Hypocrisy's Penalty Corner

Jawed Naqvi in The Dawn


THERE’S been severe criticism, primarily in the Western media, of the gross exploitation of migrant workers in Qatar’s bid to host football’s World Cup that began in Doha last week. There’s more than a grain of truth in the accusation, and there’s dollops of hypocrisy about it.

FIFA President Gianni Infantino brought it out nicely by calling out the Western media’s double standards in what is tantamount to shedding crocodile tears for the exploited workers.

The CNN, unsurprisingly, slammed Infantino’s anger, and quoted human rights groups as describing his comments as “crass” and an “insult” to migrant workers. Why is Infantino convinced that the Western media wallows in its own arrogance?

It is nobody’s secret that migrant workers in the Gulf are paid a pittance, which becomes more deplorable when compared to the enormous riches they help produce. As is evident, the workers’ exploitation is not specific to Qatar’s hosting of a football tournament, but a deeper malaise in which Western greed mocks its moral sermons.

As their earnings with hard labour abroad fetch them more than what they would get at home, the workers become unwitting partners in their own abuse. This has been the unwritten law around the generation of wealth in oil-rich Gulf countries, though their rulers are not alone in the exploitative venture.

Western colluders, nearly all of them champions of human rights, have used the oil extracted with cheap labour that plies Gulf economies, to control the world order. The West and the Gulf states have both benefited directly from dirt cheap workforce sourced from countries like India, Sri Lanka, Pakistan, Bangladesh and the far away Philippines.

Making it considerably worse is the sullen cutthroat competition that has prevailed for decades between workers of different countries, thereby undercutting each other’s bargaining power. The bruising competition is not unknown to their respective governments that benefit enormously from the remittances from an exploited workforce. The disregard for work conditions is not only related to the Gulf workers, of course, but also migrant labour at home. In the case of India, we witnessed the criminal apathy they experienced in the Covid-19 emergency.

Asian women workers in the Gulf face quantifiably worse conditions. An added challenge they face is of sexual exploitation. Cheap labour imported from South Asia, therefore, answers to the overused though still germane term — Western imperialism. Infantino was spot on. Pity the self-absorbed Western press booed him down.

Sham outrage over a Gulf country hosting the World Cup is just one aspect of hypocrisy. A larger problem remains rooted in an undiscussed bias.

Moscow and Beijing in particular have been the Western media’s leading quarries from time immemorial. The boycott of the Moscow Olympics over the USSR’s invasion of Afghanistan was dressed up as a moral proposition, which it might have been but for the forked tongue at play. That numerous Olympic contests went ahead undeterred in Western cities despite their illegal wars or support for dictators everywhere was never called out. What the West did with China, however, bordered on distilled criminality.

I was visiting Beijing in September 1993 with prime minister Narasimha Rao’s media team. The streets were lined with colourful buntings and slogans, which one mistook for a grand welcome for the visiting Indian leader. As it turned out the enthusiasm was all about Beijing’s bid to host the 2000 Olympics. It was fortunate Rao arrived on Sept 6 and could sign with Li Peng a landmark agreement for “peace and tranquility” on the Sino-Indian borders. Barely two week later, China would collapse into collective depression after Sydney snatched the 2000 Olympics from Beijing’s clasp. Western perfidy was at work again.

As it happened, other than Sydney and Beijing three other cities were also in the running — Manchester, Berlin and Istanbul — but, as The New York Times noted: “No country placed its prestige more on the line than China.” When the count began, China led the field with a clear margin over Sydney. Then the familiar mischief came into play.

Beijing led after each of the first three rounds, but was unable to win the required majority of the 89 voting members. One voter did not cast a ballot in the final two rounds. After the third round, in which Manchester won 11 votes, Beijing still led Sydney by 40 to 37 ballots. “But, confirming predictions that many Western delegates were eager to block Beijing’s bid, eight of Manchester’s votes went to Sydney and only three to the Chinese capital,” NYT reported. Human rights was cited as the cause. Hypocritically, that concern disappeared out of sight and Beijing hosted a grand Summer Olympics in 2008.

Football is a mesmerising game to watch. Its movements are comparable to musical notes of a riveting symphony. Above all, it’s a sport that cannot be easily fudged with. But its backstage in our era of the lucre stinks of pervasive corruption.

