I have worked with a number of Chinese, Korean, and Indian immigrants that had extremely impressive resumes, great test scores, etc. Yet when it got down to doing work they actually had very poor real world problem solving skills. All the Chinese guys claim to have degrees from Tsinghua University (supposedly the MIT of China).
I also think cheating is a HUGE part of academic "success" in Asian countries, much more so than in Europe or America. Academic dishonesty is so bad in Asian countries that many colleges don't even place any value at all on standardized test scores from Asian applicants. In my college courses (in applied math) the Chinese guys always did really well despite not being able to get anything right in class. Come to find out they had the most comprehensive homework and exam archives I have ever seen
It is certainly the case that Asians in America tend to do better than whites. But I think this is due to selection bias. The Asian immigrants we get are the far right tail of the Bell curve and tend to be much smarter than the bulk of the population they come from. So it's no surprise to me that they and their children tend to do much better than the average American.
