Is collusion more commonly accepted in some Asian cultures?
I distinctly remember my grad school classes, where even by getting 95% I'd be dead last in the class rankings because all the Chinese/Indian students would get 98/99/100% on their assignments. I didn't really care about it, figuring that their studying habits were much more diligent than mine, until one time I arrived in the classroom 45 minutes early and found out a sizable proportion of them were merrily exchanging answers and copying off of each other. I then learned that it was something they would do pretty much every single time.
(of course, it was not all of them– a few were hard workers who went by the rules. But in all of my classes, the majority of students from those cultures would operate in such a manner).
So I'm wondering– is this purely selection bias, or is collusion just more acceptable in certain cultures? The US (and most of Europe) heavily penalizes it at all levels of education, but I wonder if it's the case everywhere in the world.
Given all the anecdotes around here offering the same experience, I'm interested in this too. If it is a cultural thing, I'd say two things:
1. It makes sense. A lot of sense. In the real world, it's far more useful to be able to collaborate effectively than to always adopt an adversarial or competitive attitude.
2. It should be addressed openly. Personally, I think a more collaborative environment would help a lot of us in a lot of ways, but sometimes that's just not how things are supposed to be done (e.g. assignments and tests in most US schools); in that case, everyone might be a little more aware and happy if it were clear up front -- in very multi-cultural situations -- what the expectations are regarding individual work.
Of course, that won't stop everyone, and it doesn't address every problem, but making everyone aware of the differences could stop a lot of misunderstanding and, potentially, what's technically cheating even though that may not be the intent.
[edit: Of course, some people do just plain cheat, knowingly and willfully; this is not intended to excuse that behavior, which is crap and should be punished.]
From my own experience as an Indian student. We colluded a lot. In assignments and even in examinations. I went to a pretty elite Indian institution( hint: Its near the banks of a very holy river.)
I think that many Indians try to take advantage of the 'system' wherever they can and do not see it as wrong. I see it as wrong now in hindsight, but back then it seemed like a mildly wrong thing to do.
This was my experience in grad school, to the point where some of my Southeast Asian friends were taken aback that I wouldn't give them test answers (just as I was taken aback that they were asking). These were nice, kind, honest, hard-working people. They just didn't view cheating on tests as wrong.
It was such a problem in our program that the professor of one class spent a good portion of one lecture talking about why cheating was wrong and what would happen if you were caught.
However, it was striking to me that I never saw the Americans of Asian/Indian descent participating in this type of collusion. So I don't think it's a cultural thing as much as it is a outcome of the educational system in those countries.
EDIT: Removed name of particular country, since it's a regional phenomenon. There's no sense in calling out a particular country.
When I was a grad student (in America) a couple of decades ago, I was involved in two seminars/roundtable discussions that stayed with me. One was on sexual harassment- I'll save that for another thread. The other was a cultural awareness 'sharing.' For context, this was around the time of the Anita Hill testimony regarding Clarence Thomas
So sexual harassment and multicultural diversity were on the country's mind.
The department had a cultural awareness discussion centered on an exchange between the American graduate students and the recently arrived Chinese graduate students.
To my astonishment, the Chinese saw us American students as unfriendly, always retreating and 'sticking to our own kind.' They found it very hard to connect with us, much as they wanted to. It was because of the way we worked. When American students got their homework or assignment, we went to our desk and worked on it. We did the readings alone, we turned in the problems that we worked alone, and had very little discussion about the matter. We approached the courses individually, and this put the Chinese students off.
It put them off because they were very much about community. They discussed the lectures and reading until every single one of them understood it. They lived and died together. If homework was supposed to be individual work, then they did it individually- but they collaborated heavily on everything up until the point of homework- and they made sure everybody knew the concepts, math, etc. for doing the homework.
This is a very efficient way of learning new material. In fact, I've read in TIMS studies (or, books about the studies like 'The Teaching Gap' and 'The Learning Gap') that this is the asian way of teaching and learning in lower grades as well. There was less of an emphasis on (or, perhaps better, less of a recognition of) individual talent as being the basis of success in school, and more of a culture of "we can all get this together, if you can't it's because you are unwilling to work."
So I am not at all surprised that you observed heavy collaboration- I would be disappointed, however, if you saw deliberate 'cheating.' I can sympathise that people who don't fathom the concept of individuality in learning may struggle to understand the line between what we accept as cheating and not cheating. But that is not to say that they don't, and cheat anyway.
