The Ministry of Education recently issued a notification on regulating the teaching order of the Chinese-foreign co-operative educational programs. As some top Chinese universities have organized some so-called "preparatory courses for foreign university entrance", the Ministry of Education says that these preparatory courses are not acknowledged as Chinese-foreign cooperative educational programs. It urges Chinese universities to work more to raise their teaching quality instead of organizing activities like this.
According to the notification, at present, the "preparatory courses" organized by some universities, especially top universities, in many circumstances, are actually just a foreign language teaching course. Foreign universities did not participate in the formulation of their teaching program. Rather, they signed an agreement with their Chinese counterparts saying that they acknowledged the scores that students made in these courses. Some foreign universities also promised that students attending such courses would have a chance to be accepted by their university and could obtain a diploma issued by that university once students had attained all the required credits.
The notification says that all colleges and universities should focus their attention on efforts to improve their teaching quality. They should not organize such activities any more, neither should they organize such activities in the name of Chinese-foreign cooperative educational programs.
(Chinanews.cn April 20, 2007)