Anger in Beijing burst into the open when it was revealed in January 1999 that Australia’s Olympic Committee president John Coates promised two International Olympic Committee members $35,000 each for their national Olympic committees the night before the vote, which gave the games to Sydney by 45 votes to 43.

The Daily Mail described the “usual equanimity” with which Juan Antonio Samaranch, the then Spanish IOC president, tried to diminish the scam. The allegations against nine of the 10 IOC members accused of graft “have scant foundation and the remaining one has hardly done anything wrong”.

“In a speech to his countrymen,” recalled the Mail, “he blamed the press for ‘overreacting’ to the underhand tactics, including the hire of prostitutes, employed by Salt Lake City to host the next Winter Olympics.” Samaranch sidestepped any reference to the tactics employed by Sydney to stage the Millennium Summer Games.

This reality should never be obscured by other outrages, including the abominable working conditions of Asian workers in Qatar.

BME teachers often given stereotypical roles in schools

Richard Adams in The Guardian

BME teachers say they face ‘microaggression’ in the staff room and low expectations from seniors. Photograph: Alamy



Black and Asian teachers in the UK say they are often saddled with stereotypical roles in schools and want more support from senior staff in handling incidents of racism, according to a survey.

The Runnymede Trust’s poll of more than 1,000 black and minority ethnic teachers found that they were most likely to be told to organise school events such as Black History Month, or tasked with behaviour responsibilities rather than being given more challenging teaching or leadership roles.

The survey’s authors said that black teachers in particular feared being labelled troublemakers or being viewed as “aggressive” if they challenged any decisions.

Zubaida Haque, a research associate at the Runnymede Trust, said: “Our survey found that BME teachers were not only overwhelmed with the mountain of paperwork but they are also beaten down by the everyday ‘microaggressions’ in the staff room and the low expectations and support by senior staff in their schools.

“This has led to BME teachers feeling undervalued, isolated and disillusioned with their careers. If BME and white pupils see BME teachers being treated unequally, this sends out unacceptable signals to the next generation. For this reason, both schools and the government must do everything in their power to tackle the barriers faced by BME teachers in schools.”

The survey was conducted for the National Union of Teachers annual conference, which starts on Friday in Cardiff.

The survey’s authors concluded that “institutional racism – often manifested in subtle and covert ‘microaggressions’ by senior staff – still plays a key part in the barriers to career progression for black teachers in many British primary and secondary schools”.

While Asian teachers reported “casual stereotypes” and Islamophobia from both staff and students, the authors said “it does suggest that the experience of racism is particularly insidious and persistent for black teachers in this study”.

In interviews conducted alongside the survey, teachers said that racist comments and attitudes from students were often not dealt with, although others reported a zero tolerance to racism from senior leadership.

Many of the teachers questioned were positive about their treatment, although those working at schools with few other black or minority ethnic staff reported the highest levels of dissatisfaction.

Several teachers said that the government’s Prevent strategy, aimed at tackling extremism in schools, placed an additional burden on Asian and Muslim teachers.

One black British secondary school teacher told the researchers: “Students feel they can be blatantly racist, and there are no consequences for them. These extremist views are not covered in the Prevent agenda because they are not seen as extremism.”

Some 60% of those surveyed reported that they were considering leaving the profession altogether, while more than half said their school was not a welcoming environment for BME children.

Kevin Courtney, the NUT’s general secretary, said: “This report shows us the cost of the gap between the proportion of BME teachers and BME pupils, which is getting wider because diversity in teaching is not keeping pace with pupil demographics. Alongside a proper strategy to recruit and retain enough teachers, the government needs a credible strategy for attracting sufficient BME teachers.”

Why are Asians under represented in English cricket?

by Girish Menon

A recent ECB survey found that 30 % of the grass root level cricket players were of Asian origin while it reduces dramatically to 6.2 % at the level of first class county cricketers. Why?

When this question was asked to Moeen Ali, he opined among other things, "I also feel we lose heart too quickly. A lot of people think it is easy to be a professional cricketer, but it is difficult. There is a lot of sacrifice and dedication," While some may view Ali's views as suffering from the Stockholm syndrome, in my personal opinion it resembles the 'Lazy Japanese and Thieving Germans' metaphor highlighted by the economist Ha Joon Chang. Hence, Ali's views should not be confused with what in my perspective are some of the actual reasons why there is a dearth of Asian faces in county cricket.

