Chinese at North Dakota School Got Unearned Degrees, State Says
By Oliver Staley - Feb 11, 2012

Dickinson State University in North Dakota granted hundreds of degrees to Chinese transfer students who didn’t complete the required class work, according to a state report.

The school’s international agreements “are seriously lacking controls and oversight,” according to a review by the North Dakota University System released yesterday. The six violations of university and state policies could jeopardize the school’s accreditation and result in sanctions by the U.S. Education Department and State Department, the report said.

Dickinson’s practices may fuel the growing debate about the recruiting and exploitation of Chinese students increasingly sought by U.S. colleges. About 57,000 Chinese undergraduates attended American colleges in 2010-2011, six times as many as in 2005-2006, according to the Institute of International Education. At public universities, they pay two or three times as much in tuition as in-state students.

Dickinson State auditors analyzed the files of 816 international transfer students since 2003, almost all from China, according to the report. Of the 594 that received a degree, 584 didn’t complete the required course work. The school, in Dickinson, North Dakota, has 15 transfer agreements with international universities, and “only three articulation agreements appear to be valid,” according to the report.

Officials at Dickinson State and the North Dakota State University system didn’t respond to requests for comment.
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Other issues included students falsifying their transcripts using stamps from Chinese universities bought online, transferring from institutions in China not recognized as universities and failing to meet the minimum grade-point average.
Read the rest here: http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2012-02-1 ... -says.html
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I feel sorry for all the Americans who wasted their money getting degrees at this university and many others. Perhaps in the future corporate recruiters will start asking potential applicants, "How many Chinese went to your university?" And if the number/percentage is too high, then "Ummm, sorry. We need someone with an earned degree..."

Let's face it--this problem would not arise if the stupid governments of Australia, UK, Can(?) & the US had not decided to enter into the Thatcherite view and predominant ideology of the day, and start to privatise education.

University education in Australia had been for donkey's years an almost exclusive club. Then for 20 years, it was funded by the government. Now, the government has seemingly retained part of the 80s privatisation ideology of Maggie Thatcher (Dame now, isn't she?) & her other 80s fellow right wing ideologues throughout the developed world, by pulling back funding, and replacing it with full-fee paying foreign students. It has resulted in declines in stature in all the major universities, declines in academic standards, & disenfranchised a lot of the Australian-born, native Australian students. BUT IT IS ALL ABOUT THE MONEY. Governments love it because it lightens the public expenditure; the academics care, but they are forced to put up, shut up or get out. On the supply side, many institutions have a declining post-graduate student intake, meaning research declines. The Chinese students have been a ready source for this--but at what cost? How many of them have resorted to the practices that they learned in China? The University Chancellors all know about this issue, but they wish to turn a blind eye, or evince enormous naievity at the least.

There has been tremendous fall-out within the Australian education sector because of this approach, and there is now some attempt to "fix it". The only real way of solving this problem is to go back to the days of government funding University education. I don't see this happening anytime soon, if at all...

^^Or just go back to checking documents upon admittance and failing those who fail. True, that would cut their funding and the government would need to step in... Perhaps it could be an election issue? One major party in each country could promise to fund universities that ban mainland students. I'm sure the public would vote for it. I sure would

This is a shocking fact:

Of the 594 that received a degree, 584 didn’t complete the required course work.

In other-words, 98.3% of Chinese students at this uni who have degrees 'stole' them. Also, of the total number that were analyzed (816), only 1.2% of them were smart enough to get a degree... Now I'm waiting for a Chinese troll to tell me all about Chinese people's superior intelligence quoting the phony results of the PISA test ...

ATP wrote:University education in Australia had been for donkey's years an almost exclusive club. Then for 20 years, it was funded by the government. Now, the government has seemingly retained part of the 80s privatisation ideology of Maggie Thatcher (Dame now, isn't she?) & her other 80s fellow right wing ideologues throughout the developed world, by pulling back funding, and replacing it with full-fee paying foreign students. It has resulted in declines in stature in all the major universities, declines in academic standards, & disenfranchised a lot of the Australian-born, native Australian students. BUT IT IS ALL ABOUT THE MONEY. Governments love it because it lightens the public expenditure; the academics care, but they are forced to put up, shut up or get out.

Yes, that's what I did -- get out, after being an Australian academic for 10 years.
My former boss in Oz (the dept head), though an excellent maths researcher himself, devoted enormous time to bringing in under-qualified overseas students, as a result of which research in the dept suffered.

This is the more than likely the result of a combination of education underfunding, the idea that higher education should be a "business" and "entrepreneurial", and quite possibly universities putting money into budgets and administrators' pockets for meeting "development" targets. It's completely predictable to anyone who has studied and watched organizations.

KopyKatKiller wrote:^^Or just go back to checking documents upon admittance and failing those who fail. True, that would cut their funding and the government would need to step in... Perhaps it could be an election issue? One major party in each country could promise to fund universities that ban mainland students. I'm sure the public would vote for it. I sure would

This is a shocking fact:

Of the 594 that received a degree, 584 didn’t complete the required course work.

In other-words, 98.3% of Chinese students at this uni who have degrees 'stole' them. Also, of the total number that were analyzed (816), only 1.2% of them were smart enough to get a degree... Now I'm waiting for a Chinese troll to tell me all about Chinese people's superior intelligence quoting the phony results of the PISA test ...

Shocking? Maybe, but not unexpected in a country where they fake toilet paper and have crossover guards for adults .
Mind you these are the 'ambitious' ones that actually go abroad, instead of calling one of those spray painted mobile phone numbers and BUY the degree right away.

rickettyrabbit wrote:This is the more than likely the result of a combination of education underfunding, the idea that higher education should be a "business" and "entrepreneurial", and quite possibly universities putting money into budgets and administrators' pockets for meeting "development" targets. It's completely predictable to anyone who has studied and watched organizations.

