Universities in the United States should close down their Confucius Institutes – teaching and research centres funded directly by the Chinese government – says a report by the National Association of Scholars or NAS. The wide-ranging report includes additional insights on the institutes’ often-secretive operations gleaned from the contracts signed with a dozen US universities, obtained through freedom of information law requests. The report, Outsourced to China: Confucius Institutes and soft power in American higher education, says unless contracts between US universities and the Hanban can be renegotiated to include more transparency, financial and hiring autonomy for US host universities, academic freedom guarantees and other safeguards, the institutes should be shut down.

A major Chinese education company has paid thousands of dollars in perks or cash to admissions officers at top U.S. universities to help students apply to American schools. According to eight former employees the company’s services didn’t end there. Employees engaged in practices such as writing application essays for students, altering recommendation letters and modifying grades on high school transcripts. The company’s success in gaining access to leading American colleges underscores how people on both sides of the Pacific are hungry to capitalize on Chinese students’ desire to study in the United States.

The University of Iowa suspects at least 30 Chinese students of having used ringers to take their exams. The case offers a look inside a thriving underground economy of cheating services aimed at the hundreds of thousands of Chinese kids applying to and attending foreign colleges. Coaching services author essays for clients. Handle their homework. Even take their exams. All for about a $1,000 a course.

Twenty-one people have been arrested after US authorities set up a fake university to expose immigration fraud. Officials said the accused knew that the University of Northern New Jersey did not exist, but they were unaware it was a ruse run by immigration agents. The defendants acted as brokers for more than 1,000 foreigners who sought to maintain student and work visas, prosecutors said. Most foreign nationals involved in the scheme came from China and India.

As tens of thousands of Chinese students prepare to study in the U.S., they might reflect on the experience of some of those who went before them. According to an estimate by a U.S. education company, some 8,000 Chinese students were expelled from American universities last year alone – and the main reasons were poor grades and cheating.

In this article, Dr John Richard Schrock, who teaches at Emporia State University in Kansas, explains the vast differences between research, citation and teaching styles in Chinese and American university students, citing cultural and education gaps for instances of plagiarism.

Although Chinese students have been going to America to study for decades, their numbers have grown dramatically in the past few years. Many of them have only a basic knowledge of foreign universities and difficulty making sense of complicated applications. As a result, a huge industry of education agents has arisen in the country to help guide them — and, in some cases, to do whatever it takes to ensure that they are accepted.