Rioting in China Over Label on College Diplomas

http://www.nytimes.com/2006/06/22/world/asia/22china.html?_r=1&th&emc=th&oref=slogin

Rioting in China Over Label on College Diplomas

By JOSEPH KAHN
Published: June 22, 2006

XINZHENG, China, June 21 — Shengda College in central China has a diverse curriculum, foreign faculty members to teach English and a manicured campus, where weeping willows shade a recreational lake.

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But many students paid the college's rich tuition — at $2,500 a year one of the highest in China — primarily because Shengda promised that their diplomas would bear the name of its parent, Zhengzhou University, a more prestigious national-level institution, and not mention Shengda at all.

So when the graduating class of 2006 received diplomas that read "Zhengzhou University Shengda Economic, Trade and Management College," students erupted last Friday, ransacking classrooms and administrative offices, shattering car windows, scuffling with the police and staging one of the most prolonged student protests since the 1989 pro-democracy uprising that filled Tiananmen Square in central Beijing.

The protest, still simmering on Shengda's now tightly guarded campus, reflects the reality that the country's exploding population of college students must grapple with petty fraud, substandard instruction and an intensely competitive job market. Students, a traditional bellwether of political volatility in China, have become a fresh source of unrest in a society already angered by land grabs, unpaid wages and environmental abuse.

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When you get cheated out of soo much money...

diploma say Phoenix Online School.

I am sure everyone will be as amused as I am by your interesting username.

to live.. so read their articles with abundant caution.