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.

@UnspiritualHome considering that grammar is one of the think they score, at least in our uni, I would count it as cheating.

Unspirited Any proof reading would need to comply with the university's proof reading policy. Any university worth its salt will have one. Typically, when submitting work, students will have to declare that they, and anybody proof reading, is aware of and complied with the policy

An example...

"Third-party proofreaders are not expected to actively amend existing, or create new, content in draft work; instead they should support the student by identifying errors and/or making suggestions relating to – but not creating content"

If the international students on your course are not fluent then your university is being really unscrupulous in accepting their applications without verifying fluency

UKVI has a certain standard of English required to obtain a Tier 4 visa and we ask for higher IELTS scores than they need. An international student applies with a score that exceeds even what we ask for, they present an IELTS certificate that has their name and photo on it, they arrive here in September and boom - we find that they can't speak a word of English. What else should we do?

Sorry that message was aimed at UnspiritualHome .

This isn't new although I'm sure improvements in technology have increased the ability of students to cheat. My father was head of department (Business Studies) at a UK university before he retired over a decade ago. He was twice offered bribes by some (uber wealthy) foreign students, on one occasion contacted by a student's father who not so subtly offered him a ridiculously expensive sports car to change some exam results, as though my dad rolling up to work in a Lamborghini wouldn't have aroused any suspicions LOL! It was a difficult "diplomatic" situation in some ways because the university (as they all were) was recruiting from certain global markets (think oil rich nations) but the faculty was constantly having to check for cheating. The most blatant cheating my dad ever saw was one student who had a bodyguard type person with him at all times, my dad's pretty convinced that it was the bodyguard who was taking all the notes in lectures and who actually completed the coursework since the student didn't say two words all year long. I swear I'm not making this up! My dad was very jaded by the time he retired.

amusedbush, you'd tell them they can't continue on the course, surely.

@Birdsgottafly
English is the official language in Nigeria and Ghana in both state and private schools so maybe your “friend” just couldn’t spell!

Bezalelle

I'm not asking what we should do moving forward. The statement I replied to is that universities are "really unscrupulous in accepting their applications without verifying fluency". I'm asking how else we should verify their English language proficiency.

AmusedBush - sorry, I misunderstood! I'm not sure what a workable solution would be. Face-to-face interviews maybe? But that would involve a lot of resources.

Few universities ask for more than a 7.0 in the Writing component of the IELTS. TBH, a 7.0 is a really inadequate grade as proof of adequate preparation for essay writing at an English university.

Students who have advanced essay writing skills in a mother tongue language reasonably close to English can catch up from a 7.0 once they get to university. But a 7.0 in Writing at IELTS says nothing about a student’s underlying writing skills in his/her mother tongue.

@TFBundy, it was a B in Art that was attributed to his teacher. She was the person who told the press. She also said that A level students were being told answers in their exams.

I remember a certain international person in my class who the tutor actually called out for not doing his own work. It was a type of art course which did not require a dissertation.

all you do is fuel the already widespread xenophobia and god knows universities will suffer under a bad brexit. The last thing they need is for international students to be viewed as cheats. If those students stop coming to the UK it'll be the nail in the coffin. so basically no one is allowed to talk about a problem because way-cism?

The standard required typically varies depending on the degree. The standard for engineering might be lower than for classics, for example.

Any student who can barely write or speak a word of English is unlikely to last long whatever degree they choose.

In my first year of university I lived with a couple of wealthy students who were from Hong Kong and had limited English. There is no way that those students could have written essays in English.

The university sector as a whole has expanded under the assumption that large numbers of international students are prepared to pay very significant sums of money (that are not necessarily competitive on a worldwide scale) for degrees from British universities with scant regard for quality/employability. It is not surprising, therefore, that universities do not necessarily have a very able/qualified group of international applicants to choose between. I have done some work with admissions in a couple of other EU countries and, tbh, their ability to evaluate international applicants was almost nil. And if they cannot evaluate applications with some degree of accuracy, they cannot market efficiently either.

What a depressing thread.

For my masters I’d say it was the opposite. Many of the international students did quite badly because of their English but worked really hard (so presumably there was more integrity) but it made the dynamic of seminars really painful if there were too many with poor English. The focus on debate and discussion is quite different to the approach in some countries which is more about regurgitation which can be a culture shock. I deliberately picked modules that did not require group work as I was working and couldn’t be bothered with the faff.

I often witnessed (on social media) some students spending more time in Selfridges than the library.

Please dont see social media as fact. Most people don't update on 'boring aspects of life such as sitting in a library.

This is all very, very subjective.
Thing is, I write to a much higher standard for work than i would on watsapp. You cant judge someones work and work ethic based on this.

However i do know that cheating exists quite extensively in Unis. Only recently we had one of the highest paid IT guys fired (think well over £700 a day) as his degree, post grad and other qualifications turned out to be a massive lie. He scraped his degree and packed in his post grad and the other qualifications were under someone elses name...
The guy was in a consulting/delegation position and it was only when 2 of his main team staff were off and he had to do their job that he fucked the whole system up and the company had to headhunt someone else to fix the issue as he couldn't fix it.
Cue him admitting to a member of staff that he got away with it and laughed that he would be more careful next time and 'let's hope they dont check my fake qualifications'. Staff he told reported it.

Sorry i forgot to say he scraped his degree after having submitted work someone else wrote (he eventually admitted to this) and the uni gave him a pass once he re submitted his original, very shit work.

Someone on my degree course was thrown out for submitting bought essays, not an international student, but a wealthy one. It was an old fairly prestigious RG and that kind of thing was really frowned upon.

I used to proof read essays for SPG and tutor academic English, to help fund my MA. I was offered money to write essays a few times, I reported every one to the university, they were all given formal warnings and their written work placed under scrutiny. This was however in the days of dial up internet so less common I'd imagine.

I think this is a massive problem in the UK universities, not only in case of international students, but domestic ones too. The whole things is exacerbated by the ranking culture and shit initiatives like the Teaching Excellence Framework that basically measures the quality of teaching by the positivity of student feedback. So if your students are happy, your teaching must be great too. The only problem is that most students are happy when they get good grades and that many do not care about whether they deserve those grades of not. Grade inflation is rife. I would say cheating is too. In many institutions, academics' attempts to hold up the standards leads to student complaints and administrators are prepared to sell their own mothers down river to avoid them. God forbid we get negative student feedback!

The ones i know who i could see doing this just did the degree to get a better class on husband back home. They were never going to work

I suppose the problem is £££. Are universities really going to carry out an investigation into cheating students when they make up a large proportion of their bread and butter.

Cracking down might well put off other customers (and they are often merely customers) and dent the reputation of the institution.

I'm sure the powers that be are well aware of the situation but find it better to turn a blind eye.