(Xinhua)
Updated: 2008-01-25 22:16

China's colleges have been banned from giving training lectures on postgraduate entrance examinations, the country's Education Ministry announced on Friday.

"Departments and faculty in colleges are not entitled to offer tutorial classes in any form, nor to provide classrooms and facilities for any training organization," said ministry spokesman Wang Xuming.

"To maintain an orderly teaching environment, private training organizations' posters and advertisements on training courses are banned from campuses," said Wang.

The possibility of taking a master's degree attracts more than one million college students to sit the national postgraduate entrance examination each year. Training courses on postgraduate examinations, which are usually exam-oriented, are very popular among college students and usually regarded as the last precaution before the exam.

A profitable business, training classes on exam subjects mushroomed in the last decade with tens of thousands students spending hundreds of yuan each to take short courses, usually from three days to a week.

In recent years, some colleges made money by encouraging students taking the training programs and teaching staff are usually found using school facilities to offer training classes.

"Colleges are responsible for monitoring their faculties and teaching facilities," says Wang Xuming.

The number of people registering to take the postgraduate exam soared from 319,000 in 1999 to 1.28 million last year, an average annual increase of 17.2 percent. This year will see the first drop in almost a decade, down by 6.3 percent, with only 1.2 million registered participants.