Education Realist discusses Asian Immigrants and what no one mentions aloud:
The stereotype, delicately put: first and second generation Chinese, Korean, and Indian Americans, as well as nationals from these countries, often fail to embody the sterling academic credentials they include with their applications, and do not live up to the expectations these universities have for top tier students.
Less delicately put: They cheat. And when they don’t cheat, they game tests in a way utterly incomprehensible to the Western mind, leading to test scores with absolutely zero link to underlying ability. Or both. Or maybe it’s all cheating, and we just don’t know it. Either way, the resumes are functional fraud.
[...]
The universities look at the resumes of all Asian kids — recent immigrants, long-established natives, nationals — and know that many of them are fraudulent. They know that many of the kids they accept will not be able to function on their campus, whereas others will be able to get great grades so long as they cheat. They know that many of the students don’t have the inquisitive mind, genuine interest in intellectual pursuits that universities like to see in students (or pretend they do). But the universities want the great, if often fraudulent, stats to puff up their numbers for the rankings systems, to offset the athlete, the legacies (for privates), and the Kashawn Campbells (for publics). And so they try to minimize it, while still getting what they want — an improved profile, out of state fees for four years, instead of just one, while not overloading the campus with too many Asians.
This perpetuates two frauds:
The first, of course, benefits the cheaters and their schools at both high school and university level. But the second perpetuates a much larger misconception: People really believe that our top high school students are taking ten-twelve AP courses during their high school year, maintaining 4.5 GPAs, and have the underlying knowledge one would expect from such study. But this almost certainly isn’t true. And once you understand the reality, it’s hard not to wonder about all the “weeding out courses” in organic chemistry and other brutal STEM college courses, the ones that Americans are abandoning in large numbers. The willingness to accept the cheating, to slap it on the wrist if that, is leading to lies that convince a lot of American kids that they aren’t smart enough for tough courses because they don’t cheat and aren’t aware that others are.
This has been an open secret for decades.
It’s not just universities, similar “open” shenanigans are also going elsewhere, in predominantly black schools for example, as seen by the recent cheating scandal in Atlanta:
“An investigation by the Georgia Bureau of Investigation released in July 2011 found that 44 out of 56 public schools cheated on the 2009 Criterion-Referenced Competency Tests. 178 teachers and principals were found to have fixed incorrect answers entered by students. The size of the scandal has been described as one of the largest in United States history”
Couple that with actual conditions in those schools, and you have the perfect storm:
Essay by a teacher in a black high school.
“The mainstream press gives a hint of what conditions are like in black schools, but only a hint. Expressions journalists use like chaotic, or poor learning environment, or lack of discipline, do not capture what really happens.”