Students riot at Chinese university over changes to diploma

SHANGHAI (AP) - College students in central China smashed offices and set fires in a riot sparked by administrative changes that will see them graduating with less prestigious diplomas, students and school administrators said Monday. 

Photos of the weekend riots posted on the Internet showed fires in debris-strewn school courtyards and glass smashed in offices, shops, car windows and a bank. Students said police with water cannons had moved onto campus, but it wasn't clear if there had been any confrontation. 

Talks with students Monday because their demands were unclear, and school officials insisted they had acted according to orders issued by the central government, said an official with the school's Communist Party committee. 

"The problem is the students aren't being coherent. We don't really know what they want,'' the official said by telephone. 

He refused to give his name. 

The riots appeared to reflect the massive pressure Chinese students are under as they approach an increasingly competitive job market. 

Many Chinese families go into massive debt to send their children to university.  

A huge expansion in higher education has led to white-hot competition for jobs, making the quality of a degree ever more important. 

Students said they entered the Shengda Economics, Trade, and Management College after recruiters promised they would receive diplomas from the better-known Zhengzhou University, of which the college is a division. 

However, while students graduating this year will receive Zhengzhou degrees, those graduating next year will only receive Shengda degrees, according to students who e-mailed The Associated Press and posted comments on an online school bulletin board that was later shut down. 

Parents, many of them poor farmers, apparently had been willing to pay the school's relatively high 10,000 yuan (US$1,250;euro990) annual tuition because they thought their children would receive Zhengzhou University degrees. 

"We've been cheated out of three years,'' said one comment, signed Yvonne, posted on an Internet blog http://www.3ec.cn/. School administrators and local officials have apparently tried to hush up the riots, with no mention of the them found in China's entirely state-controlled media. 

Police and government and education officials in Zhengzhou, the capital of Henan province where Shengda is located, said they had no details or could not comment unless given permission by Communist Party officials. 

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