Further stories on Chinese Students Cheating

Over the past several years there has been a recognition that academic fraud amongst Chinese students has reached critical levels.  In the past five years, Chinese students have increased their undergraduate representation in American colleges from a mere 10,000 students to over 57,000.  While there is no reason to believe that the most successful Oriental students currently enrolled in North American schools engage in any of the documented modalities of fraud, sufficient data continues to accumulate that the average applicant is less than accomplished than what he or she is portraying.  For example, an article in the IHT titled "Sneeking into Class from China" points out the following:

Zinch China, a consulting company that advises American colleges and universities about China, published a report last year that found cheating on college applications to be “pervasive in China, driven by hyper-competitive parents and aggressive agents.

The consulting company told American colleges,

Our research indicates that 90 percent of recommendation letters are fake, 70 percent of essays are not written by the applicant, and 50 percent of high school transcripts are falsified.

Colleges in response are finding the following:

American college recruiters in China feel overwhelmed by the proliferation of cheating, lying, and fraud: Study abroad big business in China, and young Ivy League graduates write essays for Chinese applicants while many a Chinese public school fakes transcripts and recommendation letters.

In 2010 a Centenrary College, located in NJ, decided to shutter each of its satellite campuses in China and Taiwan, subsequent to discovering "rampant cheating among local student".  The extent of the fraud was so ubiquitous that the college was forced to

[withhold] degrees from all 400 Chinese-speaking students in its master’s of business administration programs in Beijing, Shanghai and Taiwan, said Debra Albanese, Centenary’s vice president for strategic advancement.

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In 2009 the GMAT testing agency discovered a wide-spread scandal in which Chinese companies were collecting and selling GMAT questions online.  In response to that and a growing demand from Chinese students for the test, the testing agency has introduced a fourth part containing integrated reasoning questions, in addition to the current verbal and mathematical skills and analytic writing ability sections.  A NY Times article stated that the, "rise in applications to U.S. schools from overseas students has been accompanied by a reported rise in fraudulent credentials"  The new analytic section is meant to handicap memorization and assess the ability of the student to

synthesize information from multiple sources in order to solve complex problems... They also wanted candidates to be able to indicate what information was relevant, and not relevant, and to be able to evaluate which among a set of possible outcomes were the most likely.

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Despite all these harsh criticisms and unfavorable reviews, China's institutions appears to be still very much centered around polices and practices that maintain acceptable levels of fraud and corruption.  The Economist magazine stated,

Scholars, both Chinese and Western, say that fraud remains rampant and misconduct ranges from falsified data to fibs about degrees, cheating on tests and extensive plagiarism.

This pervasive and continuous levels of fraud not only diminish the value of honest Chinese students who participate in Western universities -many of whom I personally knew to be excellent students- but leads one to question the entire system of data collection, research, and scientific publication that is present within China.

The implications of widespread academic misconduct could be great. Denis Fred Simon of Penn State University argues that growing evidence of fraud “calls into question the overall credibility of the entire scientific enterprise in China-and unfortunately feeds negatively into the related concerns about the safety of Chinese products and the integrity of information coming out of China.”

Whereas this slavish affection for deception will allow a few to prosper, eventually the system will collapse from the weight of fraud, incompetence, and indifference to empirical fact.

Spanish society in freefall...

Spain currently has a mass unemployment rate of 24.1% and youth unemployment rate (15-24 y/o) that exceeds 50%, up from 18.2% in 2007.  In comparison Italy's youth unemployment is 29%; Portugal is 30%; and 24% of young people in France are without employment.  The Spanish economy has been contracting each of the past two quarters and is officially back in recession.  As the financial sector attempts to wade through the morass of over-development, massive consolidation of the banks and the crippling of credit has occurred.

The root cause of much of this disaster lies in the corrupt nexus between local bankers and regional politicians, which happen in many instances to be one and the same.  Lax lending standards, cheap foreign labor, and easy inflows of European capital all lead to a massive over-development.  The days of cheap credit ended with the financial crash of 2008.  Private debt was absorbed by the balance sheets of the state and ultimately the collective nations of the Eurozone.

Whereas the chicanery that lead to this bloody mess is a story that needs to be told, I'm interested today in discussing the impact on real people and the current generation of people who will have to pay for this economic catastrophe for the rest of their lives.  The decline and hopelessness felt across Spain has been chronicled in a number of newspapers and journals.  Here are some of the highlights.

In the Spanish daily La Pais, a 9-March article titled Generation Nimileuristra described the lives of young people who see opportunities denied and their lives stagnating with either low or no paying jobs.  

In 2005 youth unemployment was about 20%. Now [reaching] 50% while doubling the European average (22.4%) . The best educated generation has the worst outlook since the transition and feels a victim of the excesses of others...

In Spain there are 10,423,798 people between 18 and 34... Their average net income (including the unemployed), is 824 euros per month. And those who are working earn on average 1,318 euros a month (data from the Youth Council of Spain)...  Professions that seemed safe... are not. The Polytechnic University of Valencia followed the first steps in the process of engineers and architects who graduated in 2008: one in four did not reach [jobs with salaries over 1000 euros/month]. And what is worse: the [educated with jobs with salaries under 1000 euros/month] had advanced by 8% compared to graduates a year earlier.

In many cases youth are forced to abandon independence and relocate into their family's homes.

It has been established that even small levels of protracted unemployment in developed countries can have serious implications for the unemployed.  Those include reduced lifetime wages, reduced employment opportunities, and higher mental health issues.  With respect to society at large, depressed wages will promote educated youth emigrate to other jurisdictions, resulting in a brain-drain to the nation.  Undereducated and unemployed male youth on the other hand are statistically more likely to participate in criminal activity.