The Cambridge economist Ha Joon Chang has acquired a global reputation as a myth buster and is a must read for all those who wish to contradict the dogmatic neoliberal consensus. Chapter 9 of Ha Joon Chang's old classic Bad Samaritans actually discusses this metaphor in detail. He quotes Beatrice Webb in 1911 describing the Japanese as having 'objectionable notions of leisure and a quite intolerable personal independence'. She was even more scathing about the Koreans: '12 millions of dirty, degraded, sullen, lazy and religionless savages who slouch about in dirty white garments...'  The Germans were typically described by the British as a 'dull and heavy people'. 'Indolence' was a word that was frequently associated with the Germanic nature.

But now that the economies of Japan, Korea and Germany have become world leaders such denigration of their peoples has disappeared. If Moeen Ali's logic was right then Pakistanis, Sri Lankans and Indians living in their own countries should also not amount to much in world cricket. But the evidence is to the contrary. So the right question to ask would be why has English cricket not tapped into the great love for cricket among its citizens from the Indian subcontinent?

If it wants the truth, English cricket should examine the issue raised by the Macpherson report on 'institutional racism in the police' and ask if this is true in county cricket as well. Immigrants, as the statistics suggest, from the subcontinent can be found in large numbers in grassroots cricket from the time they joined the British labour force. There are many immigrants only cricket leagues in the UK, e.g in Bradford, where players of good talent can be found. But, as Jass Bhamra's father mentioned in the film Bend it Like Beckham they have not been allowed access to the system. Why, Yorkshire waited till the 1990s to select an Asian player for the first time.

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Of course, if the England team is intended to be made up of players of true English stock only then we need not have this discussion. Some of the revulsion towards Kevin Pietersen among some of the establishment could be better understood using this lens. However, now due to its dwindling base if the ECB  wishes to get the support of Asian cricket lovers it will have to transform the way the game is run.

Secondly, to make it up the ranks in English cricket it is essential to have an expensive well connected coach. Junior county selections are based on this network and any unorthodox talent would be weeded out at the earliest level either because of not having a private coach or because the technique is rendered untenable as it blots the copybook. So, many children of Asian origin from weaker economic backgrounds are weeded out by this network.

This is akin to the methods adopted by parents in the shires where grammar schools exist. Hiring expensive tutors for their wards is the middle class way of crowding out genuinely academic oriented students from weaker economic backgrounds. Better off Asians are equally culpable in distorting the grammar school system and its objectives.

So what could be done. I think positive discrimination is the answer. We only need to look at South African cricket to see what results it can bring. My suggestion would be that every team should have two places reserved: one for a minority player and another for an unorthodox player. This should to some extent break up the parent-coach orthodoxy and breathe some fresh air and dynamism into English cricket.

Personally, I have advised my son that he should play cricket only for pleasure and not to aspire for serious professional cricket because of the opacity in the selection mechanism which means an uncertain economic future. He is 16, a genuine leg spinner with little coaching but with good control on flight and turn. Often he complains about conservative captains and coaches who were unwilling to gamble away a few runs in the hope of getting wickets. Many years ago, when my son was not picked by a county side, I asked the coach the reason and he said because, 'he flights the ball and is slower through the air'. With what conviction then could I have told my lad that you can make a decent living out of cricket if you persevere enough?

Youth cricket in Cambridge - A structured middle class affair.

By Girish Menon

Rob Steen in his article, Ravi Bopara and the cultural conundrum,  raises an important question when he asks, "Why does Britain still await its first batting star of Asian stock ?". In this article I will attempt to answer Rob's questions based on my observations in Cambridge.

