A prestigious Chinese university has advised first-year students not to use laptops in case they waste study time surfing the Internet, state media said Thursday. "We have been advised by the school to leave our laptops behind," Liu Li, a student from central Hunan Province attending Zhejiang University in the east of China told the official Xinhua news agency.
Cheng Yi, director of the university's recruitment office, said more and more students were becoming addicted to computers and the Internet.
"We have no better alternative," Cheng was quoted by Xinhua as saying.
Between September 2005 and July 2006, two-thirds of the 90 students who dropped out of Zhejiang left because of Internet addiction, he said.
The new directive was only advisory and students who needed to study on computers could still use the university's computer room, Cheng added.
According to Xinhua, the owners of nearby Internet cafes were rubbing their hands with glee at the news.
"The intention is good," said a student surnamed Sun, "but have they realized that we could just as easily hang out in net bars for a whole night?"
Source: Agence France-Presse
