Scandals shake up Japan's top varsities

But it later became clear that the questions were taken straight from an entrance exam to prestigious Kyoto University. And they were being posted — and receiving answers from other users — while the exam was still underway.

On Tuesday, the police began a manhunt for one or possibly more users who are believed to have used a single online handle, ‘aicezuki’, to cheat on exams at Kyoto University and three other top universities. The schools say they suspect test takers used cellphones to post the questions on the site and get the answers while the tests were still in progress.

While it is unclear whether more than one person was involved, the episode has become a national scandal, raising questions about how to monitor the gruelling exams, the main route to success in Japan, in an era of smartphones and instant internet access.

Doubt merit

It also touched a nerve in a proudly egalitarian nation that has struggled to come to terms with its growing economic and social inequalities. Many here are wondering aloud whether admission to top universities remains as merit-based as it used to be, or whether some youth are unfairly getting a leg up, in this case from misuse of new technologies.

Stung by the outcry, the education ministry said it may ban cellphones and other communications devices at exam sites. South Korea, which has similarly demanding admissions tests, implemented such a ban after a 2004 cheating scandal that also involved cellphones. During the current scandal, Japan’s national NHK broadcaster has repeatedly shown footage of Korean students passing through metal detectors before taking exams.

Japan’s education minister, Yoshiaki Takaki, said that measures must be taken immediately to ensure the fairness of the exams. One of the four Japanese schools, Waseda University in Tokyo, said it will compare the answers posted on the site with the completed entrance exams of 9,935 applicants, to see if any match. It may also ask the 462 teachers and graduate students who monitored the exams if they noticed anything suspicious.

The exams, which often take one or two days, are usually administered in large halls where up to hundreds of applicants scribble in hushed silence.

The four schools, which also include Doshisha University in Kyoto and Rikkyo University in Tokyo, have asked the police for help and promised to take measures to prevent cheating by cellphone.

The universities said they believe that at least one applicant used his cellphone either to type out exam questions and post them on the site or to take photos, which would have been posted with the help of an accomplice located at a different location.

The questions were posted on a site run by Yahoo Japan called Chiebukuro, or ‘Pearls of Wisdom’, on which users can ask each other for answers to questions. Yahoo Japan, which is a separate company from the US internet portal, said it would cooperate with the authorities.

In the case of Kyoto University, a user posted six math questions on Friday and two English questions on Saturday, all from the university’s two-day-long entrance exam. It said one of the postings could have been made only by someone who was physically present at the exam, since it involved a correction to the question that was written on a blackboard.

Users on the Yahoo site posted answers to some of the questions within minutes, in time to be used for the exam. The universities said it was unclear if those who gave answers knew the questions came from an entrance exam. The postings gave no indication where the questions came from.

While cheating itself is not a criminal offence, police said they would investigate whether those involved had violated laws that prohibit obstructing the operations of institutions.