The Chinese "International Student" in China
For a while there has been reports on Chinese students feigning international students in order to get into Chinese colleges. And now media reports are complete, I would report this in English.
(Major reference: Over 100 JEE Rejectees in Elite Colleges as "Internationals", Xinhua via Sina)
In October, Shanghai University has already discovered a large amount of fake international students, the suspicious things about them are:
The admission office was suspicious, but since there are no rules to reject them, they have to reject them by the reserve clause-- ie the University has the right to reject any person without given reason.
Currently, the coverage of higher education in China is about 30%-- this includes technical schools, correspondence schools, and any other non-traditional ways, including a Chinese version of CLEP.
But for the high school graduate, the allure for a four-year institution is always overwhelming, especially when the family is middle-class. The college exam, JEE, is however not the most human thing around. Strange things would occur when which parents tries to get their dysperforming children to college.
The most well-known way is bribing for a place, but this is not for the middle class. Then is finding some way to have policy JEE point additions (In China, JEE scores can be added by achieiving some policy goals, e.g. national-level athlete, some sort of extradinary Party ordinance, winning an olympiad, etc.), but the help is limited. "JEE mirgations," which refers to taking residence where colleges are less as impacted (namely poorer provinces) is also well-known, but there are heavy crackdown on this practice, but setting stricter residence rules.
So the college admissions business has gone some other tricks. Two years ago, there was a surge for students applying as overseas Chinese (Note: This is a special scheme for children for overseas Chinese who are living in China; it uses a easier paper as devised by the Ministry of Education); but this has been virtually impossible this year, when the ministry asked people asking for such status to have permanent residence in that country and had lived there for two years.
And then the more bizzare came.
When the JEE results were released in late June last year, there has been advertised by underground channels that foreign passports can be bought at 200,000 yuan, and after that students can come back into China and study as internationals.
The catch is, an "international student" is defined as having a foreign passport and coming to China with a studying visa, and the admissions standards is even laxer than those for overseas Chinese-- the HSK (Chinese Language Standards Exam) only is needed for most colleges; a few more famous have more formal tests; but what they tests are still elementary. The policy goal is that is to internationalize the campus.
Back at the ad. So in August, the student who went into the program went to a hotel in Fuzhou and had some elementary training, including elementary Tagalog and some "correct" responses to common questions. ("Why your English was so poor?" "I lived in Manila's Chinatown and attended the Chinese school there.") Then they give out their Chinese passports and get Filipino travel visas and goes to Manila.
In Manila, they stayed in a hotel for an entire month and started an crash coursh on Filipino language and culture. After one month they got their (forged) Filipino passports-- in order to increase credibility they has been stamped withseals from Thailand and the Philippines. Then they come back to China with the Filipino passports, went to colleges, and applied to colleges with forged Filipino diplomas and transcripts.
(Major reference: Over 100 JEE Rejectees in Elite Colleges as "Internationals", Xinhua via Sina)
In October, Shanghai University has already discovered a large amount of fake international students, the suspicious things about them are:
- Their registered mainland residence is in the same region in China;
- their foreign citizenship is fresh; merely for a few monthes.
The admission office was suspicious, but since there are no rules to reject them, they have to reject them by the reserve clause-- ie the University has the right to reject any person without given reason.
Currently, the coverage of higher education in China is about 30%-- this includes technical schools, correspondence schools, and any other non-traditional ways, including a Chinese version of CLEP.
But for the high school graduate, the allure for a four-year institution is always overwhelming, especially when the family is middle-class. The college exam, JEE, is however not the most human thing around. Strange things would occur when which parents tries to get their dysperforming children to college.
The most well-known way is bribing for a place, but this is not for the middle class. Then is finding some way to have policy JEE point additions (In China, JEE scores can be added by achieiving some policy goals, e.g. national-level athlete, some sort of extradinary Party ordinance, winning an olympiad, etc.), but the help is limited. "JEE mirgations," which refers to taking residence where colleges are less as impacted (namely poorer provinces) is also well-known, but there are heavy crackdown on this practice, but setting stricter residence rules.
So the college admissions business has gone some other tricks. Two years ago, there was a surge for students applying as overseas Chinese (Note: This is a special scheme for children for overseas Chinese who are living in China; it uses a easier paper as devised by the Ministry of Education); but this has been virtually impossible this year, when the ministry asked people asking for such status to have permanent residence in that country and had lived there for two years.
And then the more bizzare came.
When the JEE results were released in late June last year, there has been advertised by underground channels that foreign passports can be bought at 200,000 yuan, and after that students can come back into China and study as internationals.
The catch is, an "international student" is defined as having a foreign passport and coming to China with a studying visa, and the admissions standards is even laxer than those for overseas Chinese-- the HSK (Chinese Language Standards Exam) only is needed for most colleges; a few more famous have more formal tests; but what they tests are still elementary. The policy goal is that is to internationalize the campus.
Back at the ad. So in August, the student who went into the program went to a hotel in Fuzhou and had some elementary training, including elementary Tagalog and some "correct" responses to common questions. ("Why your English was so poor?" "I lived in Manila's Chinatown and attended the Chinese school there.") Then they give out their Chinese passports and get Filipino travel visas and goes to Manila.
In Manila, they stayed in a hotel for an entire month and started an crash coursh on Filipino language and culture. After one month they got their (forged) Filipino passports-- in order to increase credibility they has been stamped withseals from Thailand and the Philippines. Then they come back to China with the Filipino passports, went to colleges, and applied to colleges with forged Filipino diplomas and transcripts.