feels, with no request for scholarships. So to look at it the other way, you're subsidizing smarter students by taking in slightly less smart students (tbh, most Chinese students are extremely competitive, so we shouldn't be generalizing.)
  - sliverstorm 11y ago
    assumed it was a known fact that Chinese nationals often buy their way through college That kind of thing is very hard to acknowledge in the USA, even if true. It strikes close to past civil rights struggles.
    - rqebmm 11y ago
      Is it? There's plenty of tropes about dumb students who make it through Ivy league schools because their parents "bought a new wing" or somesuch. Same for rich children avoiding military service.
      - sliverstorm 11y ago
        Right, but that's classist rather than nationalist or xenophobic, and thus for some inscrutable reason infinitely more palatable
  - crdoconnor 11y ago
    >you're subsidizing smarter students by taking in slightly less smart students And diluting the value of that degree at the same time by graduating not learning anything.
goalieca 11y ago
Saw this in BC. Everyone knew TOEFL tests were know if to be faked/cheated. Lots of $$ pressure keeping people looking the other way.
deleted 11y ago
[deleted]
fiatmoney 11y ago
The SAT in East Asian locales has had to be canceled multiple times when it became clear that cheaters had acquired advance copies. https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/answer-sheet/wp/2016/01/21/sat-canceled-in-some-asian-test-centers-because-of-security-breach/ https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/answer-sheet/wp/2016/01/...
philippnagel 11y ago
In Germany it is mandatory (at least that's my experience) to identify oneself with one's ID or driver's license when taking a test at uni. Is there no such procedure at US institutions?
- mkaziz 11y ago
  I can remember only once having to take out my ID for a test - and that too was a school ID and not a state one. I went to a high tier midwestern school.
- adventured 11y ago
  That varies dramatically from one university to another. There's no national standard. Think of each university in the US has having its own culture and way of doing things. Many universities certainly use best practices, but there are no federal regulations on such things as test identification.
- theandrewbailey 11y ago
  Not where I went. Classes were often small enough that the instructors recognized you (the school itself was also small), and most tests were on the school LMS. Note that not every American has state-issued photo ID, especially among the poor.
- fwn 11y ago
  It is, however, in it's general implementation not affecting your ability to pay someone to take the test for you.
- dagw 11y ago
  If you're willing to pay someone to take a test for you, you are probably also willing to pay for a fake ID for them. Or you could find someone who looks close enough to you and hope that no one looks too closely.
- Lawtonfogle 11y ago
  There is the problem that our ability to recognize and differentiate faces is quite lazy. It basically uses the simplest set of characteristics it can get by with. This creates a problem when someone interacts with very few people sharing some give phenotypes as their heuristic is far less likely to pick up on differences between the generic phenotype. Basically, the less familiar you are with members of a certain group, the more those members look alike. Basically, the stereotype that all <insert group> look alike does happen, NOT because they do look alike, but because to someone who does not know members of that group, their facial recognition system (mental schema) are not developed enough to tell people apart. Think of it like if you trained a neural network to do facial identification by only giving it white people. Compared to a near identical network where the only difference was that it was trained on a cross section of all of earth's people, which would you expect to do a better job?
gheeohm 11y ago
The University of British Columbia is in fact creating a school catering to the 'Fuerdai'. http://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/british-columbia/ubc-s-vantage-college-canadians-need-not-apply-1.2826142 http://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/british-columbia/ubc-s-vantage...
- mccoolman 11y ago
  Which would explain why the majority of their board was appointed directly by the provincial government.
my_first_acct 11y ago
Some news on the topic: http://www.mercurynews.com/california/ci_27634630/uc-cap-out-state-students-at-berkeley-ucla http://www.mercurynews.com/california/ci_27634630/uc-cap-out... Summary: Non-Californian students pay $23,000 more per year than Californian students, generating $600 million per year for the financially-strapped UC (University of California) system. UC is proposing to cap the number of out-of-state students at UC Berkeley and UCLA at 30% (its current level); no caps at other campuses. The total number of Californian students in the UC system will not increase; UC can't afford to admit more.
Zafira 11y ago
Someone in the student affairs office once mentioned to me that they do have a serious issue with fraudulent transcripts. Ultimately, you can't stop them all. I think part of the problem is that the UCs are in a budget crunch and they were using out-of-state and international students to make up the shortfall. Supposedly, they're backing away from this strategy because it's starting to piss off the Legislature. People are complaining to their representatives because their kids aren't getting admitted, yet the number of out-of-state students keeps increasing. For me, the more annoying part is the fact that they're coming in with McLarens, Ferraris and Ashton Martins, and give off a level of amazing entitlement. Nice to see another anteater, though!

