etirabys:

There are a bunch of fascinating things here: the fact that the Chinese pour into Midwestern universities who need cash; the lack of cultural integration and the weird, cool tensions it produces, including the culture of cheating students bring with them; their lack of preparation to deal with the American education style; the divide between middle and upper class Chinese students; the role of Christian outreach in some of the integration that does happen; the Party structure (explicitly) mirrored in Chinese Student Associations… and of course I love microethnographies of the fuerdai in America:

Jonathan Hou, a 21-year-old Chinese student with a shock of bleached-blond hair, is cruising through the campus in his newest toy: a sparkling white $86,000 Mercedes Benz C63S. “It’s the only one in Iowa City,” he says, apologising for the license plate sliding around the floor beneath the passenger seat. He hasn’t affixed the plate to the front grill yet for aesthetic reasons. “I don’t want to hurt the bumper,” he says.

The Mercedes C63S can accelerate from zero to 60mph (97kph) in just 3.8 seconds, but today Jonathan is barely creeping along past the old storefronts on Clinton Street, the main campus artery. He wants to show off his car – but not, it seems, to the baseball-capped American students crossing the street in front of us. As the young men walk past, they stare at the car and its Chinese driver, and snigger.

Jonathan doesn’t seem to notice. He is more interested in the Chinese students who gather at the food court of the Old Capitol Mall, locally known as the “Chinese ghetto”. He soaks in their admiring glances and scans the street for other high-end cars. His special-edition Merc is not the only fancy ride in town. A parade of Audis, BMWs and Mercedes, accompanied by a Maserati and a beige Bentley, streams past. All are driven by young Chinese students. Jonathan assures me it isn’t a special show. “This is just a normal day in Iowa City.”

dskjdlfkajsdlkfj, they just fucking… rolled into iowa city en masse….. they’re engaged in status competitions within their ingroup with complete disregard for the locals’ opinion, because the locals don’t matter, but it looks so off color from the outside

also, not in the article, but extrapolating that re: cheating scandals, switching teaching/grading settings so that cheating is significantly harder is against the university’s interests – the students pay so much it’s not worth it to drive them away