Plagiarism

Out of Class

A few weeks ago, I read an article about rising numbers of Chinese applicants to American universities. While reading the article, I found something shocking - many Chinese applicants hire agents to help them write their application essays. Because they are not proficient in English, they recite what they want to say and the agents will write their essays for them. According to a research conducted by Zinch China, "90% recommendation letter are fake, 70% of the essays are not written by the applicant, and 50% of high school transcripts are falsified". What's worse is that the act of cheating does not stop at the application process. After these students are admitted to universities in the United States, they plagiarize in class, in assignments, in essays, and they do not think that they are doing anything wrong.

Why don't they feel guilty? In the Chinese culture, the most important thing when submitting an assignment is to get the answer right. Originality? It doesn't matter. I also read in another article (this was a few weeks ago so I lost track of the link) that they think taking information directly from a book is not shameful. In fact, (in a joking way) the author of the book should be proud because the information in his or her book is good enough to be "borrowed". In the American culture, a student can be expelled for plagiarism.

A part of me understand the Chinese students. When I was in Malaysia, no one taught me about plagiarism. Maybe no one thought it was necessary to teach it because we never wrote research essays, and the situation could be similar in China. Hence, when they go to the States, they were just doing something that they didn't know was against the rules. In addition, most Chinese students were doing the same thing, so why shouldn't they? This is the idea of relativism, where one action is unacceptable in one culture while acceptable in another.

However, now the Chinese students are studying in America, so should they go against the norm of their home country and adapt America's rule? Who decides whether the Chinese students should let go of the norm of their home country? According to consequentialism, if the Chinese students can produce a good essay by plagiarizing, as long as their essays receive a good grade, aren't their actions justified?

I personally detest what they are doing. Cheating is wrong. Plagiarizing is wrong. Sadly enough, it seems to be a trend in China. How can admission officers identify whether submitted application documents are forged or real? Most importantly, how can the Chinese learn that it is ethically wrong to hire an agent to help write their application essays?

For more information, please read:
Plagiarism in Academia: China and the US http://gnovisjournal.org/2011/11/18/plagiarism-in-academia-china-and-the-u-s/
Busted: The top 5 ways that Chinese students cheat on their undergraduate applications to American schools http://www.washcouncil.org/documents/pdf/WIEC2011_Fraud-in-China.pdf
The China Conundrum http://www.nytimes.com/2011/11/06/education/edlife/the-china-conundrum.html?_r=1

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