by mk00 11y ago

anoncoward123 11y ago

Not sure why this is getting downvoted. I'm guessing there must be a big PC crowd on HN today. From my experiences at two separate colleges (neither of which is UC Irvine), this story is exactly true, and many of classmates took note of this as well. It seems to me that most Chinese (and not Chinese-American) students spend their time tinkering around with $100k sports cars than focusing on their studies while in the US. Personally, I'd prefer to see them rejected outright, and have more hard-working Americans take their places at college institutions

fennecfoxen 11y ago
> I'd prefer to see them rejected outright, and have more hard-working Americans take their places at college institutions Even if these lazy Chinese kids' rich parents are subsidizing the hard-working Americans' education? (You can bet a Chinese billionaire's paying the full tuition without financial aid.)
- adventured 11y ago
  That influx of rich Chinese money is, if anything, slightly inflating the cost of education and punishing your referenced hard-working Americans. Identical to what it's doing in the real-estate market in, for example, Vancouver. Influx large sums of money into an especially finite system, and what you tend to get is inflation. Taxpayers are mostly the ones doing the student loan subsidizing. Whether the loans are funded through the Treasury or semi-indirectly via the Fed, it overwhelmingly comes out of US taxpayer pockets one way or another.
  - eru 11y ago
    The proper response would be to increase the supply---in real estate as well as in education. There are lots of people who'd like to be professors and teachers. Just hire more. Why do you say it's a finite system?
proksoup 11y ago
Rich kids cheating in college is maybe old news, is maybe why the downvotes for saying "it's these rich kids over here that created this problem".
- beachstartup 11y ago
  instead of rich degenerate wasp-y kids in elite private east coast schools, it's rich degenerate chinese-y kids in elite public west coast schools. personally i don't see much of a difference. i know plenty of both types and they're basically the same except for skin color.
  - deleted 11y ago
    [deleted]
  - Balgair 11y ago
    The effect is the same, but the key issue is private vs. public. The funding for a private school is, well, private. No tax dollars are paid by the government for educating a student. In California, the public UC schools take in tax dollars to help educate the students. Therefore, the cost of education is de facto a political issue. In California, the taxpayers give each student ~$10,000.00 per school year to attend in 2011-12[0], down from ~$16,000.00 in 2007-08. I believe this includes international student. The reason for this is long and goes back to the California Master Plan [1]. Essentially the point of the Master Plan was "anyone from anywhere in California could, if they worked hard enough, get a bachelor’s degree from one of the best universities in the country (and, therefore, in the world), almost free of charge." You can see how this legacy of the Master Plan clashes with the current tuition issues and influx of Pacific Rim scions. People grew up in California with a good chance of, though being poor, working hard and making a great life. We all knew mothers and uncles that studied their butt off and made it out of Salinas' fields, out of the camps in the Sierras, or out of the ghettos, all by working hard. No small part of the meme that 'if you go to college, you will escape poverty' came out of the Master Plan. And it WORKED! People really went to Cal or Davis or Chico or Bakersfield and made it out of poverty. All because the tuition was cheap and the plan worked. And California became what it is today. Silicon Valley, Hollywood, the Salinas agriculture sphere, Napa Valley, the dairy and forestry, all these places exist in California in some way due to the success of the master plan. The UCs are THE Jewel of The West's crown because the people of California put their money where their mouth was. They believed that education was the way to good living for their children. Assemblywoman Dorothy Donahoe, for whom the Master Plan bill was named, believed in the children of California. She was a person that planted trees whose shade she knew she would never sit in, and she did for her love of the people of California. And California grew mighty for those sacrifices. The UCs are THE BEST universities that have ever existed, by nearly any measure. The people of California, for decades and generations, paid into this with their taxes and knew it was good. And now, now we have the scions of the Pacific Rim are cheating and buying their way into these places. They are taking the seats from hard working sons and daughters of farmers and loggers, dentists and doctors, mechanics and architects. And they flaunt their wealth! They don't care that the janitors who dream that their daughters will attend Santa Cruz and UCLA see them do doughnuts in Lambos. The influx of wealth strikes at the core of the Master Plan and the hopes and dreams of the people of California. The UCs are seen as just another playground for the elite in this way (not strictly true yet). But for some reason the people of California are stuck footing some of the bill. [0]http://www.ppic.org/main/publication_quick.asp?i=1119 http://www.ppic.org/main/publication_quick.asp?i=1119 [1]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/California_Master_Plan_for_Higher_Education https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/California_Master_Plan_for_Hig...
benten10 11y ago
1. Duude, I'm all along with you except your hate of the "PC crowd". Stop complaining, start working. Not helpful to the conversation. 2. I used to be uhh a foreign national in the U.S (as I still am), and assumed it was a known fact that Chinese nationals often buy their way through college. Somewhat related: Northeastern and their special- Chinese-student program that gives 4-year US degrees with 0 knowledge of English. 3. It is not necessarily something to complain about, as long as it doesn't COMPLETE dilute the value of the degrees concerned. AFAIK, Chinese students (NOT Chinese American, mind) are the only students who will often pay 100% of the feels, with no request for scholarships. So to look at it the other way, you're subsidizing smarter students by taking in slightly less smart students (tbh, most Chinese students are extremely competitive, so we shouldn't be generalizing.)
- sliverstorm 11y ago
  assumed it was a known fact that Chinese nationals often buy their way through college That kind of thing is very hard to acknowledge in the USA, even if true. It strikes close to past civil rights struggles.
  - rqebmm 11y ago
    Is it? There's plenty of tropes about dumb students who make it through Ivy league schools because their parents "bought a new wing" or somesuch. Same for rich children avoiding military service.
    - sliverstorm 11y ago
      Right, but that's classist rather than nationalist or xenophobic, and thus for some inscrutable reason infinitely more palatable
- crdoconnor 11y ago
  >you're subsidizing smarter students by taking in slightly less smart students And diluting the value of that degree at the same time by graduating not learning anything.