In Cambridge, where I live, children's cricket is a formally structured activity. A child has to be enrolled in a cricket club early; he goes for training once a week, mostly in a net, and he plays in a 15/20 over match against another club on a weekday evening. There are few spontaneous games of cricket played by kids using rubber balls and plain bats unlike in the maidans of the Indian subcontinent. Those parents who have cricketing ambitions for their children double up as manager of the club team which gives their kids an unfair developmental advantage. These parents also employ certified coaches to ensure that their child has a further edge as he climbs up the cricket hierarchy. The parent's aim is to get their child into the county team at the earliest age possible because this confers the advantage of opportunity and incumbency to their child. Also, as discussed by Malcolm Gladwell in 'Outliers', those children born at the start of the school year and whose parents know the workings of the system have a greater likelihood than the latter borns of unaware parents. To add to this inequity, there is no cricket played in most of the comprehensive schools in the county. Thus cricket has become an additional academic subject for the children of upper middle class parents. The absence of cricket on terrestrial TV further accentuates the problem, as children with no access to SKY TV are not exposed to real time live cricket and its heroes. The popularity of IPL among some schoolchildren shows that the ECB is focussed on short term monetary gains while sacrificing the need to foster a large cricket playing talent pool.

Children of upper class Asian parents seem to be very clued up on the workings of the system and their children have lead roles in most club teams. But children of less well off parents (non Asians included), who may be unaware of the system's working become a cropper in this cricket structure. Hiring a coach is another handicap for a less well off kid, since the coach often doubles up as a selector and coaches have their own networks which exclude non coached children. This may even explain why a Wasim Akram or a Dhoni will never make it through the English system.

So in Cambridge at least the problem with the cricket set up is that it may never produce any cricketer with flair. The selection of players who progress through the hierarchical structures is biased towards upper middle class kids who have been coached to play cricket. In the absence of a large cricket playing talent pool which represents all economic sections living here, the youth playing cricket in Cambridge today can only become journeymen cricketers. Their cricketing style comes from a mould and lacks individuality, which is the hallmark of any superstar.

Thus Rob Steen's cry will remain in the wilderness until such time England chooses from a wider talent pool and breaks with the parent-coach nexus in youth cricket.

No Asian superstars in English cricket. Why?

Bopara and the cultural conundrum

Why does Britain still await its first batting star of Asian stock?

Rob Steen

July 3, 2013

A

	Bopara: more liable to reverse the course of a game with thrusts than parries © International Cricket Council  Enlarge
Related Links Players/Officials: Moeen Ali | Ravi Bopara | Varun Chopra |Nasser Hussain | Wasim Khan | Monty Panesar | Samit Patel |Adil Rashid | Bilal Shafayat | Owais Shah | Graeme Swann Teams: England

"Oh, Raa-vee Bow-pah-rah... Oh, Raa-vee Bow-pah-rah... " As the chant went up to the tune of The White Stripes' "Seven Nation Army", again and again and once more with feeling, it was possible to glimpse a brave new world. With all due respect to Nasser Hussain, who captured the nation's heart with splenetic disciplinarian leadership and spiky spunk rather than runs, was last Tuesday's frolic at The Oval going to go down as the night we finally acclaimed a British Asian batting hero?

It didn't quite turn out that way. First came the Champions Trophy final, then an even more agonising loss to New Zealand. For the second match running, Bopara took his team to the brink of victory and fluffed his lines. So much good came out of those two assertive, cold-eyed knocks, it would be heartless to harp on about their anti-climactic denouements, but the scoreboard is the most damning and ruthless of bottom lines.

We've been here before, of course, and not just with Bopara, who has defied those who contended that his fitful international career had ground to a permanent halt in Pallekele last October. In that same World Twenty20 fixture, while Samit Patel was battling Sri Lanka alone on that burning English deck, it was tempting to imagine, once more, that a corner had been turned. Here, after all, was a British batsman of Asian origin not simply capable enough to command regular selection but comfortable enough to be himself, to strut his stuff and dominate. Sadly, Patel's ensuing tribulations in India confirmed that the no-entry sign remained intact.

Call it the Shah Question: why does Britain still await its first batting star of Asian stock - or, rather, its first not called Sachin, Rahul, or Virender? Given that Owais Shah, one of about four and a half Englishmen to make even a small splash in the IPL, was overlooked for the last World Twenty20, a tournament that could and should have been the making of this most feckless yet dazzling of Anglo-Asian cricketers, the question of courage, of whether to fear failure or keep its extensive tentacles at bay, is not one that can be lightly dismissed.

