Disgraced ex-Microsoft chief Tang Jun?defends academic history

Former Microsoft China chief Tang Jun has spoken for the first time about his academic history since being ensnared in a fake diploma scandal last year.

Tang said he received a graduate diploma from Nagoya University in Japan in 1988 but dropped out of a doctoral degree course following a fight with his tutor, who had made insulting comments about Chinese people, prior to his oral defense of his doctoral dissertation in 1990, the Beijing-based IT Times Weekly reported Tuesday.

Tang says he then went to the US and applied to study at Pacific Western University (PWU) in 1993, which he said was a formal correspondence university approved by the California state government.

Tang said a doctoral candidate would normally have to spend US$10,000 to US$20,000 on the courses, but he only spent $3,000 as some of the PWU courses overlapped with subjects he had already covered in Japan.

Tang graduated with a doctoral degree from PWU in 1995.

Last July, Fang Zhouzi, a scholar who gained renown for his battles against academic misconduct, accused Tang of faking his diploma on his microblog.

After Tang responded that he had actually graduated from PWU, Fang said the university had been closed by the US government in 2006 for selling degrees.

Tang said that while some people may have purchased diplomas from PWU, he had graduated after spending five years on his dissertation.

Fang said Tang was once again fabricating his history.

"Tang had once said on CCTV that he had done research at CIT. How could that research become a three-month study tour?" Fang told the Global Times.