goalieca 11y ago

Saw this in BC. Everyone knew TOEFL tests were know if to be faked/cheated. Lots of $$ pressure keeping people looking the other way.

deleted 11y ago

[deleted]

fiatmoney 11y ago

The SAT in East Asian locales has had to be canceled multiple times when it became clear that cheaters had acquired advance copies. https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/answer-sheet/wp/2016/01/21/sat-canceled-in-some-asian-test-centers-because-of-security-breach/ https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/answer-sheet/wp/2016/01/...

philippnagel 11y ago

In Germany it is mandatory (at least that's my experience) to identify oneself with one's ID or driver's license when taking a test at uni. Is there no such procedure at US institutions?

mkaziz 11y ago
I can remember only once having to take out my ID for a test - and that too was a school ID and not a state one. I went to a high tier midwestern school.
adventured 11y ago
That varies dramatically from one university to another. There's no national standard. Think of each university in the US has having its own culture and way of doing things. Many universities certainly use best practices, but there are no federal regulations on such things as test identification.
theandrewbailey 11y ago
Not where I went. Classes were often small enough that the instructors recognized you (the school itself was also small), and most tests were on the school LMS. Note that not every American has state-issued photo ID, especially among the poor.
fwn 11y ago
It is, however, in it's general implementation not affecting your ability to pay someone to take the test for you.
dagw 11y ago
If you're willing to pay someone to take a test for you, you are probably also willing to pay for a fake ID for them. Or you could find someone who looks close enough to you and hope that no one looks too closely.
Lawtonfogle 11y ago
There is the problem that our ability to recognize and differentiate faces is quite lazy. It basically uses the simplest set of characteristics it can get by with. This creates a problem when someone interacts with very few people sharing some give phenotypes as their heuristic is far less likely to pick up on differences between the generic phenotype. Basically, the less familiar you are with members of a certain group, the more those members look alike. Basically, the stereotype that all <insert group> look alike does happen, NOT because they do look alike, but because to someone who does not know members of that group, their facial recognition system (mental schema) are not developed enough to tell people apart. Think of it like if you trained a neural network to do facial identification by only giving it white people. Compared to a near identical network where the only difference was that it was trained on a cross section of all of earth's people, which would you expect to do a better job?

gheeohm 11y ago

The University of British Columbia is in fact creating a school catering to the 'Fuerdai'. http://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/british-columbia/ubc-s-vantage-college-canadians-need-not-apply-1.2826142 http://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/british-columbia/ubc-s-vantage...

mccoolman 11y ago
Which would explain why the majority of their board was appointed directly by the provincial government.

my_first_acct 11y ago

Some news on the topic: http://www.mercurynews.com/california/ci_27634630/uc-cap-out-state-students-at-berkeley-ucla http://www.mercurynews.com/california/ci_27634630/uc-cap-out... Summary: Non-Californian students pay $23,000 more per year than Californian students, generating $600 million per year for the financially-strapped UC (University of California) system. UC is proposing to cap the number of out-of-state students at UC Berkeley and UCLA at 30% (its current level); no caps at other campuses. The total number of Californian students in the UC system will not increase; UC can't afford to admit more.

Zafira 11y ago

Someone in the student affairs office once mentioned to me that they do have a serious issue with fraudulent transcripts. Ultimately, you can't stop them all. I think part of the problem is that the UCs are in a budget crunch and they were using out-of-state and international students to make up the shortfall. Supposedly, they're backing away from this strategy because it's starting to piss off the Legislature. People are complaining to their representatives because their kids aren't getting admitted, yet the number of out-of-state students keeps increasing. For me, the more annoying part is the fact that they're coming in with McLarens, Ferraris and Ashton Martins, and give off a level of amazing entitlement. Nice to see another anteater, though!