School abroad - Purchasing success, are your kids at risk.

For the purpose of this blog, I will use two countries I know to be at the forefront of this wave and a third that I know is benefiting a lot from it.

In the Middle-East, showing off your new car, jewelries and expensive clothes is a way of life.  A lot of the friends I have made while living in Lebanon are willing participant in the trend and their kids can’t do otherwise but to follow suit.   

In school, getting good grades is a way 

to achieve status.  But, if only that meant working hard and studying, unfortunately for them, they don’t need to.  Their parents are there to help.    I say unfortunately because in a lot of cases, the parents are literately doing their homework for them.   This creates the need for the other kids to ask their parents to do the same or risk getting the lowest grades in the class.  

When their parents can’t help them directly, because either they don’t have time or the knowledge, they do what they are doing for themselves; they borrow.  In that case, not money, but talents and services.   Hiring people through services like Fiverr or paying an older student to do the work.   I know personally a lot of parents that have resort to bribe teachers and school directors to make sure their kids never fail a class.  The reverse is also true, a friend at the American University of Beirut has admitted to me that he was scared of failing students of rich and politically connected parents by fear of losing their jobs.

Cheating in school at home or in school aboard is nothing new.  But, the use of bribes and outsourcing your kids education can have dramatic effect on your kid’s future.  Especially if he needs to take university entry exams, on that day, he will know how he or she was cheated and how steep the road to catch-up to the rest of the students that actually worked while in school will be.

All these parents are doing is cheating their own children of an education they will never get again.  As the practice is also widespread at the university level, it shows that their kids have learned and are now doing it to themselves.   With the Internet, the professors in the Philippines, to name only one source, are happy to provide their talent to feed that new industry.  

The next country I want to talk about here is Vietnam.  There, students are already suffering from the practice on many levels.   A lot of high school known for allowing parents to bribe to get their kids better grades and/or forcing parents to pay teachers to make sure they are not failing their children have seen their student being refused to even apply to certain universities.  The same is true of universities that are no longer considered by Americans and Europeans colleges and companies as providers of proper educations.  These schools have quacking been black listed in the developed world, rendering the diplomat of their student literally useless.

That means that if you have attended that university, your chances of being considered for a job or a foreign university or school abroad your application will be pretty much requested immediately.

Here are two anecdotes from people I know.  The first is the daughter of someone I know.  Until her mother forgot to give a gift to one of her teacher and the teacher retaliated by giving her a C, the proper grade that reflected her knowledge, our daughter had never known that she wasn’t a real A student.  The second shock she received after failing the entrance exams for all the high schools in her district she applied to.  It took her a full year of study and private tutoring to finally pass and enter a middle range school. 

My second friend was simply refused a student visa and scholarship in Australia because the university where she graduated with a bachelor degree in business,  was blacklisted for offering student false grades.   She simply gave up and is now working for a local company for a few hundred dollars a month.

When your parent are cheating by borrowing money to buy things and appear rich to impress people they don’t really like, and pass that fault sense of pride to their children, tt is normal that it will catch up with them sooner or later.  If not, and they manage to get government jobs thanks to the nepotism so prominent in a lot of countries; good for them.  But, what kind of leaders will the country get in return?

Think about that if and when you plan to move to other country for your work or to offer your kids a better future.

If you want more information about that or International Relocation, Immigration and Moving.  You can visit that site I look.  www.mxel.com