A line-up of stars and celebrities has been enrolled for China's first Master of Fine Arts (MFA) degree courses beginning in September, with the second intake to be recruited in July.

Mainland actress Zhao Wei greets the audience while being awarded the Best Actress at the 2005 eighth Shanghai International Film Festival. [newsphoto]

A total of 4,138 people applied for the entrance examinations for the first MFA intake, with 1,095 enrolled, including actors Zhao Wei and Huang Xiaoming, television news anchor Chai Jing and folk singer Wang Lida, said deputy director of the National Educational Guidance Committee for the Master's Degree of Fine Arts Wang Cizhao on Sunday.

Approved by the State Council in March 2005, the MFA was established on the Chinese mainland to place more emphasis on the education of the creative visual and performing arts.

The 32 universities and colleges across the country qualified to confer such degrees planned to enroll a total of 1,390 students in the second intake, Wang said.

"We'll aim to maintain the educational quality by capping the number of students and degree-casting schools in the second intake," Wang told Xinhua. "People from Hong Kong, Macao, Taiwan and foreign countries are excluded from applying for the time being."

Prospective applicants must present their bachelor's degree certificate and examples of their work, he added.

Like the Master of Business Administration and Master of Public Administration degrees, the MFA is a professional degree already conferred in the United States, the Great Britain, Canada, Australia and New Zealand, and in Taiwan and Hong Kong regions.

MFA degree courses are to be offered by 32 mainland schools, including Peking University, Tsinghua University, Beijing Normal University, the Central Drama Institute, the Communication University of China, Beijing Film Academy, Beijing Institute of Dance, Shanghai Drama Institute, Nanjing University and Xiamen University in eight fields: music, drama, traditional Chinese opera, film, radio and television, design, dance and painting.

Previously graduates majoring in art could only earn degrees in literature since art is a second-class discipline under literature on the mainland, a tradition broken by the MFA degree, said Zhou Xing, another deputy director of the committee.

The MFA would also provide its holders with a more specific qualification when they begin looking for jobs, he added.

"The MFA exam will be distinct from other master's course entrance exams and will take in artistic talent and skills," Zhou said.