Exam fraud: news under the Thai sun?
Current affairs
University Thailand is in turmoil. During an entrance exam for a medical faculty of (in this case) Rangsit University in May 2016, fraud came to light. And not just any fraud, but fraud in a very ingenious way. An example of the application of current technology. Let me tell you how that worked.
About 1000 students had registered for the entrance exam. About 300 can be admitted. Three 'students' were hired by an unknown institute (for 6.000 Baht) to scan the exam via a camera with a memory chip built into special glasses. After 45 minutes (not allowed earlier) these 'fake' students left the exam room and gave their glasses to employees of the unknown institute. They transferred the exam into a file as quickly as possible and sent it to a room where experts were ready to formulate the answers to the questions.
Three other, non-fake, students who had promised to pay the institute 800.000 baht if they passed the entrance exam, sat in the exam room patiently, in good spirits and without healthy exam stress, constantly looking at their watches. The answers to the exam questions were passed on in code to a smart watch provided to the three students by the institute for this purpose. Just copy the answers from the watch and good luck, they thought. However, their behavior was suspicious: 3 students who finished their exam after 45 minutes? All three wearing the same type of glasses and meeting the same person outside the exam room? In short: they ran into the lamp.
On his birthday, the president of Rangsit University, Dr. Arthit, posted the whole story with pictures on his Facebook page and stated that the entrance exam has been declared invalid and must therefore be passed (at the end of this month). The outcry concerns the unethical behavior of the three students who wanted to become doctors (and - I think - also their parents who would pay the 800.000 Baht), an external institution that makes money from the fraud (the one that advertised in advance with a 100% success rate ), experts who (well paid for an hour's work, I suspect) cooperate in such a fraud (although I've heard almost no one about this before) and not least the ingenuity with which the fraud was set up.
Prevention is better than cure
I have always learned at home that prevention is better than cure. And that is not always easy because (if you are not Thai) you cannot look very well into the future and therefore do not know what to expect. But it is clear to everyone that the almost unlimited possibilities of technology will strongly determine the near and distant future of everyone's daily life. The same goes for life and work in a university. The ingenuity of the Rangsit fraud is child's play if you let your imagination run wild. Students who have chips implanted in their bodies, controlled by their eyes. The correct answers are stored in the brain. The question then begins to arise as to what fraud actually is. The Thai education system, including at the university level, still relies heavily on student memory rather than promoting independent critical thinking. Classroom education and many hours in class per week is the norm. Exams are there to test whether the students have listened carefully and whether their memory is good.
As a teacher you can do a lot to prevent fraud. Let me tell you what I'm used to doing:
- as few written exams as possible but papers and presentations;
- if a written exam (for large groups of students you cannot avoid it): different questions each exam period or the same questions with different answer options;
- not questions that appeal to memory but to analytical thinking;
- constant changes in the content of papers and presentations;
- involve the (dynamic) current events in the exams as much as possible;
- never ask for (recapitulate) definitions;
- assessing thinking and problem-solving skills.
But here too the danger of fraud is just around the corner, more in the form of plagiarism (copy-paste without acknowledgment of the source) than of copying definitions from textbooks. I am a very nice man but I have no consideration whatsoever for students who commit plagiarism or fraud. They get zero points from me and I recommend them to management for the usual suspension of 1 semester. So far, no student has escaped his/her punishment.
It is more difficult to demonstrate whether or not a student (a group of students) has had the paper written by a (paid) outsider. And that certainly happens. My remedy is that the students have to show a draft of the paper after a few weeks, but it is not completely watertight, I fully realize. There are even rumors that there are professional dissertation writers in Thailand. Talk about top academic fraud.
When the calf has drowned, the well is filled in
This is a good Dutch saying but I think it applies much more often to Thailand. There will undoubtedly also be a Thai variant of it. After the announcement of the fraud for the entrance exam at Rangsit University, the advice to prevent and combat fraud has not disappeared. In the first place, the three culprits have been suspended for life from all medical schools in Thailand. In proportion, the regular punishment for fraud if you are really a student (suspension for 1 semester) should be increased to expulsion from all universities around the world. Imprisonment is not possible because the fraudsters only broke the rules of the university, but no laws. But there are now calls for that to change. There may be a law that criminalizes exam fraud. The question arises as to how this law will be enforced if there are institutions and individuals who earn money from the fraud and may make use of university employees. Ethics and codes of conduct (for students and teachers) are more relevant here than legal measures.
But if even the Buddhist monks commit their exam fraud, there is still a long way to go. (www.buddhistchannel.tv)
Thesis writers have been available for hire for years. If you search on sites like fiverr there are plenty.