But why? For all Monty Panesar's cult following, for all the progress made lately by Moeen Ali and Varun Chopra, for all Adil Rashid's nascent revival, for all the abundant promise of Azeem Rafiq, Shiv Thakor and Kishen Velani, it remains difficult to subdue the sense that the existing resources are not being tapped as well as they might. It would also be naïve to pretend that all cultural differences have been erased.

Unsurprisingly, being a Muslim may still be a major roadblock, as exemplified, perhaps, by the sad decline ofBilal Shafayat. We may never know how much his failure to live up to the predictions of some sage judges is traceable to the prayers he once shared with Pakistani opponents during an Under-19 tournament.

Better placed than most to comment is Wasim Khan, the first British-born son of Pakistani parents to play professional cricket, author of an award-winning autobiography, and now chief executive of Chance to Shine, for which he recently won a deserved gong. The way he sees it, Muslim cricketers have external pressures unfamiliar to the majority on the county circuit, such as being the breadwinner for an extended family or the perplexing duality of living a westernised life in the dressing room and a traditional one at home, even if county menus do now encompass halal meat.

For the best part of the previous decade, Dan Burdsey, my University of Brighton colleague, plunged into vexatious waters by examining the experiences of British Muslims in the sporting arena. Cricket, to him, is the "notable exception" to the general rule. "I guess I'm just a bit stronger," one interviewee, a professional who insisted on anonymity, said in reference to his faith. "Maybe if I become more successful," said another, "people will look at Muslims differently, and maybe it will change, you know, the stereotype and the perspective of how British Muslims are."

	Cricket's first Anglo-Asian superstar, one strongly suspects, will need a spot of brashness to go with the thick skin

For all the priceless perspectives he gleaned, Burdsey was honest enough to acknowledge the shortcomings of his research: "There were occasions when participants seemed to be holding back from completely explicating their feelings around experiences of prejudice and some of the more problematic aspects of gaining inclusion in the sport." He attributed this, among other factors, to "a reluctance to talk openly to people who do not directly share their experiences; a belief that their position as professional sportsmen may be compromised through open dialogue on controversial topics; or a deliberate attempt to avoid being viewed as fulfilling dominant stereotypes of young Muslim men... and coming across as acrimonious about their engagement with predominantly white, British institutions."

Hussain, the most successful British Asian cricketer, if always a bit too grimly focused to be a batting hero per se, highlights the fear factor. "The Asian family's love of cricket means you get lots of opportunities but it also gives you a fear of failure," he told the Cricketer a few months back. The experience was personal as well as general: he often lied to his father, who ran a popular cricket school in the east London suburbia of Ilford, about how many he had scored. "If your father has driven six hours for an Under-11 game at Taunton and you nick a wide one, it can be a long journey home. It makes you intense and quite complicated."

Hussain believes Bopara, Patel, Shah and Mark Ramprakash were similarly cursed. "Ravi says he has changed, that cricket has become more of a hobby, but I suspect there's bluff in that. He would still love to be a superstar."

Though he has charmed us with his wickets and unbridled enthusiasm, Panesar doesn't quite qualify: superstars should only be conversant with ridicule on the way up or down. He is, rather, a folk hero, in large part because, being a fairly useless fielder and a bit of a dunce with the bat - and hence not at all like the ebullient Graeme Swann - he makes us giggle. As for those singularly joyous celebrations, they evoke empathy: not a superstar's due but an underdog's just desserts. Outbowling Swann in India merely served to amplify his misfortune in being the No. 2 spinner in what is habitually a one-twirler XI. In the Tendulkar Era, a batsman will have to break the mould.

	Monty Panesar: not a superstar but a folk hero who won England over at a delicate time © AFP  Enlarge

Bopara and Shah have been the prime candidates. As batsmen they are more adventurous, more liable to reverse the course of a game with thrusts than parries, more bedroom-poster-friendly, more brittle. Duncan Fletcher may have cause to see Shah as one of his chief failures as England coach, but it is also entirely plausible that the most damaging hurdle was Shah's family baggage. Bopara has scarcely lacked chances, and if treating one's job as a hobby leads to profoundly injudicious shots in each innings of the first Test of a series, as happened against South Africa last summer, maybe it isn't quite the best policy. In fairness, at the time a crisis at home was looming far too large.