I feel as you do, but it's worth pointing out that if you come from a different frame of reference you may not be observing what you think you are observing. I can't say for sure in this case of course (hence how I ended my post), but he may have seen, say, discussion (in a language he may not be fluent in), showing each other papers, etc., yet may not have been seeing the actual 'cloning' of homework answers. If you walked into a bunch of American students doing this (but couldn't, for whatever reason), it's more natural to assume that there is direct cloning involved.
But different cultures have different norms.
Let's say, for example, that problems 3, 4, and 7 are assigned. Now, problem 7 is a bitch, but shares some of the devilish details, perhaps the 'trick,' with problem 6. Let's also assume that the course requirements are "You must do your own work on homework." As a team, the group worked problem 6 together. But one of the group was still struggling to complete problem 7 for homework. He turns to his friend for help, and the friend replies "remember what we did in problem 6? You do the same thing, but with two <whatevers> instead of one."
Is this cheating?
The direct help "with two <whatevers>" is getting close, but if you are from another culture you may, honestly, think no. Because remember, your whole understanding of education is about getting/doing whatever you need to do in order to solve the problem. So you are going to judge rules differently than someone whose first instinct is "this has to be my work only-- I'll fail all by myself." (I hypothesize that this is part of the problem with international IP laws as well.)
On a personal note, one the other side of the desk I was delighted when students teamed up on homework and did extra. In fact, making solution manuals available and publishing old exams was simply a sneaky way for me to get them to do more work.
You've just made a story my brother told me click.
He spent years living in Taiwan. He came back to North America for college. He was taking an international law course, and Mandarin (he spoke, but didn't read/write as well as he wanted to) at the same time.
To improve his Mandarin he translated his law notes into Mandarin and distributed them to the Chinese students for feedback. As a result he aced Mandarin, and they all aced the law course.
I always thought that was very nice and clever of him, but until you described that cultural difference I didn't realize how much he was simply continuing to live within cultural norms for the culture he had been in.
Thanks, this is interesting. It seems to me there's an excellent middle ground that could help American students get a more social (and potentially effective) education, and also encourage some focus on individual achievement in Chinese and possibly other Asian cultures.
There is a difference in collaboration and collusion.
Collaboration is a way to share ideas, and as a group, innovate or improve the way problems are solved and new ideas developed.
Collusion is a way a group completes a task, in education or practice, with the minimum amount of effort and an equivalent level of quality.
An education system (instead of the concept of a culture) does not equate collusion and cheating at some level, it provides neither the students nor their prospective employers a benefit.
No. Such things were unheard of. As a professor I tried to institute them, but two things worked hard against it. (1) It was a commuter school, so getting people together outside of class was very difficult, as they didn't reside there and they had other places to be. (2) The concept of what to do in a study group was completely foreign. The social pressure to 'behave,' that is, be a good group member, do your share, and so on, wasn't particularly strong. In effect, like a lot of things, it benefited those who least needed the benefit. It also hurt them (they were often the same people who had important other stuff to attend to). Once it went from mandatory to optional, it died.
I'm an international student from China, and now I'm TAing a CS intro class in an US university(it's ranked top 30).
I found many Chinese students cheating and am not surprised, but what surprised me was that many US students cheated as well. Since I'm from China I know very well the kind of collusion culture : people care their grades too much and make mistakes. However, from what I have heard, US universities have strict policy against cheating, and students from US generally don't cheat.
To put it into figure: 15 out of 60 cheated, and 4 are Chinese while 9 are from US. I'm really disappointed as my college is even ranked top 30, and this changed my impression about US colleges. I'm transferring out to an ivy and hope there won't be much cheating in these prestigious ivies, but then Harvard Cheating Scandal came.
Now I feel really bad about US. I thought it is a place where ingenuity and honesty are upheld most.. Sigh.
I believe this will change once you get out of non-intro CS. My friends and I work for the CS department and we see people whom are not interested in CS or are required to take just the intro course cheat often.
The trivial solution to homewt cheating is to stop the worthless practice of assigning and grading duplicate homework. Assign unique projects, or don't grade mass homework, so incentives don't get misaligned.
One of the excuse of those who support corruption is that they are helping their friends. But there can be artificial friendship. On a survey or poll some years ago in India, those who supported corruption said it is way of introduction of businessman to a bureaucrat. Mario Puzo said mafia is friend of friends.
Their is a well known saying in India, Indians steal in Dhoti (traditional indian pants), while westerners steal in suites. Corruption is prevalent in all parts of the world just the type of corruption changes. Wherever, power and money is involved, there is corruption.
