A second university professor has been sacked within a week for falsifying his academic credentials amid mounting public cynicism over the higher-education system.
Beijing University of Chemical Technology said Professor Lu Jun , from the college of life sciences and technology, had admitted that he committed plagiarism and that his academic credentials were fake, Beijing Times reported yesterday.
Lu, 39, was accepted by a government-sponsored programme that sought to recruit foreign professionals. Under the programme, Lu was entitled to receive a 500,000 yuan (HK$613,100) subsidy.
The authenticity of Lu's academic qualifications was questioned by fraud investigator Fang Shimin, better known as Fang Zhouzi.
Fang found that the academic essays listed in Lu's resume had the same title as the papers written by a doctoral graduate of Yale University, whose name has an identical spelling to Lu's in English.
Lu claimed to have graduated with a bachelor's degree from the University of Toronto in 1999, but Fang found that the university had a master's degree graduate in 1999 by the name of Jun Lu, whose parents hailed from Taiwan.
The Beijing University of Chemical Technology later issued a notice denouncing Lu for what he did.