Which brings us to the f-word: flaky. Such would appear to be the polite epithet de jour. It's the catch-all, equally applicable to Bopara playing daft shots, Shah being a liability between the wickets, Monty shelling sitters, Patel being overweight or Rashid or Ajmal Shahzad asserting themselves too much for Yorkshire tastes. Then there's the masculinity thing.

Millwall FC are a south-east London working-class institution, long notorious for their violent and racist supporters (unofficial motto "No one likes us, we don't care"). Yet they embraced their own black players - a contradiction that Tony Witter, a decent central defender, explained to Arsenal's Ian Wright, English football's most celebrated black striker, now a voluble TV host. "Ian says to me: 'Witts, man, how can you play here, man?' I said to him: 'Ian, they're as good as gold to me.' That's the whole thing, I am playing for them."

What helped Witter and Wright find acceptance on opposing banks of the Thames was the fact that they played a masculine sport in a masculine manner, underpinned, respectively, by strength and speed. In their case, masculinity - aided by the We Syndrome - trumped race. Spinners may be deft, daring, and expert mind-readers, but beyond Shane Warne, who perceives them as macho?

Panesar's greatest achievement - a rather miraculous one - was to win over a nation at an extremely delicate time, a time when wearing a patka on the wrong high street could get you beaten up, as it still can. Cricket's first Anglo-Asian superstar, one strongly suspects, will need a spot of brashness to go with the thick skin, a Nasser or Wrighty sort of brashness: a projection of absolute inner certainty that fools most of the people pretty much all the time.

Is it too late for the more flamboyant but sometimes equally cocky Bopara? He certainly looks more focused since he took a furlough to deal with that discreetly reported domestic disturbance. In recent weeks we've seen a lightness of tread and an often gasp-worthy breadth of shot selection. He may still talk it marginally better than he walks it, but the balance, helped as much by those useful wobblers as by a capacity to compartmentalise, is shifting.

They couldn't quite exhort him over the line, but that uplifting chorus line at The Oval dropped a refreshingly heavy hint that Forest Gate's finest may yet win over minds as well as hearts. Anyone for the Bopara Bop?

Elite Asian students cheat like mad on US college applications

By Patrick Winn

Created 1969-12-31 19:00

BANGKOK, Thailand — From sleep to social lives, there is little Asia’s most upwardly mobile students won’t sacrifice for education. Though they belong to the so-called “Asian Century,” American colleges remain the premier destination for the elite from Shanghai to Singapore to Seoul.
The path to US college acceptance, however, increasingly compels students to sacrifice their integrity. For the right price, unscrupulous college prep agencies offer ghostwritten essays in flawless English, fake awards, manipulated transcripts and even whiz kids for hire who’ll pose as the applicant for SAT exams.

“Oh my God, they can do everything for you,” said Nok, 17-year-old Thai senior in her final year at a private Bangkok high school. (She asked GlobalPost to alter her name for this article.) “They can take the SAT for you, no problem. Most students don’t really think it’s wrong.”
 
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Among Asian high society, and particularly in China, parents’ obsession with sending their offspring to US colleges has given rise to a lucrative trade of application brokers. Depending the degree of assistance, families can expect to pay between $5,000 and $15,000.

“The parent says, ‘My kid needs this GPA but, frankly, his scores aren’t that strong.’ Then the unscrupulous agent says ‘Don’t worry. We’ll figure that out,’” said Tom Melcher, chairman of Zinch China and author of a Chinese-language book on choosing American colleges.

A 250-student survey by Zinch China, a Beijing wing of the California-based Zinch education consultancy, suggests college application fraud among Chinese students is extremely pervasive. According to the survey, roughly 90 percent of recommendation letters to foreign colleges are faked, 70 percent of college essays are ghostwritten and 50 percent of high school transcripts are falsified.
“For the right price,” Melcher said, “the agent will either fabricate it or work with the school to get a different transcript issued.” Admission into a top 10 or top 30 school, as defined by the US News & World Report, can bring a $3,000 to $10,000 bonus for the agent, he said. The magazine, Melcher said, is commonly confused in China for an official government publication.

