After a glimpse of the dazzling advertisements for countless international programs at high schools all over the country, one wonders whether "education" remains the key word.

Expensive tuition fees and famous Western school brands, coupled with the flaunting of certified, professional, foreign teachers, all attempt to give applicants an air of luxury and exclusivity.

Regardless of the high costs, the programs have been growing in popularity in recent years, as have the numbers going overseas for education.

But the momentum of these programs may soon hit a roadblock.

The Ministry of Education (MOE) has vowed to crack down on unlicensed international programs, after the number of programs snowballed.

Part of the problem has been the lack of transparency in the management of these schools. In many cases, despite being advertised as being run by renowned foreign schools, they were in fact operated by companies.

Rather than improving the quality of the domestic education sector, many are now asking whether these schools merely serve as a stepping stone for those who wish to study abroad.

Licensing nightmare

The number of institutions and programs cooperatively launched by domestic and foreign educational institutions has reached nearly 2,000, the MOE stated at a September 5 press conference, noting that the ministry's focus will shift to removing substandard international programs from high schools.

Figures from the ministry showed that 90 institutions and high schools went through proper licensing procedures, indicating that an overwhelmingly large number of these programs are in a legal gray zone.

A staff member from the International Department of the Guangzhou-based Affiliated High School of South China Normal University, renowned in Guangdong Province, said that the international programs were approved by the provincial education department, but records were not filed with the MOE.

This goes against a 2004 regulation that stipulated that applications for international programs in high schools should be approved by provincial or municipal education departments, but also filed with the ministry.

But this case is far from unique. Standards for approving international programs remain chaotic in China, with few filing records with the ministry and some even receiving licenses from the city or county's education departments, according to a July 3 China Youth Daily report, which noted that the situation has caused problems regarding the standards of courses and teachers.

In one high profile case, Neil Robinson, a British man wanted by UK police for alleged child sex offences, was detained in Beijing in April for illegally staying in China. Robinson had been teaching at a Beijing international high school.

Companies or schools?

An examination of the countless international programs that have had licensing problems shows that an overwhelming majority of the problematic programs have little to do with foreign schools. Instead they are directly run by companies that act as middlemen who introduce curricula from foreign schools.

China has four high school international programs with the "Dulwich" brand, which is attributed to the London-based Dulwich College, a public school renowned for its principled philosophies and was founded in 1619.

The Suzhou branch, launched at a public high school in Jiangsu Province, grabbed attention in summer 2012, when a people.com.cn report revealed that the four schools hardly have any ties with the London school.

It said they were all founded by a company registered in Shanghai that had bought the use of Dulwich's brand outside Britain for 100 years.

A staff member surnamed Han from Dulwich's Zhuhai branch in Guangdong Province told the Global Times that the branches are not managed by the London school as they were set up by the company in Shanghai, but she said that they are inspected once a year by Dulwich College.

Tuition fees for international programs vary from school to school as there is no unified standard. The annual tuition fees for a program in Beijing range from 50,000 to 100,000 yuan ($8,170-16,340), while normal high schools charge each student about 1,600 yuan.

"There are no clear financial standards or regulations for international programs in high schools, for example, regarding the income or number of foreign teachers, making the fees for these programs chaotic," Yuan Guilin, a professor at Beijing Normal University, was quoted by the China Education Daily as saying.

Losing sight of goals

The original goal of these schools was to introduce higher quality education resources and advance the development of domestic education.

But over the last decade they have veered away from this goal, and now they are often seen as a tool to avoid the national college entrance examinations, also known as gaokao, and are used as a way to prepare to enter foreign universities.

Sheng Jianxue, deputy head of department of the MOE's International Cooperation and Exchanges, said on September 5 that the ministry doesn't advocate setting up programs or preparatory courses for studying overseas.

A student surnamed Wu, in her second year in Dulwich's Suzhou branch, told the Global Times that its curriculum hardly covers domestic courses, and that even Chinese is an optional course for students. Another student, who calls himself Bill, in his second year at the school, said that the program focuses more on preparing for exams to enter foreign universities.

A Shanghai-based Youth Daily report quoted a local president of an international program as saying that the lack of integration of international and domestic courses has driven international programs away from their original purpose.

As a pioneering city to reform and clean up international programs, Shanghai released a new policy in August, stipulating that international programs in public high schools should not charge extra fees. The policy required the programs to add domestic courses including Chinese, history, politics and geography.

In addition, it said education authorities must shoulder the responsibility of introducing foreign courses, and schools instead of companies should primarily manage the programs.

"In order to solve the problems with the programs, the government needs to set up approval and supervision systems appropriate for the various programs, to avoid chaotic supervision,"  said Xiong Bingqi, vice president of the 21st Century Education Research Institute.