An Acquaintance Reports Cheating to University Authorities
Yomiuri: "Admission Fraud Methods Are Becoming More Sophisticated"
Cheating using the camera function of a wearable device, smart glasses, was detected during the entrance exam of the prestigious Waseda University in Japan.
According to Yomiuri Shimbun and NHK on the 15th, the Tokyo Metropolitan Police Department decided to send Mr. A (18), who took photos of exam questions with smart glasses and sent them to acquaintances, to the prosecutors on charges of obstruction of business by deception.
Mr. A took photos of the chemistry exam questions with smart glasses equipped with a camera during the entrance exam for the School of Creative Science and Engineering at Waseda University held on February 16. He wirelessly transmitted the images to his smartphone and then sent them to several acquaintances via X (formerly Twitter), asking for the answers.
The incident was uncovered when one of the acquaintances noticed the cheating and reported it to the university authorities.
Five days later, on the 21st of the same month, Mr. A went to take another faculty exam and was caught by the university when they found a miniature camera attached to his glasses. Waseda University holds main exams on different schedules for each faculty, and applicants can apply to multiple faculties.
During the police investigation, Mr. A admitted to the charges, saying, "After failing to get into my desired university, I decided to cheat because I was afraid of failing again," and that he wrote down the answers he received from his acquaintances on the answer sheet. The exam scores obtained through cheating were below the passing threshold and were invalidated regardless of the results.
The Waseda University exam where Mr. A committed cheating is a "general entrance exam" conducted separately for each faculty, similar to the university-specific early admission essay exams in Korea.
Yomiuri reported, "With the miniaturization and performance improvement of electronic devices, methods of cheating in entrance exams are becoming more sophisticated."
Recently, smart glasses have been released with designs almost indistinguishable from regular glasses. Low-cost Chinese models are priced at just a few tens of thousands of yen. The manufacturer of the smart glasses worn by Mr. A has not been disclosed.
Although university entrance in Japan is known to be easier than in Korea, major national universities and prestigious private universities in the Tokyo metropolitan area have entrance exam competition as intense as in Korea. Many students start competing from elementary school to get into prestigious universities.
Meanwhile, earlier in Japan, in 2022, during the University Entrance Common Test (equivalent to Korea’s College Scholastic Ability Test), a test taker was caught after photographing exam questions with a smartphone and leaking them externally.
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