[Aramgutang]

I don't like to defend what smells of blatant racism, but it makes more sense if you divide the generalisation into the following:

* Students who are taking a course due to societal pressure, rather than genuine interest, are more likely to cheat.

* Asians are more likely to be taking a course due to societal pressure, rather than genuine interest.

[dcosson]

I'm sure neither of you intended to come off as racist here, but I'm not sure this helped...how is assuming that Asians have no genuine interests (read: that they're unmotivated and don't think for themselves) any better than assuming they're cheaters?

I do agree with the rest of the original comment though, this Scott guy sounds like a run-of-the-mill smart person who ended up at a mediocre school, not "one of the world's most efficient studiers." I'm sure 80% of the students at MIT, Stanford, etc would do just as well at his school. Very surprised this made the front page.

[Aramgutang]

By genuine interest I mean interest in the course. They may have genuine interest in art history, but are taking the computing course because of pressure from parents.

[msie]

It's really terrible how now the assumption is that the asian students cheated when it seems they were only practicing with previous exams.

[msie]

It's a slippery slope from generalization to prejudice to racism. Each little step "makes sense" and is innocuous enough. We take many little steps and then we wind up far away from where we started off with.