China's biggest and best-known education Web site has been warned formally over an unregistered degree programme it has been offering in Hong Kong.
The caution to Netbig is the third time within a month that the Education and Manpower Bureau has issued warnings to operators over unregistered distance-learning courses.
The warning was prompted by an advertisement which ran in Recruit magazine last week promoting an MBA from the University of Iowa in the US and offered by Netbig's Hong Kong office.
Leung Cheuk-man, registrar at the Non-Local Courses Registry, said it was issued on Monday. 'We have issued a warning and will monitor their response to ensure that irregularities are identified and rectified. If they ignore the warning we will move to prosecution,' Mr Leung said.
The bureau's warning was in two parts: failure to register a course and misleading advertising. Netbig has admitted not registering its distance-learning MBA, and the Recruit advertisement promises face-to-face lectures. Distance-learning courses are not permitted to include face-to-face teaching unless they are registered.
Failure to register a course can carry a $25,000 fine and two years' jail, while misleading advertising is punishable by a fine of $25,000 and six months' in prison.
Netbig's Hong Kong marketing director, who preferred not to give her name, said the warning was a 'technical mistake'. She said that the course would not be launched until 2002 and that Netbig had placed the advertisement only to gauge public interest. 'We were just doing test marketing. We haven't recruited any students, we just wanted to see what the response would be,' she said.