'Sponsor fee' charged by schools under fire

By Cui Xiaohuo (China Daily)
Updated: 2008-12-03 08:32

A vast majority of parents think a "sponsor fee" charged by elite schools should be deemed commercial bribery, according to the results of a survey released on Tuesday.

A sponsor fee is typically charged by good schools for admitting students who do not otherwise qualify because they live outside the school's catchment area.

But four in five of the 2,185 netizens polled by China Youth Daily said they believe it is a form of commercial bribery and so should be dealt with as a crime.

The newspaper conducted the survey following a Nov 20 interpretation by the Supreme People's Court and the Supreme People's Procuratorate on handling commercial bribery cases.

According to the interpretation, teachers face bribery charges if they receive money or other forms of inducement, for say, prescribing extra reading material, buying unnecessary sports equipment or material for extra-curricular activities.

"But the sponsor fee is even more terrible than teachers accepting bribes. It causes a major imbalance in education, so it should be viewed as commercial bribery," a reader wrote on the China Youth Daily website.

In the survey, respondents also said they would consider teachers the "worst possible" social group if they are corrupt - more so than government or judicial officials, real estate developers, government procurement staff and doctors.

But legal experts are cautious about labeling the sponsor fee as a form of bribery.

"I understand that the survey underlines a call from the public to eliminate unreasonable fees collected by schools, which should provide education without an eye on profit," Wang Zuofu, a professor of criminal law at Renmin University of China, told China Daily.

"But since unreasonable fees are also charged in other social institutions, it is difficult to single out schools," Wang said.

A parent who declined to give her name told China Daily that she pays an annual sponsor fee of around 10,000 yuan ($1,450) to have her son educated at an affiliated elementary division of an elite school in Beijing.

Lei Guangyong, a professor at the University of International Business and Economics, said earlier that the fee should not be deemed bribery.

The fact that parents choose a good school for their children is not a commercial act, Lei said, and the root of the problem is the disparity among educational resources nationwide.