Certainly, there has been the popular view in business of the enterprise as made of profit centres, & this has led to what--re-engineering? outsourcing?

I sense that the US experience of education policy and funding had been as you describe. But in Australia, (and I suspect the UK) we have had more left leaning governments & supportive of a more egalitarian view of society & access to higher education.

I believe it stems from the thinking put out during the 80s & the coterie of economists from the major US think tanks and universities of the day, who have gone on to influence in government & industry. Of course, the nature of global finance has changed in their wake, & as many can attest, not necessarily for the better.

In Australia, successive governments, federal and state, of both stripes, seemingly have maintained this view, loathe to being perceived as "wasteful", aiming for their popular, made-for-the-media announcements of "budget surplus". In Australia, they have been spared the mess the US has had, but this 80s hangover has merely given the policy makers and the mandarins who support (manipulate) them an atmosphere in which to continue--despite a seemingly healthy economy.

I see this as just another variant of what the US (and much of the western world) Exports now....pretty paper living off the legacy of the 20th century except this is the new 2012 version vs what was exported before bonds/currency/passport (citizenship)....once enough Chinese have these fake degrees (to make them worthless) what will be the next paper to be marketed?

P.S. Good thing "Fargo" the movie not popular otherwise they will know what kind of State "North Dakota" is. They gave away free land but still nobody wanted to move there.

Whee does all the tuition money go at universities operating as a "business"? Many claim that it is to the university, ie academics, to make up for short falls in government funding, but thinking back to my uni years, I believe this not top the case. universities are cheaper to run than ever as tenured tracks disappear and the classes are replaced by poorly paid lectures on short term contracts, while universities reign in record profits. These profits go to expand the bureaucracy of the administration. at my university, the staff and salaries at the campus administration grew enormously in the 2000's. over all staff quadrupled while salaries got a 50% to 100% raise. Also thee has been a trend over the last decade or so to only fund departments that produce patentable products. Computer science, f*ck yeah! We'll fund that. Let's give a new hire 200% the salary of a tenured humanities prof!That's the business model of education and I hope it goes bankrupt.

...

KopyKatKiller wrote:Whee does all the tuition money go at universities operating as a "business"? Many claim that it is to the university, ie academics, to make up for short falls in government funding, but thinking back to my uni years, I believe this not top the case. universities are cheaper to run than ever as tenured tracks disappear and the classes are replaced by poorly paid lectures on short term contracts, while universities reign in record profits. These profits go to expand the bureaucracy of the administration. at my university, the staff and salaries at the campus administration grew enormously in the 2000's. over all staff quadrupled while salaries got a 50% to 100% raise. Also thee has been a trend over the last decade or so to only fund departments that produce patentable products. Computer science, f*ck yeah! We'll fund that. Let's give a new hire 200% the salary of a tenured humanities prof!That's the business model of education and I hope it goes bankrupt.

True dat. My alma mater is a sprawling mess of the most nightmarish bureaucracy imaginable. The whole thing is run on the backs of part-time, indentured-servant post-grads. Meanwhile the president is a classic MBA spouting empty-suit who jets around the world pushing absurdly over-priced business degrees to third-world students.

The whole "foreign-student" solution to underfunding is a massive can of worms that is being kicked under the sofa by the academics. It isn't going to end well.

Chinese go to USA to get unearned degrees...

@

American "English Teachers" working on L/F Visas in China

>>> Vice Versa

highlander wrote:I see this as just another variant of what the US (and much of the western world) Exports now....pretty paper living off the legacy of the 20th century

100% agree.

Shanghai89 wrote:American "English Teachers" working on L/F Visas in China

May have been true in '98, 89....

KopyKatKiller wrote:

Shanghai89 wrote:American "English Teachers" working on L/F Visas in China

May have been true in '98, 89....

lol, you will be surprised.

Shanghai89 wrote:Chinese go to USA to get unearned degrees...

@

American "English Teachers" working on L/F Visas in China

>>> Vice Versa

If you're trying to equate the two, you're comparing apples and bumblebees.

rickettyrabbit wrote:

Shanghai89 wrote:Chinese go to USA to get unearned degrees...

@

American "English Teachers" working on L/F Visas in China

>>> Vice Versa

If you're trying to equate the two, you're comparing apples and bumblebees.

well, actually the drunker bear is onto something...

BHL Chinese who can't beat gaokao flee to US to get their shady degrees
BHL Americans/Canadians who can't get more than 1700 on their SAT flee to China/Korea/Japan to teach English

^^^^Both get what they want until enough of their countrymen hear about this great opportunity (to get a foreign degree/esl job) that they flood the market until the opportunity is no longer attractive.

minyanville wrote:

rickettyrabbit wrote:

Shanghai89 wrote:Chinese go to USA to get unearned degrees...

@

American "English Teachers" working on L/F Visas in China

>>> Vice Versa

If you're trying to equate the two, you're comparing apples and bumblebees.

well, actually the drunker bear is onto something...

BHL Chinese who can't beat gaokao flee to US to get their shady degrees
BHL Americans/Canadians who can't get more than 1700 on their SAT flee to China/Korea/Japan to teach English

Since when do Canadians write SAT's? I have a 4.0 gpa by the way and came to China as a uni student during my summers to teach on an "L" visa. Back then my company, EF, a\were the ones to actually take my passport to the Visa office to get my "L" visa extensions. Once I went myself and the cop behind the counter told me that next time I should come work on an "F" visa. This was in 2001 - 2002. Fat chance of that happening in Shanghai today.

It's a failure of critical thinking to equate these two. Think about it . . . without the Wodka.

Who isn't an ESL teacher in China?

At least self-proclaimed ESLers are smart enough to charge.