At Ohio State University, a Chinese student took tests for Chinese classmates for cash last year, guaranteeing an A.
At the University of California, Irvine, some international students used a lost-ID-card ruse to let impersonators take exams in place of others.
At the University of Arizona, a professor told of Chinese students handing in multiple copies of the same incorrect test answers.
A flood of foreign undergraduates on America’s campuses is improving the financial health of universities. It also sometimes clashes with a fundamental value of U.S. scholarship: academic integrity.
A Wall Street Journal analysis of data from more than a dozen large U.S. public universities found that in the 2014-15 school year, the schools recorded 5.1 reports of alleged cheating for every 100 international students. They recorded one such report per 100 domestic students.
Students from China were singled out by many faculty members interviewed. “Cheating among Chinese students, especially those with poor language skills, is a huge problem,” said Beth Mitchneck, a University of Arizona professor of geography and development.
In the academic year just ending, 586,208 international undergraduate students attended U.S. colleges and universities, according to the Department of Homeland Security. More than 165,000 were from China. South Korea and Saudi Arabia were the source of nearly 50,000 each and India of about 23,500.
A plaque inside a Georgia Tech classroom urges students not cheat. A plaque inside a Georgia Tech classroom urges students not cheat.
Faculty and domestic students interviewed said it appears that substantial numbers of international students either don’t comprehend or don’t accept U.S. standards of academic integrity.
At the University of Arizona, the staff works hard to explain academic integrity to those from abroad, but “our students don’t always understand what plagiarism is,” said Chrissy Lieberman, associate dean of students.
Citing the Freedom of Information Act, the Journal asked 50 public universities with large foreign enrollments how many reports of alleged academic-integrity violations they recorded for international undergraduates and how many involving U.S. undergraduates.
Many of the schools said they didn’t have such information or it would be too onerous to track down. Fourteen provided the full records sought, for the 2014-15 academic year.
At nearly all that provided data, the rate of such cheating reports was at least twice as high for foreign as for domestic students, ranging up to over eight times as high.
Universities don’t all define and track cheating reports exactly the same way. Most record the number of incidents, but some record the number of students involved. The Journal’s analysis tabulated cheating reports as the universities defined them. It didn’t delve into how the cases were resolved.
Lanqing Wang, a Georgia Institute of Technology electrical-engineering student from Shanghai, who is distressed by the cheating he sees, said, “In China, it’s OK to cheat as long as you’re not caught.”
Paidi Shi, vice president of the Chinese Students and Scholars Association at the University of California, San Diego, disagreed that it was all right to cheat in her home country but said, “In China, our culture puts a lot of pressure on students. We are more likely to find a shortcut to get a good grade.”
Qingwen Fan, president of the Chinese Students and Scholars Association at the University of California, Davis, said some students in China get burned out by cramming in high school, and when they get to college “they want to enjoy life. They are busy with social stuff and everything they missed before. They start to cheat. They didn’t put in the time but they want to pass the test. That is kind of a cultural thing.”
Ms. Shi said her association plans to launch a social-media campaign to tackle the problem next fall.
Both private and public U.S. universities have welcomed a surge in foreign students, who often pay two to three times the tuition and fees of others, partly because of special programs for them. At many public universities, their payments help compensate for shrinking state subsidies.
Sanctions for cheating can range from an F on an assignment to suspension or expulsion. At the University of Arizona, which recorded over 11 reports of alleged cheating for each 100 foreign undergraduate students in the 2014-15 school year (and 1.8 per 100 domestic undergrads), no student was expelled that year and just two suspended, according to the university.
“I can assure you that somewhere someone at the university is doing a calculus about how much tuition they would lose if they start coming down hard on students who cheat,” said Ms. Mitchneck, the geography professor.
Asked about that, Lynn Nadel a leader of the faculty senate, said it is true the university’s business model “is somewhat dependent on out-of-state students, and it’s an acknowledged fact that we depend on them to cover our costs. But the next step, that therefore we should treat them with kid gloves, has never come before me or even been uttered in my presence.”
Academic dishonesty is an issue on campus without regard to students’ origins. About 60% of all students on U.S. campuses admit they cheated at least once in the last year, according to Teddi Fishman, director of the International Center for Academic Integrity, a nonprofit with offices at Clemson University. She said that level has remained steady for 23 years. Most of this cheating never leads to a formal complaint, the Journal’s analysis shows.
The especially high rate of cheating reported for international students fuels faculty concerns about a cheapening of schools’ diplomas. “If the integrity of the degrees they are earning is undermined, that market could also be undermined,” said Ms. Fishman.
Some universities work harder than others to monitor cheating, which could affect where they stood in the Journal’s analysis. UC San Diego, which had one of the higher cheating-allegation rates for international students, also has an especially robust effort to track infractions, led by Tricia Bertram Gallant, its academic-integrity director.
“We decided to admit more international students in response to a decrease in public funding without consideration of extra socialization they might need to adapt to the new academic culture,” Ms. Bertram Gallant said. Schools are still “playing catch-up.”
At Purdue, David Sanders, a leader of the university senate, recently had the task of reading 4,000 essays from applicants and said he found the obvious copying among Chinese students, in particular, mind-numbing.
“I can’t tell you how many times I read an essay that started, ‘The 20th century was the century of physics and the 21st century will be the century of life sciences.’ I read that same phrase over and over and over again,” he said.
Armaan Mehta, a computer-engineering major at Georgia Tech, shows his notes for a signals and systems class. Mr. Mehta, an American, said he sees ‘ridiculous amounts of cheating’ among Indian and Chinese students. Armaan Mehta, a computer-engineering major at Georgia Tech, shows his notes for a signals and systems class. Mr. Mehta, an American, said he sees ‘ridiculous amounts of cheating’ among Indian and Chinese students.