That is the excuse in India to fight corruption. Everybody is fighting corruption, Indians are not. But if you think further, Spying is also cheating and corruption which is glorified everywhere.
there is plenty of high level corruption in India too, and on top of that you have to deal with the pervasive low level corruption. One of the things that caused my dad to decide to leave Bangladesh was having to pay a bribe to get phone service installed.
You're conflating a lot of things -- I'd hesitate before noting correlations to causation.
I'd consider viewing things under governmental structure, incentives, and the checks and balances in play than attributing any one culture or nation state to be some kind of paragon of virtue. Efficient governance is a luxury of first world countries, where enough people are capable and incentivized to play by the rules for it to work.
I do personally subscribe to freedom and the desire of the population for equitable governance and a level playing field for a better society, but that's a discussion for another time.
Are you even looking at the map you linked to? Do you not see the Asian countries (ex-Japan) colored in reds and dark oranges, while North America, Australia/New Zealand, and western Europe are in shades of yellow? The major Western economies have scores of 70+ (U.S., U.K., Germany, France, Australia), while the major Asian economies, ex-Japan, have scores in the 20's and 30's. South Korea straddles the two, with a score in the 50's.
Of course not. But the amount of corruption in places like India would make Dick Cheney blush.
Westerners can't really appreciate it unless they've experienced it. In the US, shameless corruption is rare. Dick Cheney genuinely believes what he's doing is justified in some way. In India, people have no shame. That creates the major difference: pervasive corruption among common people. Not just the wall street lobbyist, but the guy hooking up your phone service.
>>Is collusion more commonly accepted in some Asian cultures?
Short answer: No.
Long answer: Generally there exists 0 ways to fight this sort of cheating or corruption or unfair play or whatever you call it. So the net result is people are forced to put up with it. You may ask why it is so difficult to fight it out. Starting at every levels, you just can't as an individual take on a whole a system. You can try, but the end result will be that you will be crushed. You will waste a lot of time, energy and end achieving nothing in the end.
You can't do much against any government employee as they will pretty much have the rights to screw if you want. Grievance redressal is useless and next to non existent. Almost any body here in India can work, especially in Government sectors with total lack of accountability or fear of action regardless of their actions. Same applies to educational institutions and even corporate environments. Corruption and politics is rampant, corporates are only marginally better than government institutes.
You will surprised at toxic high levels of politics and corruption in nearly all corporate sectors which advertise themselves as promised lands of merit based culture. Politics and corruption thereby happens for all sorts of reasons, Language, regional affiliations, caste, culture, color and religion- You name it. Promotions, a work assignment in a foreign country, out of the turn perks, unjustified hikes you name it, and it happens.
I've even lost the count how many times I've seen such things happen in the Indian software companies. Scenes where hardworking people getting screwed, some guy who sleeps on his job getting all the milk and honey just because his manager happens to speak his mother tongue, or belongs to the same state, or his religion, or caste is far too common.
Often there are no ways to fight it. No HR, no body to complain to and pretty much any body you can contact to put you case forward is likely to be your manager's friend.
This is case even in colleges. A lot of hidden gangs exist, teachers generously reward their favorite students.
Almost anybody who cheats almost feels they sort of are entitled to do so.
This case only happens to come out in a place where students found it was unacceptable to cheat.
this manifests itself in the job market as well, as people from the same culture/background "help" each other get positions/contracts. then again, isn't this what humans have always done, tend to their own? I mean, if you identify with a group, you naturally show some loyalty to that group.
Because I've lived in several countries and somewhat assimilated different cultures as my own, I personally don't identify with any one group enough to do this. So among cross-cultural people I can say they/we tend to the opposite. Just from personal experience that is...
You seem to be saying you had graded (with grades that went somewhere on a transcript that matterd) problem sets in grad school. That is a rather antiquated concept, even for undergrad..
I distinctly remember my grad school classes, where even by getting 95% I'd be dead last in the class rankings because all the Chinese/Indian students would get 98/99/100% on their assignments. I didn't really care about it, figuring that their studying habits were much more diligent than mine, until one time I arrived in the classroom 45 minutes early and found out a sizable proportion of them were merrily exchanging answers and copying off of each other. I then learned that it was something they would do pretty much every single time.
(of course, it was not all of them– a few were hard workers who went by the rules. But in all of my classes, the majority of students from those cultures would operate in such a manner).
So I'm wondering– is this purely selection bias, or is collusion just more acceptable in certain cultures? The US (and most of Europe) heavily penalizes it at all levels of education, but I wonder if it's the case everywhere in the world.