Nine arrested in Harbin over MBA exam cheating

Nine people in Harbin in the northern province of Heilongjiang have been arrested and accused of helping students cheat on their postgraduate entrance exams, state media have reported.

They are accused of giving students at the Harbin University of Science and Technology earpieces connected to radio devices so they could be told the answers during their exams last month to get into an MBA course, People's Daily reported.

The suspects have been charged with stealing state secrets as exam questions are protected under the mainland's security legislation, the report said.

Twenty-six students were caught wearing earpieces and wireless receivers.

"We were so shocked to hear that students cheated at our university," a former lecturer at the college said.

The university had a strict system for supervising exams, especially for national level tests, she said.

"Supervisors had to receive training to understand the examination rules. We swap with supervisors from other universities. Nobody would know which exam they would supervise until the last minute," she said.