In many OECD countries the unemployment rate is substantially higher than the general population. An Economist article from Sept-11, 2011 discusses the various disadvantages and impacts under-employment and unemployment will have on these people.

Unemployment of all sorts is linked with a level of unhappiness that cannot simply be explained by low income. It is also linked to lower life expectancy, higher chances of a heart attack in later life, and suicide. A study of Pennsylvania workers who lost jobs in the 1970s and 1980s found that the effect of unemployment on life expectancy is greater for young workers than for old. Workers who joined the American labour force during the Great Depression suffered from a persistent lack of confidence and ambition for decades.

The implications of this situation are severe.  Not only will youth not be entering the work force, they will not be participating in the economy and doing normal things, such as buying cars, homes, furniture. So there is a negative cascade felt across the nation on all levels. Secondly, since they will not be paying taxes, who will bear the burden of maintaining the welfare state that Europeans are so proud of?   As fewer people are contributing to these pay-as-you-go programs, older generations will see a reduction in benefits.

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The financial crisis has lead to governments across Spain to drastically cut programs, services, and cash transfers to lower levels.  A New York Times article elaborates:

Just as Spain’s national and regional governments are struggling with the collapse of the construction industry, overspending on huge capital projects and a pileup of unpaid bills, the same problems afflict many of its small towns.

One town's mayor discusses his small community's problems:

“We lived beyond our means,” Mr. García said. “We invested in public works that weren’t sensible. We are in technical bankruptcy.” Even some money from the European Union that was supposed to be used for routine operating expenses and last until 2013 has already been spent, he said.

The banking upheavals have brought similar troubles to small and medium scale businesses, which represent "60 percent of the economy, and 80 percent of the jobs".  The vicious cycle has resulted in the shuttering of more than 500,000 small business according to the NY Times.  

“The cuts in credit have been so abrupt that some businesses not only lost specific projects they were working on,” said Carlos Ruiz Fonseca, the director of economy and innovation at Cepyme, Spain’s association of small and medium-size companies. “Some companies have just gone out of business.” 

How is any of this supposed to engender confidence in the international markets?  The same banks which are cutting credit lines, reducing exposure to risk, and contracting their businesses are simultaneously being downgraded by the various credit agencies.  Billions of Euros are being requested by the financial sector to keep these debt ridden entities from further collapsing and imploding the entire Spanish economy.

The net result of all these events is a society that is in freefall.  If these trends continue, not only will Europe have generated legions of angry, unemployed persons, they will have created the same foundations that gave rise to the extremists of the last century.

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Update: video link about squatters taking over an vacant apartment complex, built during the construction boom, in Seville

Thomas Friedman on Why America is Floundering!

Thomas Friedman comments in his op-ed piece -called "We're No. 1(1)!"- on why he thinks America no longer is the world leader that it once was.  While I think he skirts some of the obvious contributing factors, he does hit the nail on the head in referring to American society as one that has become intellectually incurious, slothful, and where individuals are driven towards instantaneous gratification in both their careers and personal lifestyles.

With regard to why American children consistently score so low internationally, despite the enormous sums of money to reform and improve the education system, he refers to another piece written by the Washington Post's Robert Samuelson in Newsweek.  Samuelson contends that the dearth of progress on the educational frontier emanates not from lousy teachers and administrators, but from lazy, coddled, and unmotivated students, who no longer attempt or even care to achieve academic excellence.

The larger cause of failure is almost unmentionable: shrunken student motivation. Students, after all, have to do the work. If the students aren’t motivated, even capable teachers may fail. Motivation comes from many sources: curiosity and ambition; parental expectations; the desire to get into a “good” college; inspiring or intimidating teachers; peer pressure. The unstated assumption of much school “reform” is that if students aren’t motivated, it’s mainly the fault of schools and teachers...

Motivation has weakened because more students (of all races and economic classes, let it be added) don’t like school, don’t work hard, and don’t do well. The conflict between expanding “access” and raising standards goes against standards. Michael Kirst, an emeritus education professor at Stanford, estimates that 60 percent of incoming community—college students and 30 percent of freshmen at four-year colleges need remedial reading and math courses.

The best part of Friedman's analysis relates to the wretched Baby Boomers, who I call "The Greediest Generation!"  In contrast, as he points out to the World War II generation who sacrificed, struggled, and saved to overcome the Great Depression, defeat both Nazi German and the Japanese Empire, and rebuilt Europe and expanded America's industrial prowess, the baby-boomers:

leaders never dare utter the word “sacrifice.” All solutions must be painless. Which drug would you like? A stimulus from Democrats or a tax cut from Republicans? A national energy policy? Too hard. For a decade we sent our best minds not to make computer chips in Silicon Valley but to make poker chips on Wall Street, while telling ourselves we could have the American dream — a home — without saving and investing, for nothing down and nothing to pay for two years. Our leadership message to the world (except for our brave soldiers): “After you.”

When India, China, and many developing countries are turning out more ambitious, fit, and intellectually competent students, employees, and businessmen, how far does anyone think the fatties and professional victims of America's culture wars are going to get in the great competition of life?  As conservatives like to bemoan, "Culture matters!"

Statism and its believers

Of all tyrannies, a tyranny exercised for the good of its victims may be the most oppressive. It may be better to live under robber barons than under omnipotent moral busybodies. The robber baron's cruelty may sometimes sleep, his cupidity may at some point be satiated; but those who torment us for our own good will torment us without end, for they do so with the approval of their own conscience.

- CS Lewis