Hundreds of students who failed to finish their post-graduate or doctoral degrees within the proper time frame will face the possibility of being dismissed by Huazhong University of Science and Technology in Wuhan, Central China’s Hubei province, Yangtze River Daily reported on Sept 4.

Post-graduate students should finish their study within four years and doctoral students in eight years, according to university regulations. Those who don’t finish within the time limits will be dismissed. But they reserve the right to appeal.

Although 300 post-graduate students face that punishment, that only accounts for 1.7 percent of the total student population of 17,694, a record of 2009.

Chu Zhaohui, a researcher at the China National Institute for Educational Research, supports that rule, saying the policy should be adopted in undergraduate studies as well so as to motivate students and improve the quality of higher education in China.

The number of post-graduate students in China increased by more than 1 million in the past 10 years, reaching 1.4 million in 2009. In 2010, 534,000 new post-graduate students will be recruited.