Considering the massive essay-writing industry and standardized testing irregularities in China, the below excerpt of an article entitled, Bribery Confession in China Calls Into Question Integrity of College Admissions, in The New York Times, seems anything but surprising:

HONG KONG — The children of the wealthy and well-connected in Chinaenjoy enormous educational advantages, gaining access to elite kindergartens, primary schools and tutors beyond the reach of most Chinese families. But strict meritocracy was thought to reign at one crucial stage: college admission. To gain a spot in a top Chinese university and a ticket to a prosperous life afterward, a student needed a high score on the country’s famously difficult national college entrance examination, not a father with a thick wallet.

Or so most people thought until Thursday, when a confession to bribery by Cai Rongsheng, the former admissions director for Renmin University, called the integrity of the system into question. Mr. Cai, 50, acknowledged to a court in Nanjing, where he is on trial, that he had accepted more than $3.6 million in illegal payments between 2005 to 2013, in exchange for helping 44 students obtain spots at Renmin, a prestigious school in Beijing, or to allow students already there to change their majors, the website of the state-run China News Service reported. Among the wealthy students who benefited was the daughter of a Hong Kong businessman, China News Service reported on Thursday.

More: Bribery Confession in China Calls Into Question Integrity of College Admissions, The New York Times (12/4/15)

But what happens when that business is public university? Does a public university owe it to its state residents to work in their interests instead of in the interests of the university’s bottom line?

The Wall Street Journal has a fascinating article that makes one ask these exact questions:

With foreigners enrolling in U.S. schools at record numbers, students such as Noah Hernandez, a freshman at the University of California, San Diego, are getting a global view of the world without leaving their home state. The school has thousands of Chinese students, including Mr. Hernandez’s roommate, who pay three times the in-state tuition.

“If I were running a school, it would make sense” to accept them, said the biology major, as a clutch of Mandarin-speaking students walked by.

Then he began thinking of a childhood friend, who also had a stellar academic record yet didn’t get into UCSD to study engineering. Now, he says he wonders “whether taking so many international students is fair to California students who are going to stay here and benefit the state.”

More: Foreign Students Pinch University of California Home-State Admissions, The Wall Street Journal (11/16/15)