Do you give gifts to your teachers or professors? It seems that Hokkaido Professors have received cash, gift certificates from PhD recipients. Common in your country?

According to the state-run university’s internal survey, the nine who received the gifts belong to the graduate schools of agriculture, engineering and science and one of them received up to 150,000 yen in cash from two PhD recipients.

Masaaki Hemmi, vice president of the university, said, ‘‘We are ashamed that incidents degrading the dignity of academic dissertations have happened. We will work on measures to prevent recurrence,’’ claiming it will prohibit faculty from receiving gifts and other benefits from people applying for academic degrees.

The university conducted the internal survey after it received an anonymous tip in February naming a specific faculty member.

It said it has concluded that the incidents had no influence on the evaluation process of PhD candidates after conducting a survey of PhD recipients.

One of the nine professors said he or she has been customarily receiving honoraria since taking the post, but the university will not probe into cases in and before fiscal 2006, university officials said.

Is giving gifts to someone you want to thank; a crime? Having said that, it is not common for teachers here(Singapore) to accept gifts too. I seen my own teachers rejecting our kind intentions to give them a gift during Teachers’ Day. Lol! So we end up throwing a party just to thank them.

Source: JapanToday