What I also did myself was warn in advance that I had already tried all methods myself and would be unrelenting if fraud turned out to be. Then quietly leave the room during an exam and look into the classroom for five minutes through an adjoining dark room. You go back with the dean and pick them out one by one. One with cheat sheets in a pencil case, one with a piece of paper in the sleeve of the sweater and ... the most beautiful: written on the upper leg under the skirt. Three in one 'catch…'
They still don't know how I knew and did….
Oh and my first 'technological' form of fraud was with an old Sony Walkman that had all the words spoken in English, alphabetically, with the translation. Then with a white cap (that you could buy twenty years ago) and a wire through my sleeve to my breast pocket. Not noticed.
During the HTS we had advanced HP48GX calculators. I could communicate with my neighbor via IR (in 1993 or something like that).
Then just learned and graduated from university without a single (attempted) fraud.
So it is possible…
Fraud with those HP48s was even easier than that. A clever head of ours once wrote a text program for it, so you could simply program whole pieces of text into it.
Of course they were also exchanged among themselves.
Many lecturers also gave mock exams. So it was a breeze to, for example, simply work out pump or steam turbine calculations and put them in your HP48. On the real exam, the questions were often the same, just different numbers.
That's right. I also linked it to my PC and was able to load entire dictations. Until a few years ago I used it for specific calculations in the cockpit, but that has now been completely overtaken by iPads…
Modern technology has unlimited possibilities, ethics and codes of conduct are certainly something to capture what it is all about. Whether that should prevail? Would be nice if that were enough. In my opinion, deterrent legal measures should also be part of these extremely harmful practices in addition to further tightening the rules of ethics and codes of conduct.
The above-mentioned rules that are already being used to prevent fraud are a good start.
Nico B
Fraud is as old as the road to Baan Khaikai. Fifty-one years ago, there was already a student at the HBS final exam who had a remarkably large wristwatch and yes, if you turned the knob, a string of paper came out with the most commonly used math formulas. Important things were written with the pen on the inside of the forearm and even in the palm of the hand. Every tool such as a logarithm book was checked by the teachers because it did contain codes by which people could remember formulas. And now they even have to check glasses and clocks and ban i-phones. Yes, why not, and why do people act surprised? They don't come from an egg here, do they?
This is the Thai equivalent of 'When the calf is drowned, one fills up the well':
โคหายจึ่งล้อมคอก khoo shark cheung lorm khork 'when the cow is gone one closes the stable' . The posh Thai word 'khoo' for 'cow' and the Dutch word 'cow' both come from Sanskrit. It is also 'koo' in Frisian.
And here's how much cheating is happening in American schools and universities, so very often:
http://www.plagiarism.org/resources/facts-and-stats/
Various studies (mainly self-reporting) show that between 40 and 95 percent have cheated on exams or assignments, a large group several times.
Another study indicates that 57 percent of a group of American students find exam fraud morally objectionable, but 43 percent don't think it's that bad.
I do have the impression that in Thailand teachers and teachers condone too much and do not impose punishment. Good thing it's happening now.
It's even worse with the monks. There the answers are handed out along with the questions…..and they have to learn the Thai moral standards…..
Dear Chris,
Thank you for your kind explanation which may be an 'eye opener' for many.
Your way of taking exams may be a bit too much to ask of the 'Thai'?
I was alerted many years ago to Recommendations of Diplomas for sale online.
It has been 18 years since I once worked in soi Pricha next to Ramkhampeang University and my Thai partner asked me why I saw so many students in uniform walking around in all Shopping Centers during the day. So there turned out to be 2 shifts because there were too many students, but it became clear to me about the life of many Thai students. It is a joke and there are enormous opportunities for young people with wealthy parents. There is no 'morality'!
As for young people with 'poor parents', they are capable of doing 'anything' to keep up with the 'rich people's children'.
As far as exam fraud is concerned, it also plays a role in the Netherlands!
My last Guesthouse was located in the area where many International students and PhDs from Webster University stayed. Those students who were not satisfied with their room and who could afford it, rented a room from me, among others. For example, there was a cousin of Karzai from Afghanistan, but also a 50% Dutchman whose parents worked for the UN, his father was Dutch. I also drove a taxi for students but also PHDs who had missed the University bus and had to be taken 15 km further in the bush to the campus. Students said that they only had to 'clock' (report present) because they had to go to school for a certain minimum number of hours. The Indian vice-director sometimes had breakfast or dinner with me and once asked me about my impression of his director, who was also Indian. So I gave my opinion plainly as I am. I noticed that PHDs with a non-Indian nationality did not receive a contract extension and new Indians came to work instead. It was a 'clan' formed by the Director. He was a nothing person, but surrounded by 'friends', he maintained dominance and control. There was also exam fraud there (6 years ago). It was a sickening world. I could walk around freely and knew all the teachers. ok the director and his private life.
