International students & widespread cheating

[Pewdie]

Last year I was a masters student (MSc Management). Majority of the modules involved group work. Often times I found it extremely difficult, if not impossible, to communicate with my teammates. They would often confuse very basic models/terms and their emails, WhatsApp messages were intelligible and riddled with errors. However, when it came to producing the actual assignments the standard would be incredibly high. I understand people perform differently in different contexts in how people perform varies in different contexts but I just can't believe there was nothing untoward going on. AIBU to suspect there is widespread plagiarism occurring at universities among rich, international students.

Just to note I am not bitter nor resentful. I have watched many international students agonise over assignments.

[Shimy]

Maria That was exactly the point Clande was making upthread and I agree with it.

[Astret]

To pick up on the point by @MeteorGarden
I have experience working as a course director in a 'middling' UK University with high proportion international students. There are quality standards which apply to assessment diversity and technologies which support staff to 'catch' students who are submitting work which is not their own. It can sometimes take three years to catch a cheating student - but the practices on academic misconduct do catch them. However there are two principles which support many home and international students alike to get away with purchased essays. The first is the principle that it is better to let a cheat get away with it than punish an innocent person. The second is the fear of litigious behaviour from students/parents in cases of inaccurate needs assessment of students with additional learning requirements. Both these principles encourage panels examining student cases to err heavily on the side of the student. The first is justifiable, the second less so. In addition, the pressures on universities and on staff are such that student support facilities are overstretched, financial needs are prioritised, and working to identify academic misconduct is a serious job which is not sufficiently resourced. In fact, the task has a negative impact on the career progression of many academic staff if they devote the time and energy to do it well.
So I commend the original poster for highlighting the issue of quality management in our universities, and I wholly support those who would like to raise the political and organisational questions regarding what institutions are doing to address this. But this is not about international students - it is about a failure to resource and manage our universities effectively to produce an excellent high quality system of education.

[MariaNovella]

I don’t think it is necessary/possible to test candidates’ grasp of vernacular English. They just need to be held to a sufficiently high standard of Standard English, such that learning vernacular is straightforward.

[Antiparos]

Doctors who are EEA nationals/ qualified are entitled to registration automatically in most cases - but they dont get a licence to practise in the UK until they've evidenced their knowledge of English: www.gmc-uk.org/registration-and-licensing/join-the-register/registration-applications/application-guides/full-registration-for-european-doctors-who-graduated-in-an-eea-country-or-switzerland/your-knowledge-of-english

This hasn't always been the case, so there might still be doctors working who haven't got appropriate language skills. But they should be reported by their employer or patients.

[Shimy]

@Maria Yes of course, I totally agree with that. But do you agree that a 'standard proficiency English test' cannot include a test for local vernacular? secondly, which local vernacular will it be based on?

[MariaNovella]

If patients speak in vernacular English, doctors need to understand it. It’s not hard to get to grips with local vernacular English if your grasp of standard English is firm.

[Shimy]

Yanboo - Its called a standard proficiency test for a reason. Its testing "standard" English not local vernacular.

[yanboo]

Shimy- meaning is contextual. No culture - no context.

It matters.

Anyone with friends in academia (God help you) will likely know how far the rot set in. Undergraduate levels of English are shocking in students from the U.K.. Lecturers either correct the work to an acceptable standard or fail the students and lose their course next year (which might mean their job).

No one fails the students. The essays I’ve seen are palimpsests of cut and paste. Googling them shows the origin. The better off ones submit excellent essays they could not have written themselves.

Relative has been in schools a lot (consultant- GCSE) and said the coursework cheating where teachers would write the coursework for the kids was endemic until the all-exam reform (which was meant to stamp it out).

I can’t see it getting any better with children being tested on reading nonsense words at 5.

[Shimy]

Maria - No they don't. They need to be proficient in standard English, the same as any other British doctor. British doctors do not need to understand every single local vernacularism across the UK in order to practise do they ?. Local vernacular is something that will be picked up over time on a case by case basis.

[MariaNovella]

Of course doctors have to be able to use and understand the local vernacular

[Shimy]

@Maria but that was not Clandes point.
Even indigenous people will not be expected to understand every single local idiom in the U.K. and like Clande said even she had to google the meaning of ‘Mardy’, I also do not understand what it means. Her argument is that very localised terms like these cannot be used as a standard measure of proficiency. ‘Standard’ in this context means the norm, and terms like ‘Mardy’ or any other local lingo or slang are not the norm all over the U.K.

