Officials with the education ministry, including Hiroshi Tsuboi, head of the division on foreign students, conducted inspections Thursday at a scandal-tainted junior college in Sakata, Yamagata Prefecture, ministry officials said.

The officials with the Education, Culture, Sports, Science and Technology Ministry said the move was due to insufficient explanations by school officials when they were questioned earlier in connection with a controversy involving Chinese students at the college.

Immigration authorities suspect that many of the students at Sakata Junior College have moved to Tokyo and its vicinity to get jobs. Some of those students have been seized for violating immigration laws.

School officials were questioned on five occasions, but failed to satisfy the ministry with their answers, ministry officials said. They said certain documents, including those concerning scholarships, could only be checked at the college's headquarters.

The college was found to have accepted more than the allowable number of foreign students and failed to give some of the scholarship money from the Association of International Education Japan to its students, the ministry officials said.

Recently, the Chinese Embassy inspected classes at the school. The embassy's visit came after Japanese immigration authorities searched the college in December to check on the status of about 200 Chinese students living in Tokyo and its vicinity to verify whether the students were attending classes.

In December, the college urged about 200 Chinese students registered for classes at its Tokyo campus to return to Sakata following the closure of the Tokyo campus. But about 100 students are still living in the Tokyo area.

The two-year college caters mainly to students from China who apply for Japanese visas to study management.

Due to the controversy surrounding the college, the Sendai Regional Immigration Bureau decided not to issue student visas to 60 Chinese who were planning to enroll there this spring.