High-tech cheating in Asia's high-stakes exams
Passing notes in the exam room? It's so passé.
Try this instead: sew a tiny microphone and speaker inside a shirt cuff, activate on a concealed cellphone, and get your buddy outside to scan the textbook for answers. It worked this year for two first-year medical students in Lucknow, India - until a supervisor spotted them in action.
Or why not sit out the test altogether? In China, professional exam-takers known as "hired guns" handle the bothersome task of actually turning up to take a test. For a fee, an agency will send a look-alike to the exam room, with the promise of a 95 percent success rate for university entrance tests.
As stressed students across Asia sweat through do-or-die exams for coveted college spots, educators are struggling with a surge in high-tech cheats. Pressure to get into good schools is heightened by the belief that only the best will succeed in a tough job market.
Rapid economic growth in countries like China and India has only added to the pressure from parents and peers. By some estimates, barely 1 percent of hundreds of thousands of Indian applicants seeking college spots this year will land a place.
"There's too much pressure on students these days. Competition is cutthroat," says R.K. Mahapatra, founder of www.studentindia.com, an education portal. "Desperation to succeed drives the urge to cheat."
In China, authorities this week took the drastic step of scrambling cellphone signals at test centers where millions of students were sequestered for two-day college-entrance exams. Test-takers were required to sign honesty pledges and were warned against buying answers online in advance or signing up for cellphone message services.
India's Lucknow University, which has long been plagued by cheats, resorted last year to installing CCTV to watch students during the April exam period. "But that proved to be ineffective in closely monitoring the students," says R.P. Singh, the university's vice chancellor. "And it wasn't well received within the student community, who found the move derogatory."
In Vietnam, crib sheets in eye-straining fonts called "life buoys" are sold at tea shops before entrance tests, designed to be consulted discreetly in the exam room. Thailand is getting wise to high-tech sneaks: last year, 46 men were caught with cellphones taped to their body or hidden in underwear at a military academy entrance exam in Bangkok, Thailand.
Gadget-savvy Japan has long enforced a ban on cellphones and other electronic devices in exam centers. Most universities disqualify without warning any students whose phones ring during a test. Baseball caps are also forbidden to stop students from writing cribs inside.
The consequences of getting caught can be severe. China's Education Ministry says some 1,700 students spotted cheating on last year's exam won't be allowed to sit for the test again. Last year, South Korea jailed members of criminal gangs who infiltrated the national college entrance test and sent answers by cellphone to exam-takers. Hundreds of scores were invalidated.
But, morality pledges notwithstanding, the shame attached to cheating doesn't always stick. In the ultracompetitive environment of Asian education, the ends can be seen to justify the means.
Just ask Ashish, a telecommunications graduate from India's Pune University. He was caught cheating on his final-year exam - he diagrammed an elaborate electronic circuit on the underside of his calculator - and kicked out. But hereturned and passedthe next term, and freely admits to cheating on most tests at university.
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