Education agency refutes reports of application fraud

A Shanghai-based educational agency on Saturday rebutted a Reuters report that accused the agency of helping students cheat in their college applications and buying access to top U.S. college admission officers, slamming it as sensationalism and an attempt to defame China's education system.

The Reuters report, based on biased opinions of some former employees while ignoring positive responses from dozens of U.S. admissions officers, distorted normal education exchanges between the two countries into an "abnormal" trade with U.S. admission officers, attempting to hype "groundless corruption" to please the public and smear China's education system, Dipont Education Management Group said in a statement released on its website Saturday.

The statement said one of the organization's top managers has been quoted out of context in order to support a false accusation, and the company will refute the report line by line in near future, while reserving the right to take legal action.

Dipont said that it has always upheld professional integrity and has never attempted to affect the U.S. admissions officials' decision in an improper way.

Eight former employees of the company told Reuters that they used to ghostwrite application essays for the student clients, adjust wordings in the recommendation letters and even erase bad grades on the students' transcript.

The report also claimed that Dipont and an affiliated charity picked up travel expenses for admissions officers attending exchange programs. Some officers have received cash as well.

The report quoted Benson Zhang, Dipont's founder and chief executive, as saying that "if there had been such a case, it had not been reported to me...if such a complaint comes to my attention, I will deal with it with severity."

Zhang added that one or two aberrant employees violating the rules does not indicate company-wide fraud.