Four college students have raised eyebrows by setting up a matchmaking agency to help their peers find true love.

The agency, opened last month by Xu Jiaojiao and three other third-year students from Nanjing Agricultural University in east China, aims to help college students "meet, get to know each other and fall in love", and also help them express their feelings and break up in a peaceful way.

Xu Jiaojiao said they provide the matchmaking service free.

"We want to learn and develop by organizing activities and also create more opportunities for college students to get to know each other," Xu said.

They have collected personal information from 20 students from different colleges in Nanjing, capital of east China's Jiangsu Province.

Sun Xiaolei, a Mechanical and Electrical Engineering major at Nanjing University of Aeronautics and Astronautics said the agency benefits college students, especially engineering majors like him, whose class has few girls.

Jin Taijun, dean of the School of Public Administration at Nanjing University of Technology, said there is nothing abnormal about college students running a matchmaking organization.

But some people find the four girls' decision to take up matchmaking as a part-time job "weird".

An anonymous netizen on the Xici.net forum said "college students don't need to spend their spare time on matchmaking, because there are always plenty of opportunities to meet people from the opposite sex at college".

Many netizens said that expressing one's feelings and breaking up are personal affairs and it is strange to have a third party get involved.

But Xu and the other three are keen to pursue their adventure and envisage a Nanjing college network that boasts organized group activities, such as hiking, balls and parties.

"People can meet each other in the course of such activities and have more choices. The one-to-one dates we set up weren't so successful," Xu said.