When I went to Thailand at the age of 39 (in 1989), I left my diplomas at home (also my HBO diploma) and I would present myself as 'Rien', who I am and what I have to offer. That worked too. Not in the Netherlands, but in Thailand.
Many diplomas are bought in Thailand. I once had an employee (Master marketing)
because we thought she couldn't really do that much and we asked her how the hell she got her Master's, we were simply told that in Thailand everything is possible with money
Ever read how people in China get a PhD in economics, for example. The requirement is that you have three articles published in a professional journal.
Take 3 articles in English. You will have it translated into Chinese. You tinker with it to make it look more local. You then take them to three printing companies a few blocks away. They each bundle one of your articles with 'articles' from other economics students. Et voila! You are in 3 trade magazines. You can pick up your PhD diploma at the university tomorrow.
In my opinion, a sentence of 1 semester is far too light for serious fraud. The rules of the game must be clear. If a student does not comply with this, in my opinion it should be all over at that university. Each country must decide for itself whether a student at another university gets a second chance or not.
Ever experienced that a Dutch student was almost allowed to return to the Netherlands. She followed an expensive summer course at a top university in the US. The smooth, smart lady reported in her paper very detailed data about a very large country (down to the last person and m2). That information was completely superfluous and therefore probably reason for the assessor to see where the hell that data came from. There was nothing in her bibliography that gave that information. It became a riot. The university should have sent her home. After all, each student had been given a clear explanation at the start of what was and was not allowed, and not mentioning sources fell under the last category. The lady didn't understand. According to her, it was allowed in the Netherlands if it concerned something as simple as that. The icing on the cake was that the source turned out to be Wikipedia. There is nothing wrong with 'just look something up in Wikipedia', but this source is not allowed at universities because it is an open source that can contain real nonsense. In the end it ended with a fizzle, but this student went home with a much lower grade.
Why this long story? My experience is that the same standards do not apply all over the world. As far as scientific publications are concerned, they are more or less there and articles from dubious countries are simply ignored. As far as students are concerned, however, I'm not so sure there is uniformity. I therefore think that your idea of denying students who have committed fraud all universities around the world goes too far. It would penalize students who have committed the error in a country with strict requirements much more severely than students from other countries.
Well, more than 30 years ago you had pagers on which you could receive text messages, the semascript. Later in modified form known to a wider audience as 'buzzer'.
After a multiple-choice exam, the correct answers simply hung outside. There was no high degree of ingenuity involved.
At our old school in Antwerp they were super strict.
1 person per table, no talking, only use paper that was handed out by the teacher.
even blotting paper could only be used after checking. If you were nevertheless caught, irrevocably a 0
Thai so-called university diplomas are a joke by nature, notwithstanding the exceptions. Lots of bells and whistles, certainly, especially if the student in question can receive his/her diploma from a “Royal”.
I stay near the university city of Mahasarakham for a large part of the year and have already had several contacts with both students and professionals there..
Graduated for “English language” and cannot hold a simple conversation? Yes! I only learn how to read and write…
Simply hilarious.
Also a nice one I heard from a young lady who used it:
2 students go to the toilet at the same time, 2 cubicles next to each other. Skirts go out and are hung over the joint partition.
After the "message", each does not take her own skirt, but the other's. The weak student goes back to the exam hall with a note in the pocket of the skirt with answers given by the smart student.
… where I forgot to mention that of course a teacher accompanied me in the toilet room
Can't just give them the note.
Here are some more ideas 🙂
The ultraviolet pen, the smart bottle, flesh-colored ears:
cheating is now so advanced
http://s.hln.be/2701382
Dear Chris,
An enlightening story!
Fraud is of all times and difficult to prevent, especially in this time with its technical tools
I fully agree with your way of examining and examining.
Appeal to the combining, deductive and problem-solving competencies.
I too have been tricked into it during my 40-year career as a teacher.
Say hello to them there At our branch Rangsit/Stenden.
Steven Spoelder(Stenden University NL)
Read with great pleasure all the possibilities in which ways one can cheat during exams, exams or tests. In my time, such advanced methods were not yet used, but we sometimes managed to exchange information on the spot via sign language when the test was written.
In my opinion, there is only one method of preventing fraud during an important exam, which is an oral exam and then conducted by at least two impartial examiners, who are not part of the teaching team. For example, I had to take my qualification exam at the time.
Then look again at cheating.
Good luck to all those who are going to succeed in life honestly.