March and April is a busy season for many Chinese students applying to study overseas. According to statistics released by Ministry of Education (MOE) Friday, a total of 229,300 Chinese went overseas for study in 2009, up 27.5 percent year-on-year.

Among them, about 92 percent were self-funded and the rest went on national scholarships or were funded by companies and organizations.

MOE is warning against the traps and risks of the overseas study market, as in the past, thousands of students have found themselves cheated.

MOE established a website, www.jsj. edu.cn, in 2003 to help regulate overseas study and continues to monitor the market. Up until now it has released a total of 47 "overseas study-related warnings" and case studies.

'Fly-by-night schools'

Some overseas study agencies offered false school information and some even misled students. They took dishonest measures to boast about overseas language training schools as a necessary gateway to enter universities.

In reality, they turned out to be "fly-by-night schools" founded by a group of people with only a few rooms and teachers and were likely to close at anytime because of their lack of student resources.

Some education institutions, which were not entitled to issue academic degrees, said they were branches of certain universities with excellent teachers and professors and could issue MBA degrees in order to mislead and cheat consumers.

Tricky 'overseas service fees'

MOE pointed out that overseas education agencies generally charge students intermediary fees and overseas service fees. The former is clearly priced, but the latter is really a tricky one. Some agencies chose not to tell the students where service fees would be spent.

When the students felt that the money was not being spent on education-related expenses and they found the actual situation abroad quite different from what the agencies promised, they asked the agencies for a definite answer. The agencies presented a list of charges with dozens of previously unmentioned items in addition to tuition fees. Online 'free-services'

Overseas study service websites are by and large not qualified to provide overseas study services and they are not permitted to advertise their services in print media.

The websites therefore often placed advertisement links on various types of search engines or other well-known websites claiming that they offered free professional overseas study consultations or free professional overseas study guidance and information. The websites that claimed to provide free intermediary services actually charged fees in a concealed manner.

The cumulative fees paid to the websites far outnumbered those collected by formal overseas study service institutions.

Students not allowed to graduate from language training schools

According to the 22nd early warning, some Chinese students who were studying in Sydney complained that they took language courses at language training schools or preparatory schools. However, when the course ended, the schools did not allow them to graduate and said that they had failed relevant examinations.