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Comment by msoad | Hacker News Reader

If a native students finds it hard to graduate school she/he might drop out of collage but a foreign student who's struggling can't just drop out. Dropping out often means going back home as a giant failure. It's a much bigger pressure.

I'm not saying it's fine if they cheat. I'm also not ignoring the cultural differences. This is just another way of seeing this phenomenon.

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I'm pleasantly surprised to see the audience on HN be aware and considerate of the socio-cultural differences.

To add a few other points to the list -

1. The pressure is also to literally survive, and can sometimes extend to their families. It's not uncommon to find Indian students coming to the US to alleviate their families' financial condition by studying here and consequently getting a job here. A lot of times their families would have mortgaged their apartments/houses to get a loan to fund the education. I was such a student about 3 years ago. If I would have failed, not only would my parents not have an apartment anymore, but it would also be difficult for us to survive as a family (my parents earn very little). I realize this was a calculated risk and no one forced me(us) into it, but it was very pressuring regardless.

2. While cheating is frowned upon at a run-of-the-mill Indian university, it's not dealt with as severely as at American universities. Consequently it can be a little like you were careless enough to be jaywalking in a foreign country you're visiting and finding out they're going to imprison you for it later.

3. The immigration rules here don't help as well. You have a limited amount of time for which you can stay in the US after finishing up studies to find a job. Failing to find a job in that time results into having to go back. Sometimes you have to go back even if you found a job but didn't get through the H1 lottery.

Let me firmly state that having said all of that, I don't condone this behavior, and am unreservedly against it. I'm just glad people here on HN already have additional perspective into why this happens and I'd just like to add to it since I feel I can.

American universities are very upfront about their strict academic honesty policies, so it's not really analogous to jaywalking.

That's what my point is - in your head, you might think you're doing something that's less of an offense. But it's not.

Maybe, maybe not. As with most very diverse things: it depends. Yes, googling for the honesty policies is easy, if you know they are typically referred to as the 'honor code.' I would imagine that a fair percentage of US and foreign students would be confused as to what 'honor' has to do with cheating though ("Like, chivalry is dead, bro"), but that is not an excuse. And to be fair, even though the honor codes are strict, does not mean that the cheating is not rampant. A friend's wife taught a lot of Chinese nationals as a grad student and she said that they cheated a lot. However, that was not due to maliciousness or ignorance. They knew it was 'not kosher' to cheat, but back in China it seems that these kids has the same 'don't cheat' policy but if you believed in that, you were totally screwed and the cheating was seen as a necessary evil by people at all levels of society. You had to hide it, but everyone knew everyone else did it. Now to these 17/18 year old kids newly in the US, they did not expect the system to really be any different (think back to yourself at that age). And typically it is not. You only get punished if you get caught. There really are no downsides for them. Yeah, sure, some scapegoat is made every once in a while, but how is that different than the way China works anyways? The only difference here is that you don't have to bribe as much. I mean, the average grade at Harvard is an A- [0], how could you NOT think that cheating is rampant at the very highest levels? Sure, they call it 'grade inflation', but a rose by any other name smells just as sweet.

[0]https://www.boston.com/news/local-news/2015/05/27/harvard-cl...

Students are told about the honor codes. It's not something you have to look up.

Grade inflation has nothing to do with cheating - that's just more FUD. If a class curves to a B, and everyone cheats, the average grade is still a B.

> can't just drop out.

This is terribly discriminatory to thousands of other intl students who wanted to, but never made it to a US university. That's not social sensitivity, it's pandering.

> This is just another way of seeing this phenomenon

I think I detected a bit of justification in there. If not what policies or changes would you propose based on those explanations. So maybe some of them will have to leave the country if they are caught cheating. They'll be seen as failures at home. What should US universities do? Let foreign students cheat, be more lenient with them? Ask them about their family poverty level before they engage in disciplinary action?

I'm going to ignore your implicit rhetoric that there's nothing that can be done to help this and offer a potential suggestion - universities here can go an extra mile to put severe emphasis in educating international students about how cheating is dealt with in the US and how severe the consequences were when students were caught in the past doing it. It would also probably help if the students were convinced that there's a high probability of being caught with modern tools.

I know I'll get some flak for the last sentence there, but how many people in the world you really think are law-fearing as opposed to law-abiding?

I don't see this as their obligation or responsibility, but if looking for helpful measures that can be taken, I see this as one.

> I'm going to ignore your implicit rhetoric that there's nothing that can be done to help this and offer a potential suggestion

There is no implicit rhetoric. It was quite explicit. I saw a list of possible explanations of why foreign students cheat more. I pointed out those seems like leaning toward a justification, and invited a list of policy proposals based on those explanations.

So far we have "do more during orientation". Trust me, as an exchange student, albeit at just one university. This was made very clear during orientation. There were no maybes, or ambiguity there. But you are right there, it was something that should be done, but it is already done. Maybe force all to sign a paper saying "I will not cheat". Will that help solidify the idea? Perhaps...

> how many people in the world you really think are law-fearing as opposed to law-abiding?

I honestly don't know. I lived in 2 countries so far for long periods of time and people have very different attitudes towards law and authority in both. I wouldn't be surprised if the same people are law fearing for some law (getting caught speeding) and then also law-abiding (they wouldn't steal even if they know they'd never get caught) for others.

> So far we have "do more during orientation".

Another solution would be come up with a secure US-administered standardized test. Students cheat on the SAT [1] (3 min video)

You could (1) pressure the SAT / ACT to become more secure, or (2) create an alternative.

With a secure test, test-prep centers would not find success from cheating. This would pressure schools/businesses in foreign countries to provide better education.

[1] http://www.reuters.com/investigates/special-report/college-s...

You're implying this isn't done already at universities. In literally every single class in university, the professor would spend lecture time talking about cheating, and it was always spelled out in the syllabus.

I would imagine it would be similar for a local student (minus visa issues and interest in immigration) in the case where the family is supporting them financially, particularly in countries where university tuition is a significant portion of their income.

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