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This is going to take a long time to change for the better. My Chinese friends who don't cheat because they actually want to learn stuff definitely complain a

by dmoy 13y ago

This is going to take a long time to change for the better. My Chinese friends who don't cheat because they actually want to learn stuff definitely complain a lot about the rampant cheating. If you want to get into and finish Uni completely legit, you have to work way, way harder than everyone else :\ And you will end up doing worse than people who cheated and got away with it, just have to suck it up. There's a lot of inertia to solving it, and it's very hard to do across the board. For Uni entrance, there's ~10 million+ people taking the exam every year - that prevents a lot of non-exam based solutions to "who do we let into Uni?" I do not envy the position of the people in charge of all of this :(

lsc 13y ago
Wow. You realize that this world where people care enough about school to put in that much effort is /completely foreign/ to me, right? Personally, I think the school system I came from, where nobody cares is in bigger trouble than the system where cheating is endemic.
- JulianMorrison 13y ago
  They still don't care about school. They care about not being weeded from the pile of resumes because they didn't have "the right grade" - which they got by a pantomime that superficially resembled school. As a system it's highly optimized to select candidates who'll "go along to get along".
  - lsc 13y ago
    >As a system it's highly optimized to select candidates who'll "go along to get along". Yeah, but isn't that a big part of what school teaches, though? It's an important skill, too. If you want to get a good grade on that paper, you've gotta read the professor and figure out what they are expecting, and give it to them. That's an important skill. I mean, what school doesn't teach is that you can also choose who you want to please; different people want different things, so if you want to be one way, well, you just find a boss/partner/whatever that wants you to do the things you want to do. school doesn't cover that.
jlgreco 13y ago
I am not coming from a perspective that has inherent insight into this, but this all seems very strange to me. It seems to me that only the top [whatever] percent of a population is going to be able to get into a class of school of their choosing, and only a top [whatever] percent of those admitted to those schools are going to successfully graduate. Now, China's population is unfathomably large, so that means way more people are going to be rejected or fail to graduate. On the other hand, it also means way more people are going to be accepted and graduate. 10x the population should mean 10x the rejected people, but it should also mean 10x the accepted and 10x the graduated, right? I don't really see why a larger population should mean that cheating is incentivized more, unless the real problem is an undersupply (proportionately) of education. Now, if lack of education positions is the real problem, then cheating isn't a solution to that; rampant cheating just changes the equation from "top [whatever] get accepted" to "top [whatever] at cheating get accepted". But do those who don't meet "top [whatever]" in a large population have more incentive to cheat than those who don't meet "top [whatever]" in a small population? I don't see why. The incentives should be the same in either a large or a small population, right?
- burntsushi 13y ago
  > I don't really see why a larger population should mean that cheating is incentivized more, unless the real problem is an undersupply (proportionately) of education. I interpreted dmoy's comment much differently. I thought the point was that since there are so many people entering Uni, they just don't have the resources to penalize enough people for cheating. The obvious solution is to put people on site and prevent it rather than look for it after-the-fact, but apparently that results in rock throwing protests...
- dmoy 13y ago
  Sorry, I didn't mean to say that the higher population CAUSES cheating. Just that the insane volume of people applying makes the current system (single exam being 99% of your entrance to Uni) more logistically feasible than a lot of other potential systems. The disadvantage is that you have no other way to prove yourself than a single test score. That's also why you're seeing such outrage, because that single test is going to open (or shut) a lot of doors. (See above comment about O(n), he articulated it way better than me :P)
Sven7 13y ago
Cheating is always going to exist in highly competitive environments. Confusing kids in such environments with excessive focus on honesty and integrity can put them at a serious disadvantage. In my experience, irrespective of country or culture, most people (even those that have cheated) inherently want to be fair and that sort of balances the equations out over the long term.
- miguelrochefort 13y ago
  Sounds exactly like those people who want to make privacy a right.

by dmoy 13y ago

lsc 13y ago

Wow. You realize that this world where people care enough about school to put in that much effort is /completely foreign/ to me, right? Personally, I think the school system I came from, where nobody cares is in bigger trouble than the system where cheating is endemic.

JulianMorrison 13y ago
They still don't care about school. They care about not being weeded from the pile of resumes because they didn't have "the right grade" - which they got by a pantomime that superficially resembled school. As a system it's highly optimized to select candidates who'll "go along to get along".
- lsc 13y ago
  >As a system it's highly optimized to select candidates who'll "go along to get along". Yeah, but isn't that a big part of what school teaches, though? It's an important skill, too. If you want to get a good grade on that paper, you've gotta read the professor and figure out what they are expecting, and give it to them. That's an important skill. I mean, what school doesn't teach is that you can also choose who you want to please; different people want different things, so if you want to be one way, well, you just find a boss/partner/whatever that wants you to do the things you want to do. school doesn't cover that.

jlgreco 13y ago

I am not coming from a perspective that has inherent insight into this, but this all seems very strange to me. It seems to me that only the top [whatever] percent of a population is going to be able to get into a class of school of their choosing, and only a top [whatever] percent of those admitted to those schools are going to successfully graduate. Now, China's population is unfathomably large, so that means way more people are going to be rejected or fail to graduate. On the other hand, it also means way more people are going to be accepted and graduate. 10x the population should mean 10x the rejected people, but it should also mean 10x the accepted and 10x the graduated, right? I don't really see why a larger population should mean that cheating is incentivized more, unless the real problem is an undersupply (proportionately) of education. Now, if lack of education positions is the real problem, then cheating isn't a solution to that; rampant cheating just changes the equation from "top [whatever] get accepted" to "top [whatever] at cheating get accepted". But do those who don't meet "top [whatever]" in a large population have more incentive to cheat than those who don't meet "top [whatever]" in a small population? I don't see why. The incentives should be the same in either a large or a small population, right?

burntsushi 13y ago
> I don't really see why a larger population should mean that cheating is incentivized more, unless the real problem is an undersupply (proportionately) of education. I interpreted dmoy's comment much differently. I thought the point was that since there are so many people entering Uni, they just don't have the resources to penalize enough people for cheating. The obvious solution is to put people on site and prevent it rather than look for it after-the-fact, but apparently that results in rock throwing protests...
dmoy 13y ago
Sorry, I didn't mean to say that the higher population CAUSES cheating. Just that the insane volume of people applying makes the current system (single exam being 99% of your entrance to Uni) more logistically feasible than a lot of other potential systems. The disadvantage is that you have no other way to prove yourself than a single test score. That's also why you're seeing such outrage, because that single test is going to open (or shut) a lot of doors. (See above comment about O(n), he articulated it way better than me :P)

Sven7 13y ago

Cheating is always going to exist in highly competitive environments. Confusing kids in such environments with excessive focus on honesty and integrity can put them at a serious disadvantage. In my experience, irrespective of country or culture, most people (even those that have cheated) inherently want to be fair and that sort of balances the equations out over the long term.

miguelrochefort 13y ago
Sounds exactly like those people who want to make privacy a right.