As the annual college entrance exam draws near, parents around the country are once again racking their brains to pick the best universities and colleges for their children.
To help them make better decisions, education-themed website Sdaxue.com has released a comprehensive list of 210 bogus universities in China. These universities do not have qualified teaching staff, and are allegedly involved in illegal practices to recruit students.
Beijing is the worst offender with 83 such universities, contributing to 44 percent of the total number in China. Shanghai ranks number two with 15 such schools, and Shandong rounds out the top three with 12.
The bogus university phenomenon is nothing new in China. In July 2014, Legal Daily published a detailed report, analyzing why parents fall for such traps. Apparently, one of the major reasons is that bogus universities tend to come up with "proper-sounding" names that are even better than the real ones. For example, Zhongyuan Engineering College (中原工學院) is a legit university in Hunan province, while Zhongyuan Polytechnic University (中原工業大學) is a bogus one. The latter certainly sounds more like a legit university than the former.
Another contributing factor is that bogus universities have their "official" websites too. At first glance, they are no different from most legit ones. But if you look closer, there are plenty of telltales. For example, they are not updated in a timely manner. They tend to have domain names such as ".com", ".net" and ".org", rather than ".edu.cn". And of course, they tend to steal information from proper universities, especially the "About Us" page.
As expected, Chinese netizens quickly took to Weibo to voice their opinions. A sample of comments:
@elkantlers: The actual number is much higher than 210. These are only the ones that got caught.
@huhuhaha: Why just expose these bogus universities? Where's the punishment? Why are they still open?
@notsourcecode: Chinese education... *sigh* Even if you are lucky enough to study in a legit university, so what? After you graduate, you either get a job that pays only 4 or 5K rmb per month, or you can't find a job at all. Is this what you want after studying for 12 years? Is this what your parents want after raising you for 20 years?
@maisuzi: Most of these bogus universities have done some homework when it comes to picking names. If you just look at these proper-sounding names, you might fall for the trap as well.