Franklin, Andrews, Kramer & Edelstein

[scion]

How top U.S. colleges hooked up with controversial Chinese companies

By Steve Stecklow and Alexandra Harney Filed Dec. 2, 2016, noon GMT
http://www.reuters.com/investigates/special-report/college-charities/

New Oriental, China’s biggest private educator, has been accused of academic fraud. Thanks to two enterprising Americans, it has also gained access to leading U.S. college admissions officers.

SHANGHAI/SHELTER ISLAND, New York - Thomas Benson once ran a small liberal arts college in Vermont. Stephen Gessner served as president of the school board for New York’s Shelter Island.

More recently, they’ve been opening doors for Chinese education companies seeking a competitive edge: getting their students direct access to admissions officers at top U.S. universities.

Over the past seven years, Benson and Gessner have worked as consultants for three major Chinese companies. They recruited dozens of U.S. admissions officers to fly to China and meet in person with the companies' student clients, with the companies picking up most of the travel expenses. Among the schools that participated: Cornell University, the University of Chicago, Stanford University and the University of California, Berkeley.

Two companies Benson and Gessner have represented – New Oriental Education & Technology Group Inc and Dipont Education Management Group – offer services to students that go far beyond meet-and-greets with admissions officers.

Eight former and current New Oriental employees and 17 former Dipont employees told Reuters the firms have engaged in college application fraud, including writing application essays and teacher recommendations, and falsifying high school transcripts.

The New Oriental employees said most clients lacked the language skills to write their own essays or personal statements, so counselors wrote them; only the top students did original work. New Oriental and Dipont deny condoning or wittingly engaging in application fraud.

Building on a model they pioneered for Dipont, Benson and Gessner helped New Oriental introduce its clients to U.S. admissions officers, linchpin players in the fast-growing business of supplying Chinese students a prestigious American education.

Beijing-based New Oriental is a behemoth. Founded in 1993, the company is China’s largest provider of private education services, serving more than two million Chinese students a year. Its shares trade on the New York Stock Exchange. The company generates about $1.5 billion in annual net revenue from programs that include test preparation and English language classes. This year, about 10,000 of its clients were enrolled in American colleges and graduate schools.

Winning the trust of American college admissions officers is an important part of the business model. New Oriental’s counseling division - Beijing New Oriental Vision Overseas Consultancy Co - has centers throughout China and 3,300 counselors and staff. It typically charges students between $1,450 and $7,300 to recommend colleges and prepare applications.

A New Oriental student contract reviewed by Reuters states that its services include “writing or polishing” parts of college applications. The contract says New Oriental will set up an email account on behalf of the client for communicating with colleges, keeping sole control of the password. Several former employees said some students never even saw their applications: The company controlled the entire process, including submitting the application to colleges.

The new insight into the business practices of Chinese education companies comes at a time when American colleges are relying more heavily on Chinese undergraduates, who tend to pay full tuition. Their numbers grew 9 percent to 135,629 students in the 2015-2016 school year, representing nearly a third of all international undergraduates, according to the Institute of International Education.

Helping Chinese kids get into U.S. schools has become a significant industry, with hundreds of companies having sprung up in China to cash in. These businesses often charge large sums for services that sometimes include helping students cheat on standardized tests and falsifying their college applications.

Ghost-writing applications for students is so common in China that some who do it speak openly about the practice.

“I wrote essays and recommendation letters for students when I worked at New Oriental, which I still do right now for my own consultancy,” former New Oriental employee David Shi told Reuters. “I know there is an ethical dilemma but it’s the nature of the industry.”

Many of the colleges participating in the New Oriental and Dipont trips said accepting travel expenses from the Chinese companies was appropriate, that they hadn’t been aware of the fraud accusations, and that none of the students received special consideration. Some said they have stopped or will stop participating in the subsidized trips. (See table.)

Benson, in a statement responding to the fraud accusations, said: “There are many bad actors and bad practices in the world of admissions counseling, in both China and the United States. In every visit we have made to China, we have been strong advocates for the highest standards of honesty in the admissions process. We believe that we and those who have traveled with us have upheld these standards.”

New Oriental said its counseling division “prides itself on its longstanding commitment to education and the very high standards it has.” It added: “The company’s operations are governed by robust policies and procedures designed to guard against any unendorsed behavior by employees who are assisting students.”

Benson, who is 76 and speaks Mandarin, used to be president of Green Mountain College in Poultney, Vermont. He said he has had a lifelong fascination with China. He had a Chinese roommate in college and led a program for a spring term in China as a professor at the University of Maryland in the 1980s. Benson also is the co-founder of ASIANetwork, a consortium of about 170 colleges that promotes Asian studies.

“China has been in my blood and in my family history all the way through,” he said.

He said he first met Gessner, 72, about eight years ago. At the time, Gessner was a consultant to Shanghai-based Dipont, which runs international programs in Chinese high schools and college-counseling services that can cost a student more than $32,000.

Dipont executives said they wanted to help more students study in the United States. So, they initially hired Gessner, and later Benson, to help train guidance counselors and develop student exchange programs.

Beginning in 2009, Gessner and Benson launched tours and summer camps for U.S. admissions officers to meet Dipont students in China and advise them on applying to colleges. Benson said he and Gessner recruited the universities through contacts in secondary and higher education.

To establish credibility with the colleges, they said, they set up a New York-based non-profit called the Council for American Culture and Education Inc, or CACE.

“It was a more respectable way to work as consultants. It helped us to recruit colleges,” said Gessner.

The strategy worked. The early participants included admissions officers from such prestigious institutions as Cornell, Stanford, Swarthmore College, Emory University and the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor.

Reuters reported in October that the New York Attorney General’s office planned to review the charity, which had failed to disclose its ties to Dipont in U.S. and New York State tax filings. The review could lead to a formal investigation if authorities find evidence that CACE violated New York law.

Reuters also reported that eight former Dipont employees had described how the company had engaged in application fraud, including writing essays for students and altering recommendation letters. Since the story, Reuters has interviewed nine additional former Dipont employees who gave similar accounts.
...
more
http://www.reuters.com/investigates/special-report/college-charities/