The education authorities have ordered a ceasefire in a bitter war of words between two prestigious Shanghai universities over allegedly underhand recruitment methods.
Fudan University, famous for its liberal arts and science departments, accused its biggest rival in the city, Shanghai Jiao Tong University (Jiaoda), of sending staff posing as Fudan employees to deceive high school graduates into abandoning their applications to enrol at Fudan and opt for Jiaoda instead. Jiaoda, strong in engineering fields and the alma mater of former Communist Party general secretary Jiang Zemin, denied the accusation.
The scandal is a reflection of the cut-throat competition for elite students across the mainland after years of university expansion and increasing competition from overseas institutions, including ones in Hong Kong.
On Friday, Fudan posted 'a serious statement regarding some students in some provinces being cheated into changing their applications' on its website. 'During this year's recruitment period, some people posing as Fudan teachers called students who had signed enrolment agreements with Fudan to tell them that the agreements had been dropped by Fudan,' it said.
Fudan said it was a vicious fraud and it retained the right to sue those responsible.
On microblogging site Sina Weibo, Fudan said a technological university in Shanghai was behind the scam.
