BEIJING, May 19 -- China's education authority will send about 100 college officials abroad on 24-day training trips so they can learn how to build "a batch of first class universities" in China.

The Ministry of Education said in an online notification that officials selected from across the country will visit Japan, Britain, Australia, and the United States to "learn advanced management skills" to develop "a batch of first-class universities by 2020," The Beijing News reported yesterday.

The trip funded by taxpayers' money sparked immediate public discussion. More than 6,000 Internet users commented on the news within hours after it was posted on Sina.com.cn, and most of them expressed negative opinions.

Many online commentators maintained that the 24-day training could be no more than a superficial sightseeing trip and predicted a total waste of tax money.

No Chinese mainland university ranked in the top 10 in the Asian University Rankings released last Thursday by the business and education networking firm QS. Even Peking University and Tsinghua University, the most highly regarded schools on the mainland, were only 12th and 16th on the list dominated by Hong Kong and Japan.

On QS's world-best universities list, Tsinghua University ranks 49th and Peking University 52nd. Schools from the US and UK dominated the list released in February.

Some Internet users said it is stupid for the Education Ministry to set a 10-year time limit to nudge China's universities into the "first class rankings."

The former principal of Peking University, Xu Zhihong, said the government must deal with the fact that it has no first-class universities now - and won't for quite some time.

Xu said to build a great university takes at least one or two generations' effort, and the Ministry of Education was being overly anxious.

In fact, even as China's universities recruited many more students to edge their way up in the ranking lists, some have fallen deeply in debt.

It was reported in 2007 that Chinese universities owed more than 200 billion yuan (US$29 billion), which was affecting the operation of many schools, according to the National Development and Reform Commission.