Why do Chinese students think it’s OK to cheat?

Kelly Yang says criminalising cheating in the gaokao university entrance exam is a good start to fixing the problem. But parents must also teach their children the right attitude to learning

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China’s education officers monitor students taking their university entrance exam in Zhengzhou, Henan province, earlier this month. Photo: AFP

Published: 12:05pm, 14 Jun 2016Updated: 12:05pm, 14 Jun 2016

Cheating is now officially a criminal offence in China. Students found guilty of cheating in the notoriously difficult university entranceexam will now face up to seven years in prison. Many are calling the punishment overly harsh. Even so, I think it’s exactly what China needs, if it is enforced fairly.

In recent years, cheating has got so out of control that, three years ago, in the small town of Zhongxiang, Hubei ( 湖北 ), a group of gaokao invigilators found themselves under siege as enraged parents and students trapped them in their office and threw rocks at the windows, shouting, “We want fairness! Let us cheat!”

University entrance exam is not the be-all, end-all in life

It’s not just the gaokao – it’s the SAT, the GRE, and a whole host of other exams. An estimated 90 per cent of all recommendation letters for Chinese applicants to United States universities are fake. Some 70 per cent of application essays are not written by students, and 50 per cent of grades transcripts are falsified.

Once the students arrive on campus, more cheating services are available. Last month, Reuters published a devastating report on cheating by Chinese students in the US, finding a thriving black market which includes services to write essays, do the students’ homework, and take their exams. It seems you can now get a degree from an Ivy League school without ever leaving your house!

Parents wait outside a school where their children were sitting the gaokao university entrance exam in Beijing. Most Chinese parents tell their children from young that their goal in life is to get into a good school. Photo: AFP

Thousands of Chinese parents take to the streets to protest university admission quotas

With so much evidence of cheating, the question is: why do Chinese kids cheat? Well, because they want to and because they can. Most Chinese parents tell their kids from a very early age that their goal in life is to get into a good school. That’s it, not learn the right skills or to find inspiration in school to seek meaningful work. Just “get into a good school”.

Education gets reduced to a product, one which, like all other products, can be bought and sold