Cheat service to help Chinese students who want to study abroad has become a big business
From China, which has been developing remarkably in recent years, hundreds of thousands of students go abroad to study abroad such as the United States every year, but some of them pay money to hire professional cheaters and pass the test fraudulently. There are also Chinese students. A non-profit news organization, Rest of World, interviewed more than 10 vendors providing such cheating services, and approached the reality of the rampant cheating business in China.
Chinese students use remote access software to cheat on US college entry exams - Rest of World
``For people like us in the industry, online tests like TOEFL are just a joke,'' said Tony Wang, the owner of an agency that helps Chinese students study abroad. .
As exams have moved online due to the outbreak of the pandemic, many tests are now being conducted on PCs. In these tests, the examinee sitting in front of the PC hits the keyboard, and the examiner strictly monitors the situation through the camera, but it is Mr. Wang who actually inputs the answers. There are many cases of being an entrepreneur.
Mr. Wang's clients range in academic ability from students who have no English at all to students who study on their own, score 90 out of 120 on the TOEFL, and then rely on Mr. Wang to make it 100. Some students were brought in by their parents to take the exams fraudulently, while others wanted their parents to pass the exams in secret. In addition, Mr. Wang seems to have helped cheat not only students but also corporate executives and pop stars.
According to another vendor who responded to Rest of World's interview, China's cheating business is a multi-million dollar (hundreds of millions of yen) industry. More than 10,000 students may have cheated on international exams, especially during the COVID-19 pandemic, two industry insiders testified.
Of course, educational institutions are not sitting idle. Wallace Dalrymple, chief security officer at the Educational Testing Service (ETS), which provides TOEFL, said, 'Before the test starts, we perform comprehensive security checks, confirm identity, and scan the test environment to prevent unauthorized testing. We are doing it,” he told Rest of World. It is said that ETS spends tens of millions of dollars (billions of yen) every year on anti-fraud measures.
Despite these efforts, cheaters and their student customers cheat in a variety of ways. For example, one company offers a service that supports cheating with remote access software for 12,000 yuan (about 230,000 yen). By using this service, it is possible to obtain 85 points or more out of 90 points in reading, listening and writing. Even for speaking tests, the vendor prepares a script, but it is the student who reads it. The agency told Rest of World that it helps 100 to 200 customers cheat on TOEFL and
Among these services, there are services that are cheaper than the market price of regular exam preparation that teaches studying, but there are also services that undertake bold replacement exams at higher fees. A popular “quanti” among wealthy Chinese students going to American high schools and colleges, the service first searches for an actor who looks exactly like a photo the client sends, then memorizes the client’s profile. After that, let them put on makeup and take the exam. 'Most of the examiners are foreigners, so they can't tell the difference between Chinese faces,' said a company that offers substitute exams.
In China, helping others cheat on state exams is a crime. But Chinese authorities pay little attention to cheating in international tests, vendors say.
Mr. Wang, one of such vendors, also has ethical conflicts. However, Mr. Wang told himself, ``Students will cheat anyway if I don't do it, and students who didn't help me will be disadvantaged against other students who cheated.'' It turns away from moral issues. 'Everyone is doing it anyway,' Wang told Rest of World.
Related Posts:
in Note, Posted by log1l_ks