[lwakefield]

I TAed a compulsory "Introduction to Engineering" class at USyd. The class itself was dead easy, the equivalent of the fizzbuzz interview question.

The single assessment was "review an engineering article" where I caught 7 students (all international) plagiarizing. Not just borrowing a sentence or two, but lifting entire paragraphs and gluing them together with broken English. In one case a student had gone as far as submitting Stephen Hawking's "Space and Time Warps", verbatim.

I raised all of these to the professor. Despite all students signing the "I know what plagiarism is, I won't do it and understand there I will be kicked out if I do" - the professor knocked back all of my claims and all students passed.

It was a huge disappointment to realize that this is how the "education system" works.

[mmerlin]

Yes! My partner eventually quit her job university lecturing because she was explicitly told time and time again she was never allowed to fail any of the international "full fee paying" students. If she lodged a fail mark she was raked over the coals and forced to change it as a passing mark.

She was only allowed to give failing marks to Australians who pay approximately half the university fees compared to international students.

[Vintila]

International students actually pay about 4x what a domestic student pay [1].

[1] https://www.adelaide.edu.au/degree-finder/2020/bengh_behe&es...

[nopassrecover]

Not if you consider the contribution of the taxpayer on behalf of domestic students (and their tax contributions over their future careers).

[t34543]

This should be a crime.

[wallace_f]

There is too much white collar crime and it seems like it is just becoming ordinary business. People responsible for things like the insulin racket are profiting off of death. But we focus orders of magnitude more resources on jailing people for smoking a harmless plant and minding their own business. Who will take responsibility?

[ksec]

I dont think plagiarism is just a Internaional Student thing, but they do take it to a whole different level.

I am sure as a Student, we have all see or even been part of plagiarism. The difference is that while others may look at your work, question why this is done this way, think for it ( hopefully ) yourself , and try to rewrite it in likely much worst adaptation of it. ( Since the level of understand is usually quite different ) With Copying in few places.

These International Students's plagiarism is basically simple copy and paste editing. It is so bad that even spelling mistakes are the same.

And when you question why these spelling mistake and grammatical mistakes are the same, you will likely get an answer that is because it is how we use the English languages, any further discussion on the subject will likely be countered as oppression, or racism.

The worst thing about it isn't actually the plagiarism itself. It is like Software pirating, a lot of people used to do it. ( BitTorrent, FTP, or if you are even older passing Disc with Code around ) But at least those who committed those wrong doing knew they were wrong. ( Or at least I hope ) These international student often does plagiarism with no sense of guilt or wrong doing, as it is the norm back in their home country. And if they get caught surely some donation would smooth things out. They will think why everyone does that same thing and how unlucky he or she was to get caught.

Now if you think back about all the issues, and instead of happening in a small place called University but in a much bigger world of business and Cooperate, you may see what the world right now are having lots of disagreement.

[the_resistence]

there's a hyper level of pragmatism. The ends always justifies the means. there is no ethics or morals in these circles, none whatsoever.

[themattress]

It’s very depressing, I also TA’d in college and ended up grading one of the mid terms for a programming class I had the previous semester. I found a group of students who clearly shared some code over gchat or something... weird variable names and unique code structure that was clearly copied among 5 or so students.

I was told by the professor to not fail them, just give them 0 for the question. Cheating was rampant in my program and the institution’s response to push them through was disheartening. We also had a “code of conduct”. These were all US students, I think cheating is just a huge problem in Universities all over the world.

[timwaagh]

On my university, copying eachother's assignment was so common a student/teaching assistent was talking about how he had 'reprimanded' one of his students for plagiarism while he was copying my solution to our own homework problem. It's corruption all the way down.

[NeedMoreTea]

Anecdotally from the kids and their friends, it's pretty similar in UK universities with the overseas higher paying students. Now there's £9k UK tuition fees universities are far more focused on the money than the education.

Oh well, it's a step on their journey to old and cynical adult.

[pkaye]

I had an international student as a teammate for an engineering class. We had to write a couple papers and we alternated being leads on the paper. The first paper he wrote was quite well written. He didn't have any references so I googled a few line and found the entire first two pages were directly plagiarized. I pushed him to fix it up and somehow he managed.

[close04]

> It was a huge disappointment to realize that this is how the "education system" works.

Is there any man made system that isn't eventually run or at least strongly by financial interest? Genuine question.

[wendyshu]

It's not clear that low standards actually are in the long term interest of the universities because it devalues the degree.

Thus it is important to expose this corruption far and wide so that people, e.g. employers, can be aware.

[close04]

I totally agree. The cynic in me was just surprised at the disappointment, not the reaction of outing them for what they do.

And to your first point, fewer and fewer people think for the long term. Perhaps because in an age where you want results now they will be judged by short term performance.

Also I noticed I'm missing an "influenced" in the comment above. Strongly influenced.

[phs318u]

I’d actually rephrase the question as, “is there any system that can’t be gamed?” i.e. a system immune to corruption? Impervious to bad faith intentions? I suspect the answer is no.

EDITED to fix a spelling mistake.

[tempguy9999]

"is there any system that can’t be gamed?”

Well, I think that's a different thing. Gaming something is AIUI an exploitation of the rules.

What's happening here is plain breaking of rules, which I'd call something like corruption.

[nitrogen]

There are the rules as written, and the "rules" as enforced. Can one build a system where the inevitable "rules" that arise are fully aligned with the intent of the system?

[stjohnswarts]

strongly __________ by ?