Teachers be careful! A service on WeChat designed to find student subtitutes

[Paul Bower]

Hi everyone !

 

My name is Paul. I would like to know if some of you have ever heard of a paid service on WeChat used by some chinese students to find substitutes who attend class for them.

One of my student showed me the following video, which was originally aired on Liaoning TV and posted on Youku :

 

 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=z5F3Qit06-A

 

 

According to the video, this practice is well spread in some universities in the province of Zhejiang.

I’m a teacher in a chinese university (in Guangdong province) and I don’t think this ever happen in any of my classes

(I believe I would have noticed if one of my student had been replaced by someone else).

As a teacher, or a student, in China, have you ever witnessed this practice in your university ?

 

[imron]

I once had a student of mine swap places with a student from another class.  It was only the second lesson of the semester and they wanted to see which of the foreign teachers they liked better.

 

Unfortunately for the student, they had chosen a weird name that had stuck in my mind and so when I called the roll and it was a different student I was immediately suspicious.  I asked who was the class monitor, and then asked the class monitor if the student was who they said they were, and the class monitor said yes the student was telling the truth.  I said ok, but that at the end of class we were all going to go to the administration office to sort things out.

 

During the break, the monitor, the student and the real student came up to me and admitted that they had lied, apologised for everything and asked not to take thing to the school administration.  I agreed, but set them all a 400 word essay, due the following week, explaining and apologising for their actions.

[Lu]

What I find funny is that people will pay other people to get their education. What an opportunity: if you play this smart, you can cobble together not only a decent univerisity education (except the diploma) for free, you can even get paid for it. Combine this with an essay-writing gig and you'll even get your work graded. Find the right client and you can just pretend to be them from day one and get an entire uni degree (except the diploma) with a full scholarship!

 

I suspect teachers usually won't care. This is just an extension of sleeping through class, with the difference that presumably the paid substitute students stay awake and look attentive.

[Demonic_Duck]

@Lu: good point, pretty sweet deal when you put it like that. Except that I'm pretty sure the essay-writing and exam-sitting parts are illegal in China (and maybe elsewhere too?)

[Lu]

Sure, it's illegal. But that doesn't seem to stop people, neither in China nor elsewhere. And the risk is mostly on the official student, isn't it? They can hardly expel the imposter.

[Demonic_Duck]

Expel? No. Jail? Yes.

 

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/education/universityeducation/7672272/Student-jailed-for-accepting-cash-to-sit-someone-elses-English-exam.html

 

(Though that example is from England, not China.)

[陳德聰]

I haven't heard of it being illegal in Canaduh, but in my city it's very common for people to pay others to complete their online coursework for them. Not quite the same as in-person substitutes for a whole semester, but presumably you also would have to pay someone to pretend to be you at the final exam since it is done "irl" as opposed to online...

[Lumbering Ox]

"What I find funny is that people will pay other people to get their education. What an opportunity: if you play this smart, you can cobble together not only a decent univerisity education (except the diploma) for free, you can even get paid for it."

 

Problem is the paper is more important for getting in the door than the knowledge.

 

Spoiler alert

 

It was a bit of a plot element in the movie 3 idiots.

[Lu]

Spoiler

Ha, you're right! I've seen that movie and never made the connection.

 

Sure, the paper is important. Still, if you don't have the money to get that, getting the knowledge without the paper is a lot better than not getting either.

 

By the way, the forum has spoiler tags, like this: [ spoiler ] Your spoiler goes here [ / spoiler ]

 

Your spoiler goes here.

[Lumbering Ox]

It wasn't that much of a spoiler anyway ;) All Izz Vell.

 

Knowledge for it's own sake is fine, I am a nerd of Potsie like proportions. However if universities depended on the pursuit of knowledge to fill it's classes, they would be hard pressed to even give away their seats. I have loads of paper that I actually earned but never used and people often think it was a waste of time and question why.