Cheating is OK: So What is Your Problem Anyway?
by In Thailand, cheating is the status quo. How can the west do business with Thailand when their culture has no ethics and is amoral?
“I am an ‘A’ student, it says so right there on my transcripts! Who cares that I graduated from an English university and I cannot speak English, read it or write it!” Unfortunately here in Thailand, not many do care. Having a university degree use to say something about a person, it use to say that you completed something, that you worked toward and successfully attained a level of education that satisfies educational standards qualifying you the honor of having a degree bestowed upon you. Having a piece of paper in Thailand that says you graduated from an accredited university means nothing and is used to weed out people that do not have one in the pursuit of a getting a higher paying job and even that is not guaranteed. 
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It could mean that you have a higher quality of education but that is more than often not the case here in Thailand. For the most part what it means is that you are better at cheating. Cheating has become an epidemic in Thailand. How students cheat has become more advanced and even though how you prevent cheating has also been giving more advanced high tech tools to help fight it, lax standards from university professors have actually become worse than in the past.
Cheating has infiltrated all educational institutions in Thailand in every industry. In a military academy entrance exam 46 men were caught using mobile phones strapped to their legs and hidden in their pants. Thailand is not alone in this epidemic; however, Asia tends to be on the forefront of pushing cheating to extremes. Miniature mics and speakers are sewn into shirt cuffs and hidden in to wigs. Fake IDs are sold at ridiculous prices that enable someone capable of passing the exams to take them as a proxy for the ‘customer’.
Of course, the standard ‘cheat notes’ typed on a piece of paper have been improved with technology by photocopying the notes to a reduced state that is hardly legible. These notes are passed around among classmates or even sold by vendors close to the school. According to the exam, whether a national exam or medical exam the sale of the exam is quite lucrative to vendors with some making as much as $1 million US.
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Post CommentCynthia Bartlett
On October 14, 2009 at 12:40 pm
The more things change the more they stay the same. Good luck with that.
CA Johnson
On October 21, 2009 at 7:19 pm
This was a very interesting article. It is a shame that people can get away with cheating like that. How are the students learning anything if they are constantly cheating? I hope that it changes too.
JaiRudolf
On November 15, 2009 at 1:30 pm
different new stuff leads to different new thought
Tony James
On December 20, 2010 at 4:58 am
I was in a Thai university test the other week. The girl in front had all the answers on small cards. I was amazed. I looked over at two university staff who were supposed to be watching, were just talking as this went on.
The lecturer then came into the room, he had been to the toilet or something, and caught a group at the back with their book out, talking, and copying. He did nothing, just said ’stop that’.
It is the blind leading the blind. No one cares. They will still talk all the time in the class and cheat in the exam. It is part society. And the crazy thing is.. if you say anything you are the bad person for complaining.