Universities in fee-for-ranking scandal

By Wen Ya

The Ministry of Education strongly opposes all university rankings, most especially those rankings based on payment of certain “fees”, ministry spokeswoman Xu Mei said Tuesday.

The sharp comments came in response to a recent story that Chengdu University of Technology(CDUT) had possibly paid to climb the “China university rankings” table compiled by the self-titled “China University Evaluation Program of Chinese Academy of Management Science” at http://edu.sina.com.cn/focus/utop.html.

The university had invited “program director” Wu Shulian to lecture in 2004 and in 2006, a source at the university told the Beijing-based People’s Daily.

After Wu had received his 50,000 yuan “remittance”, the school’s ranking rose from 116 in 2004 to 92 in 2007. It fell to 103 in 2009, People’s Daily reported Tuesday.

The rankings released by Wu’s organization have been running for about 10 years and until recently were regarded as the most influential of their kind in China.

Wu continued to insist his organization belonged to the science research institute of the Chinese Academy of Management Science even as the academy secretary-general Zhang Naijian confirmed there’s no such institute in his academy, People’s Daily reported.

Wu admitted in his e-mail to the daily paper that he went to CDUT twice and received a “consultancy fee” from them.