The Ministry of Education confirmed on Thursday that a former official of the prestigious Renmin University of China (RUC) is under investigation, vowing to punish any university admissions official who abuses their power.

Xu Mei, spokeswoman of the Ministry of Education, said at a news conference in Beijing that Cai Rongsheng, former head of the RUC's student admission office, was under investigation.

She added that the ministry has paid high attention to corruption in universities, and requires the RUC to cooperate with the probe, according to the news portal People's Daily Online.

A publicity official with the university, who asked not to be named, confirmed with the Global Times on Thursday that Cai was under investigation.

But he refused to reveal the reasons why he was probed by the disciplinary body, and made no comment on the alleged bribery reported by the media. 

Wang Jian, the deputy secretary of the university's discipline inspection commission, told the Legal Mirror newspaper on Wednesday that Cai was caught at an immigration check in Shenzhen, Guangdong Province.

The university has required the officials at the level of deputy director or higher to hand over their passports, and insiders with the university said that more people involved with the case will be probed, Caixin magazine reported.

Cai, 48, was also a professor in economics in the university, and was the former or current independent director of at least seven corporations, said Caixin on Thursday. 

An insider told the Beijing Times that Cai was likely to be probed for corruption about his role in the RUC's independent enrollment.

The national policy was launched in 2003 in some key universities, entitling them to enroll students according to their own criteria. The RUC started its own enrollment in 2005.

Students who pass the independent entrance exams organized by the qualified universities are given some slack on the results from taking the gaokao (national college entrance examinations).

Cai's case has once again sparked off public discussion over the independent enrollment policy and the heavy bureaucracy of Chinese universities.

Those who support the new enrollment policy praised it for giving more autonomy to the universities without limiting them to the sole criteria of the the gaokao score.

But the gaokao, while widely disliked, is also seen as a gatekeeper against corruption.

The power of the faculty administrators should be restrained by regulations and supervised by the public, otherwise it will cause the abuse of power and the embezzlement of public resources as in Cai's case, Li Qi, a professor of education at the Beijing Normal University, told the Global Times on Thursday.

Universities should promote anti-bureaucracy reforms and let academic experts take charge of the management instead of government-appointed officials, giving the schools more autonomy to make decisions based on their own needs, said Li.  

In 2011, the university was put under the national spotlight when it recruited a 11-year-old boy from Yunnan Province. It was disclosed online that his father had spent millions of yuan to win him admission at the university.

Xu Mei said that the ministry has repeatedly emphasized the fairness, justice and transparency of independent recruitment and the universities will be punished for any violations of the regulations.