SOME ORGANIZATIONS posted online advertisements offering advanced courses in business and management, apparently for the elite class. Their tuition fees vary from about 30,000 yuan ($4,498) to more than 7 million yuan. Beware of such courses, because they are run by diploma mills. Beijing Times commented on Tuesday:

These expensive courses have fancy names, and claim to be affiliated to top universities such as Peking University and Tsinghua University. Such claims can attract a lot of executives and businesspeople. And offers like "elite training completion certificates" can impress even top managers and executives, for they can also help build business contacts.

People go to extreme lengths, no matter what profession they are in, to build contacts, especially because it is part of Chinese tradition. Therefore, many people enroll for such courses. For example, a course for CEOs of listed companies has more than 50 top management trainees. And the urge to excel in one's field in order to make more money is fanning the craze of taking up expensive and fancy courses.

The Organization Department of the Communist Party of China Central Committee has banned many such courses, causing many government officials to give up their executive MBA courses. Although some leading officials of State-owned enterprises are still undergoing training in a few institutions, the ban has spelled the doom for most of the bogus institutions.