A private college in Shandong province said yesterday that it had sacked its vice-president after a newspaper accused him of faking his academic and professional credentials and falsely claiming to have a PhD from Harvard.
The Shandong Translation College said that on Wednesday it dismissed Professor Chen Lin, 40, from the post of vice-president which he took up on May 8.
On that day the China Youth Daily reported that Professor Chen had obtained the job and was paid one million yuan (HK$940,000) a year, far more than mainland academics normally earn, by falsifying his academic and job record.
The report said that in his application, Professor Chen, a native of Fujian province, said he had graduated in 1994 from the John F. Kennedy School of Management at Harvard, with a doctorate in economics and financial management after studying under Nobel Prize winner Robert Merton. It claimed he also said he had a Master's degree in sociology from Stanford University and a Master's in physics from China Science and Technology University.
He further reportedly claimed to have worked at Harvard Business School, Merrill Lynch and the US Federal Reserve, and that he was among 28 people invited to be a professor at Tsinghua University for one million yuan a year but declined.
The newspaper quoted Harvard University as saying it had a record of two people named Chen Lin, but neither had graduated in economics and financial management, while China Science and Technology University had a graduate in physics named Chen Lin but he was 59. Tsinghua University had no record of offering him a job.
