International students may be cheating more than their domestic counterparts at U.S. universities, the Wall Street Journal reported.
In an analysis of data examining public universities, the newspaper found that there were 5.1 reports of alleged cheating for every 100 international students, while there was just one in 100 for domestic students during the 2014-2015 school year.
The Journal used the Freedom of Information Act to request information from 50 public universities and received responses from 14 for the study.
The newspaper reported that students from China were particularly “singled out” when the topic came up in interviews. “Cheating among Chinese students, especially those with poor language skills, is a huge problem,” said Beth Mitchneck, a University of Arizona professor, in an interview with the publication.
“I can assure you that somewhere someone at the university is doing a calculus about how much tuition they would lose if they start coming down hard on students who cheat,” she added.
The newspaper noted that there may be more cheating among international students because they aren’t aware of U.S. academic standards or because they reject them.
In May, a complaint was sent to the Department of Education by Asian-American groups alleging that unfair admissions standards exist to keep Asian students from attending Ivy League universities, as Fortune reported.
The Department of Homeland Security reports that in the last academic year, there were over 586,000 international undergraduate students at U.S. colleges and universities. Over 165,000 of those hailed from China.
