A Chinese businessman's nearly $9-million gift to the Yale University business school has sparked a nationalist backlash in China, Agence France-Presse reports. The businessman, Zhang Lei, donated $8,888,888 to the Yale School of Management to build a new campus, the university announced last week. The amount was chosen because eight is a lucky number in China. But angry Chinese commentators said it would have been better if the gift had been made to a Chinese university. Other commenters defended Mr. Zhang's decision, saying large donations to Chinese universities would be misspent.

Taiwan is preparing to enroll students for the first time from select mainland Chinese universities next fall, the Associated Press quotes a vice minister of education as saying. The issue of such enrollments has been tense in Taiwan, where the pro-independence Democratic Progressive Party says mainland students should be barred. But proponents hope the initiative, expected to be approved by the Taiwanese legislature, will boost enrollments at the country's universities, now ailing as a result of its low birth rate. If current patterns persist, more than one in three Taiwanese institutions will close by 2021, Agence France-Presse reported in November.

The Chinese Ministry of Education is warning students against enrolling in private Australian colleges following the collapse last month of several vocational institutions, The Australian reported. China currently has 120,000 students studying in Australia, according to China Daily. One thousand of them were stranded after the sudden closing last month of four campuses run by Global Campus Management Group, a private company. The Chinese warnings prompted Australian government officials, who have been struggling to rebuild the battered image of Australia's vocational-education industry, to reissue a list of approved education providers.

China's legislature removed the country's education minister over the weekend, the state-run television station CCTV reports. The executive committee dismissed the minister, Zhou Ji, and replaced him with Yuan Guiren, a former president of Beijing Normal University and a deputy under Mr. Zhou, at a meeting on Saturday. The move comes in the wake of a corruption scandal in Wuhan, where Mr. Zhou once served as mayor, the Associated Press reports.

China’s Ministry of Education has approved the C9 conference, an association of elite universities that will allow credit transfer and more flexibility in exchange programs, the Xinhua news agency reported on Monday. Nine institutions -- including Peking University, Tsinghua University, and Fudan University -- formed the group, which is described as “China’s Ivy League,” on October 12. The universities have received millions of dollars in support since the government began its overhaul of the nation's higher-education system, in 1998.