VietNamNet Bridge – It’s easier nowadays to find the people who provide the service of learning and attending exams for others. The service providers, service fees and contact addresses can be found on many websites.

On raovat, muare, or rongbay, one can find numerous ad pieces about the service of learning and attending exams. A third year student of the Hanoi University of Social Sciences and Humanity said that these are the “prestigious” markets, which provide “high quality” services, while the service fees are “reasonable.”

“The price is really very reasonable. Imagine that you don’t have to go under the scorching sun these days to class, but you would still be marked as attending the class,” she said.

The average service fees quoted on the websites are VND50,000 for one time of going to class, VND700,000-800,000 for one time of attending exams. Especially, learners would have to pay higher to obtain higher marks. A service provider, who introduced himself as an excellent student of a state owned school, affirmed that he can satisfy all the demand from learners.

“If you want 7 from the exams, you would have to pay VND700,000, but if you want 8, the price would be VND800,000,” he said.

hocthue.net website, which has been operational for the last 3 years, is believed to be the best known one among students. All kinds of services are available here, from the service of solving exercises, writing theses, to going to class, attending exams. A mobile phone number was shown on the website 0985.08 xxxx.

The website is believed to be more and more prosperous because the demand is increasingly high. The service users are mostly the students of universities, who don’t want to go to class, bust still want to obtain good marks from exams and good degrees after finishing schools.

On Facebook, the “Hoi nhung nguoi luoi hoc” (the association of learn-shy students) has gathered 1,539 members, and the “Hoi nhung nguoi luoi hoc nhung muon duoc diem cao” (the association of the students who are lazy but still want good marks) has had nearly 1,000 members. And they could be the potential clients of the service.

According to Nguyen Anh Duc from the HCM City University of Technique Education, four students who had others attended the exams for them, were punished in the last two years.

Duc said that the four students all had bad learning capability, who foresaw that they could not solve the exam questions.

TTB, one of the four, said that NVQ, a student of the HCM City University of Technology, attended the exams for him. However, the HCM City University of Technology replied that NVQ was not found in the list of the school’s students.

Tran Dinh Ly, Head of the Training Division of the HCM City Forestry and Agriculture University, said the school discovered 11 exam cheating cases, in which 11 examinees attended the English exam under others’ names.

“Most of them were the fourth year students. They passed their specialty exams, but they were bad at English,” he said.

Under a draft decree being compiled by the Ministry of Education and Training, the people who help others cheat at the exams, would be fined VND5-10 million.

However, Ly believes that the fine would not help stop the cheating. Students would be willing to pay money to get good marks or pass the exams.

Tien Phong