Forty-five professors in Jilin University lost their qualifications to recruit doctoral students as the amount of their research failed to meet the school's requirements, the Beijing News reported yesterday.

The school, in Changchun of Jilin Province, made the decision during its new round of selecting PhD candidates' mentors between April and early November.

The 45 professors, some of whom were invited from other universities, are from eight disciplines. The oldest is 59 years old.

It is a custom in China for PhD mentors to be given long tenures, said Qiu Shiguan, vice-president of Jilin University.

But these teachers, with no other incentive to perform well in the academic community, then become increasingly unqualified.

"Some teachers lost their enthusiasm for teaching and doing research and are more keen on participating in social activities," Qiu said.

More seriously, some of the professors used their prestige to make money outside school, the vice-president added.

Jilin University's reform this year stipulated new rules in selecting doctoral students' professors. Teachers who meet the new requirements will become the PhD mentors for the next recruitment.

However, those mentors who fail to meet the requirements have no qualification to recruit new students.

The reform, therefore, sounded an alarm to the faculty.

"The reform gives us a warning that to be a good postgraduate candidate teacher, the first step is to improve myself and my academy," said Xu Xuechun, a postgraduate candidate teacher at Jilin University.

Wang Shubin, a teacher at the Humanities Institute at the university, said: "The reform set clear, quantifiable targets and encouraged young teachers such as me to have an opportunity to become a PhD mentor."

(China Daily December 1, 2005)