Duke offers a global executive program where students attend classes every three months for two weeks in Asia, Europe, Latin America and North America.

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To qualify for "highly-trusted" status, a college has to ensure students attend classes regularly, its teaching is of sufficient quality, and it adheres to a range of other factors.

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About 450 students now attend classes at the Hua Shan Forum, a quarterly newsletter reaches 20, 000 readers, and more than a thousand teachers have been trained.

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To qualify for "highly-trusted" status, an institution has to demonstrate its teaching is of a sufficient quality, its students regularly attend classes, and that it complies with a range of other factors.

BBC: Harvinder Kaur

About 10 percent of the students attend regular classes at those schools, with an aide to help them, but 90 percent are in special classes, with student-teacher ratios as small as 1-to-1 and as large as eight students with two aides and one teacher.

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Levine predicted that there would continue to be traditional campuses in the future where students live and attend classes, but that they would compete with virtual universities that only exist online.

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"As a result, notifications of changes to circumstances of students, details of students failing to enrol or attend classes, or curtailment of sponsorship were not being acted upon, " he said.

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Students choose the location where they want to attend classes based on the proximity of their residence or place of work.

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At the elite Indian engineering colleges students must attend 42 hours of lectures and lab classes each week, twice as much time as the typical MIT undergraduate spends in class.

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