[MariaNovella]

clande - I disagree. My mother was told she was going to die by someone whose English was so bad that she couldn’t understand him and he couldn’t understand her because there were both EFL and generational differences in their English.

[sandandc]

British citizen. I live abroad and have been offered money to write assignments for Masters courses. I refused. It has affected my career prospects. Integrity costs but happy I can sleep. I know people who have it as a constant side hustle.

[clande]

I think you didn't read my previous posts about the problems with the PLAB tests and incompetent/poor English speaking docs getting through them? Please do so before slinging around terms like "ignorant".
But the article you linked applies a very strange standard of proficiency in English - not knowing what "mardy" is (I also don't, googling suggests that it is very local to Lancashire / Yorkshire) or not understanding idioms like "to spend a penny" or "pushing up daisies". I don't think it is a sign of professional incompetence.

[proseccoandbooks]

I agree this is a depressing thread.

I'm a foreign too and studied in the UK (I now live back in my home country due to personal circumstances). At the time I started my degree (2011) my English was good but then it obviously improved a lot during my degree. I wrote my essays all alone, I backed them up with a shitload of reading and I had no one to proofread them. Still, I got great marks and I graduated with a first. In my third year I went to Alicante, Spain (Erasmus) but I spoke impeccable Spanish since I was little, so that wasn't a problem either. However, loads of english native speakers would come to Spain and only pick English subjects.

What strikes me as odd is: why would you go to study in Spain for example when you can't speak Spanish?! This is really weird and it doesn't make a lot of sense, does it?


I do remember a few foreign people in the UK who spoke no English whatsoever and still graduated. I wish I knew how.

[Rebs1988]

@SheeshazAZ09

Pretty sure I could find articles on the contrary, since you are not a Doctor you are not qualified to comment on the sufficiency of PLAB.

I wouldn't dream of commenting on the barr exam because I'm not a lawyer, yet you think because the guardian published an article you are now an expert.

Not sure if it was you or another person, but, being the wife of a Doctor still doesn't give you credentials by proxy. If you really want to know spend 5 or 6 years at medical school and another 5-10 specialising. Then I'll listen.

[SheeshazAZ09]

@Rebs1988 Please also read post by amusedbush above about apparent cheating in the IELTS.

[SheeshazAZ09]

@Rebs1988 I think you didn't read my previous posts about the problems with the PLAB tests and incompetent/poor English speaking docs getting through them? Please do so before slinging around terms like "ignorant". And it is super-clear that there are huge problems with the IELTS too:
www.theguardian.com/healthcare-network/2016/apr/08/english-language-requirements-foreign-doctors-not-fit-purpose
The sheer volume of noise around the issues of 1) competency and 2) English skills in medical professionals, even from a medical establishment that loves to keep its dirty laundry under wraps, must surely convince you that there are problems here?

[AlexaShutUp]

There is undoubtedly a problem with contract cheating in UK HE. However, not all international students are cheats, and not all cheats are international students.

There are a lot of sweeping generalisations on this thread which make me very uncomfortable indeed.

[BejamNostalgia]

I would suspect with Chinese students if anything is happening it’s probably translation rather than straight up essay cheating.

Most of them do come with good background knowledge of the subject and they are so concerned with ‘losing face’ I don’t think they’d risk outside cheating. Also often their courses are funded by the Chinese state which expects them to fulfill a specific purpose and the Chinese state is not one that you would really want to allow to spend a lot of money on you then go back without achieving what they expected.

[BejamNostalgia]

those who come to middling universities treat it like an extended visa so they can shop and party in the UK and get a degree at the end.

Really? There are loads of Chinese students in my city and the uni I worked at and partying is the last thing I would associate them with! Not all of them are rich either because I employed some of them via the in house recruitment agencies for events and they worked very hard for low wages.

I haven’t heard anything about language difficulties or cheating but it is a top uni so as you say, maybe there is less cheating there and they have a handle on the issue? The one issue that did come up as a problem was cultural ones. Many international students come from cultures where it is seen as impolite to question or contradict others and the studying style they’re used to is having facts given to them and repeating them back rather than thinking and innovating. It caused problems with teaching because if in a group they’re supposed to be batting around ideas and coming up with solutions, if you have 20 students staring blankly at you or just repeating their lecture notes it’s very difficult to progress learning. I believe they now start the international students earlier and have extra classes covering learning styles which is intended to deal with that.

[MissEliza]

Wow Meteor that's quite interesting