The previous university I worked at had a problem even one level more sophisticated. The school had a lot of international students, mainly from China and the Middle East. Mostly these were children of rich (but not obscenely rich) parents and often not particularly smart (the school was not super highly ranked).
Now the ghostwriting was also an issue, but that theoretically still can be caught (and it was from time to time). One way to do that was requiring in person exams and you always had to cary your uni I'd for the exams.
However, what the University administration realised is that there were some students essentially hired someone at the beginning of their studies to impersonate them at registration, where they got their photo taken. The "impersonator" would then complete the full studies for the student.
Now you need to id yourself at registration, however if the hired person looked somewhat similar it would just go through.
I was doing some genetic algorithm research at UO and I was approached by some kid who basically demanded that I do one of his electronics projects. I got some details, reported him to his academic advisor, and was then told that he was the son of one of the diplomats in town and that nothing could really be done.
So I agreed to help him do the project. He took that to mean that I would do it for him, he did no work and didn't show up on 2 of the 3 times that we had scheduled to work on it together.
And then he got mad at me when the project literally caught fire because of an absolutely obvious short that I put there on purpose to see if he'd catch it. I told him that if he couldn't be arsed to write the schematic he should at least have read it.
(This was between 10 and 15 years ago, and all this guy had to do was look at the breadboard for 2 minutes)
Yeah, petty revenge, basically :) I put a nichrome wire, in yellow plastic cover, between Vcc and Gnd. I told him to ensure that the circuit matched the schematic. He didn't remove the wire, so once he powered the thing up, it caught fire. I don't know if the circuit worked with it removed (it should have, but I wasn't present when the assignment was due).
I had a small class in engineering and was surprised at the exam time to see a few faces I hadn't seen all year. I assumed it must be people coming back to sit a second time or something. I'm so Naive.
Unless he finds someone who looks really similar, these international students should bring their passports/F1 visas? My guess is that the administration is turning a blind-eye because of the international $$.
I know it's popular to blame malice on part of organisations, but I don't think it's in the interest of the school to overlook this. In fact I heard about this in a discussion/information saying how this was a problem and what to do about it.
Yes they require a passport at registration, but it's difficult to decide for an admin who sees someone for 2 min and looks at the passport for maybe 10s that that person is not the person on the passport. Especially so if you are not expecting it and the person comes from a different background (we struggle more with distinguishing people from other ethnicities)
I think this is how they got wind of the scheme though, someone got suspicious.
I heard rumors about similar stuff when I was a student - but not to that extent, that you had someone impersonate someone for the whole semester.
In majors with huge classes, no compulsory attendance, and schools where ID cards don't require a picture - this was apparently a thing. Some people would simply hire people to take the exam for them.
Obviously this wouldn't fly in a small class with 15-20 students or so, but very feasible in classes with 200-300 students, and where the exams are also open to previous year students.
I'm not sure if this is a serious comment, but I'd think professors generally aren't in a position to know their students' standardized test scores (never mind whether they'd care).
At my university we can see any student's transcript including scores through our faculty portal. But you're right, generally no one cares to look these things up.
This was largely a technical university. I also doubt that the hired students were getting top scores. That often was not the goal, for those privaledged kids, getting a foreign degree almost certainly guaranteed a cushy job back home. The grades didn't matter too much.
In my country universities get money for foreign students. In fact more than they get for local students from the government. This is also the reason why universities switched to English in the 1990s.
Yes long term this can damage your reputation but in capitalism nobody cares.
In France since the 1990" roughly one third of the university students are foreigners with a higher proportion in PhD studies (41%) than in bachelor studies (11%) [0].
Now the ghostwriting was also an issue, but that theoretically still can be caught (and it was from time to time). One way to do that was requiring in person exams and you always had to cary your uni I'd for the exams.
However, what the University administration realised is that there were some students essentially hired someone at the beginning of their studies to impersonate them at registration, where they got their photo taken. The "impersonator" would then complete the full studies for the student.
Now you need to id yourself at registration, however if the hired person looked somewhat similar it would just go through.