I was pretty surprised when I moved to Prague to learn that students both Czechs but especially students from the former USSR (the *stans and Russia) expected to be able to work together on exams. Having gone to school in the US and been graded on a curve I just couldn't understand these people actively wispering and showing echother answers letting others read over their shoulders. There were groups of people who would have one person study and sit in the row bellow them in the auditorium and then there would be three rows of students above all copying in a game of telephone from one to the other. I remember a very serious incident in college in the US when our history professor found two answers to be similarly worded. The two students were kicked out of the class with a warning that if they were caught copying from eachother again they would be kicked out of school. In Prague, the professors obviously knew about the copying and didn't say a word. Indeed, some of them helped us cheet by showing the answers during the test. They only wanted to be able to document our results to prove to the acreditation comitee that we had studied, and they cared not for our actual qualifications at the end of the degree.