According to a recent survey, thousands of rich Chinese students were expelled last year from American schools because of cheating.
Last year alone, U.S. universities expelled around 8,000 Chinese students for cheating and bad grades, with more than half of them from top-100 schools.
They are typically rich Chinese citizens who can afford to study abroad, but may not be equipped to handle the stresses of higher education. According to the survey, expelled students were specifically dismissed for cheating on their exams, plagiarizing and finding other people to write their papers for them.
Pittsburgh-based WholeRen Education, a U.S. firm that caters to Chinese students, based their estimate on a survey of 1,657 students who were expelled from American universities last year — more than 80% of those students were expelled for academic dishonesty or poor grades. WholeRen Education also surveyed students about their U.S. study experience a year earlier.
Chen Hang, the chief development officer at WholeRen, explained:
“Chinese students used to be considered top-notch but over the past five years their image has changed completely — wealthy kids who cheat.”
The survey also coincides with allegations from U.S. prosecutors that 15 Chinese citizens were hired to take college entrance exams, like the SAT, on behalf of others, and that they conspired to obtain student visas by fraudulent means, according to the Wall Street Journal.
Chinese students make up almost a third of all international students studying in the U.S., the largest share of students from any country. The fact that cash-strapped universities are aggressively recruiting rich students from foreign countries adds to that statistic.
