BEIJING, July 29  -- The Ministry of Education (MOE) on Tuesday released a circular calling for timely information disclosure following a series of scandals in college admissions and other areas.

The circular designated 50 areas for which 75 MOE-affiliated universities must give transparent and in-time information to the public, such as recommended candidates for college admission, public bidding for infrastructure construction and university leader's off-campus posts.

Information on faculty, teaching quality and student management will also come into the public domain.

"These 50 items are just the baseline for university information openness," said Xu Mei, spokesperson of the MOE. "We encourage the universities to do more to give the public access to university affairs."

All the universities affiliated to the MOE are required to post the specified information on their websites within 20 days of any change.

One obstacle to information openness lies in the difficulty of supervising its implementation, said Yuan Guiren, the minister of education, and the ministry is considering independent third party evaluation. The ministry will also conduct regular monitoring, the results of which will be available for public review.

The circular comes after a series of scandals involving China's universities that have made the public doubt the purity of the ivory towers, including bribe taking in admissions and corruption in construction projects.