Demand for such agents is high and getting higher. Rapid economic growth across China and other parts of Asia has sparked an explosion in foreign students hoping to secure their ascent with a Western diploma.

Chinese citizens currently account for more than one in five foreign students studying at US colleges. Nearly 158,000 Chinese students are enrolled at any given time, a full 300 percent jump over mid-1990s numbers, according to the Institute of International Education.

Chinese, Indian and South Korean students comprise roughly half of America’s foreign college student population. Vietnam has sent 13 percent more students to the US within the last year, and Malaysia has added 8 percent, the institute reports.

But many American college officials are oblivious to the application fix-it men these foreign students may have paid back home. Worse yet, remaining blind to the deception is often financially incentivized.

America’s economic downturn has drained the state tax coffers that provide a funding lifeline to many US colleges. Many schools have resorted to unpopular tuition hikes. But many are also courting wealthy foreign students whose families gladly fork over money for housing and tuition along with out-of-state or even out-of-country fees.
 
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“International students are seen as a source of revenue ... and the trend has exploded in the past two years,” said Dale Gough, international education director for AACRAO, the American Association of Collegiate Registrars and Admissions Officers.

Foreign students, through tuition and living expenses, contribute $2.1 billion to the US economy, according to the US Commerce Department. “In short,” Gough said, “they help the bottom line.”
Excuses abound for ignoring fraudulent applications, Gough said. Some assume that kids who cheat will inevitably flame out anyway and never score a degree. Some admissions officers, he said, contend that “that’s just the way it’s done over there.”

Many schools also make sloppy attempts to translate foreign transcripts, calculated by an “indigenous” and unfamiliar methodology, into America’s GPA or “grade point average” system, Gough said.

His association publishes a guide to deciphering foreign scores, the only one of its kind, but fewer than 500 of the 3,500 institutions represented by AACRAO bother to buy a copy.
“Translating foreign grades into a GPA system is meaningless,” Gough said. “They attempt to do it anyway.”

Gough fears that universities’ lax standards, and focus on big foreign tuition payments, will eventually undermine the pedigree of an American diploma. The damage, he said, would be nearly impossible to undo.

“This scenario spells disaster,” Gough said. “Even if a lot of the students who cheat are bright, and they go on to succeed, is this fair to American students? Or [to] the foreign students who play by the rules?”

While America has ceded manufacturing power and foreign influence to China, an American degree remains the gold standard of educational prestige. Nok, who is currently applying for colleges abroad, never considered applying to universities in Asia.

“Students who study in America are elite, the privileged,” said Nok. “It shows you’re smarter than the others.”

But like most Asian students, Nok has felt baffled and overwhelmed by America’s complex application system.

“Here, you take a big test one day and report the score. That’s how you figure out where you’ll go to college,” she said. “The Americans are different. They want to know the big picture. All these essays. All this stuff about your life.”

America’s liberal arts application system is “fundamentally more confusing,” said Joshua Russo, director of Top Scholars, a college prep and tutoring agency in Bangkok.

Asian families unfamiliar with the process, he said, are justified in seeking an agency’s help with application strategies and tutoring to build the skills US colleges demand. But Russo’s refrain to parents, he said, is that kids who can’t write their own essays are likely to burn out once enrolled in America.

“Some consultants will promise the world ... and they’re fundamentally preparing students to fail,” Russo said. “Beyond fabricating an essay, they’re fabricating a whole life story. Students will start to believe in the lie. It’s wrong.”

The allure of America’s universities, and the pressure-cooker drive to succeed among Asia’s expanding upper class, will continue to propel Asian students into American schools. Many Chinese teenagers applying abroad, Melcher said, are the sort of highly motivated students colleges desire.
“Chinese kids are typically great,” Melcher said. “They’re not at the tailgate parties drinking. They’re busting their butts. Failure is not an option.”

But college application fraud will continue, he said, so long as the risks are low and the rewards are so high. His consultancy suggests interviewing all Chinese students via online video chats, conducting spot tests in English, and hiring a mainland Chinese staffer in the college’s home office.
“Frankly, I feel really bad for Chinese families who are trying to be honest,” he said. “They’re driving 55 while everyone’s zooming past them. After a while, they throw up their hands and say, ‘Fine, I’ll speed up.’”