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Feature: Exam culture spurs many to cheat

"Students embrace cheating because they don't view it as unethical. They're just interested in their goal -- an A -- and don't consider the moral ramifications of their actions."

Lee Ming-tsung, National Taiwan University sociology professor

Sweat rolled down "Stephen's" neck as the echo of footsteps in an auditorium announced a proctor's approach.

He thought he'd been collared when the footsteps halted beside his desk.

Soon, however, the proctor moved on and Stephen continued whispering answers to a fellow examinee.

Stephen, now a math teacher in Taichung, said: "I was very nervous," while recalling how he had helped his student cheat on a key high school math test eight years ago.

Test administrators didn't bat an eyelid when Stephen -- then a master's student of engineering in his mid-20s at National Taiwan University (NTU) -- had registered for a high school exam and took the test in a hall full of 17-year-olds, he said.

"Nobody cared," he said.

In roughly 30 minutes, Stephen finished the test and then relayed his answers to a pupil who he had been tutoring -- a high school student who stood little chance of acing the exam on his own.

The two were seated next to each other because they had signed up for the test together, Stephen said.

In a country where cheating on tests is common and often performed with the help of cutting-edge technology, cheaters like Stephen are smalltime.

The pros, he said, use scanner pens and earpieces, relying on electronic signals to transmit information in and out of testing sites.

Although far fewer than their more conventional counterparts, such tech-savvy cheaters sometimes deal disproportionately powerful blows to the education system, he said.

In 2004, for instance, computer hackers in China forced the world's leading test developer, New Jersey-based Educational Testing Services (ETS), to scrap its computerized version of the Graduate Record Examination (GRE) on both sides of the Taiwan Strait after they raided ETS' database and poached sensitive information, said Joe Harwood, an English proficiency test developer in Taipei.

Earlier this month, Taiwan's Language Training and Testing Center, which administers the GRE in Taiwan, announced it would begin administering radically revised GREs in September because of security concerns.

ETS likely had both smalltime cheaters and heavyweights boasting spy gadgets and hacking know-how in mind when it overhauled its GRE.

The ETS Web site now mentions updated security features and less memorizable test content.

But try as test administrators might to prevent cheating, the problem is unlikely to go away, education experts said.

A deep-rooted education system that determines academic success based on test performance is behind the rampant cheating, said Taiwan Solidarity Union Legislator Lin Jih-jia (林志嘉), who serves on the legislature's Education and Culture committee.

Cheating is more severe here than in the West because Taiwanese students have only their test scores to rely on in the admission process, while admission to Western schools is based on diversified criteria, Lin said.

"With tests deciding one's future, one is likely to cook up ways -- both legitimate and illegitimate -- to ace them," he said.

For NTU sociology professor Lee Ming-tsung (李明璁), the proliferation of cheating rings fits with a growing trend of fraud in Taiwan.

Amid a surge of identity theft and phone scam cases in recent years, cheating is a reflection in academia of a broader social problem involving a distorted value system emphasizing results, not the means, he said.

"Students embrace cheating because they don't view it as unethical," Lee said.

"They're just interested in their goal -- an A -- and don't consider the moral ramifications of their actions," he said.

When society fails to morally indoctrinate students, however, the Telecommunications Police Brigade, under the National Police Agency, races to plug the gaps.

Armed with high-tech devices that sniff out electronic chatter, brigade officers visit testing sites before exams to determine the presence of normal signals there, said brigade deputy commander Liu Tai-chiang (劉太強).

Any deviation from that original reading during the exam results in officers -- often disguised as proctors -- zeroing in on the source of the atypical signal, he added.

"We caught test takers once who installed hidden cameras on their glasses and transmitted footage of questions to an outside source, who in turn produced answers and beamed them back via earpieces hidden in test takers' ears," Liu said.

A variation on that method, Stephen said, involves using a scanner pen that can both scan and transmit whatever it touches on paper.

The source outside the building who receives questions and broadcasts answers back is a test wizard who is also handsomely paid -- typically hundreds of thousands of NT dollars per cheater -- for his services, Liu said.

Who fronts the money?

Parents, of course, Stephen said.

"They fear their kid will flunk a key test and thus won't move on to a better school," he said.

"A lot's at stake, so they're willing to get their kid involved and cough up cash," he said.

Cram schools typically spawn such rings, Liu said.

Adults also use electronic signal-based cheating methods to ace licensing or civil servant exams, he said.

"We've busted two such rings comprised of up to 30 testers each in the past five years," he said.

Speaking to the Taipei Times in a smoky bar last week, Stephen, 33, reminisced over high school classmates' planting answer keys in bathroom stalls erroneously marked "Out of Order" during tests.

One bathroom break was all it took to ace the exam, he said, his eyes gazing off nostalgically behind coke-bottle glasses.

Asked whether a fat wad of cash was behind his helping his student cheat almost a decade ago, Stephen shrugged and took a long, contemplative drag on his cigarette.

"No," he replied. "I wanted him to do well; he was like a little brother to me."

"Plus, I wanted to see if I could ace that exam -- again," he said.
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