Kindai University, a Japanese school known for raising its profile through aggressive publicity, was targeted in an alleged admissions fraud case involving a former tutor accused of posing as a student in an application, police said Monday.
Osaka prefectural police said Mizuki Noguchi, 35, has admitted taking the test and filing the application on behalf of his former student, who was initially accepted by Kindai University before the admission was later revoked.
The university has become popular among high school students across Japan after achieving full-cycle farming of bluefin tuna and becoming the country’s first university to successfully breed Japanese eels by hatching larvae from older farmed specimens.
Trygroup Inc., operator of a nationwide tutoring service, said the suspect was working for the company at the time of the alleged fraud, adding it takes the matter “seriously” and “will fully cooperate with the investigation.”
The police suspect Noguchi took Grade 2 of the Eiken Test in Practical English Proficiency on behalf of the teenage male student in September and used the result and a different photo to apply to Kindai University in November, obstructing the school’s operations.
A photo apparently combining the suspect’s and student’s faces was submitted with the application, police said. Kindai University in western Japan has allowed scores from external tests such as Eiken to count toward foreign-language marks.
The student was accepted, but his family noticed the photo on his student ID was different and contacted the university. The school reported the case to Osaka police in April and revoked his admission. Police are also questioning the student voluntarily.
© KYODO
