People do lie about their qualifications, sometimes to get a job, or to make an impression on others. It doesn’t help that fake degrees are easily available.
WOW, you have a PhD!” That was my reaction when Chan* claimed that he’d obtained his doctorate from a university in the United Kingdom (UK) more than 20 years ago.
“Wait. From X University*, you say? Hmm ...”
It is important to check if an academic is legitimate and recognised by the relevant bodies before signing up for it.“Yeah, it’s named after a place in the UK, you know. Just like Shanghai University. I did it through distance learning,” he quickly added.
Well, I’m sorry “Dr Chan”, but no one seems to have heard of the university you purportedly went to.
I had bumped into “Dr Chan”, a college principal, during one of my assignments recently and he sent me his CV after I asked for a copy. His credentials certainly sounded dubious.
First, the name of the university from which he obtained his PhD was “unusual”. Second, when my colleagues and I tried to look it up on the Internet, there were no matching results. When contacted again, “Dr Chan” insisted that it was a “small and private” university and, therefore, “it didn’t have a website”.
A check on the website of the Department for Innovation, Universities and Skills found no such set-up on the list of institutions that have been empowered by the UK Government to award degrees.
A person can "order" his MBA online or through an agent, and have his certificate delivered right to his door.On top of his PhD, this college principal also claimed to have completed a diploma from Y University* in the United States (US).
The Malaysian-American Commission on Educational Exchange (MACEE) executive director, Dr James Coffman, confirmed that Y university is not recognised by any of the six regional accrediting associations in the US.
To give him the benefit of the doubt, “Dr Chan” could have been duped into believing that his PhD is recognised. Dr Coffman doesn’t buy that.
“I don’t believe that any of those people who obtain bogus degrees were duped. They all see it as a quick and easy thing. I have had a steady parade of people coming to my office with these degrees and saying, ‘Could you authenticate this degree because I want to go work in Saudi Arabia?’
“When I tell them their degrees are bogus, they look at me and say, ‘Oh well, I didn’t know that’. But I know very well that they do.
“First, they didn’t do any work for it. How could you possibly earn a legitimate degree when you haven’t attended any class or written a paper?” Dr Coffman says.
According to the website of a top business school in Britain, tuition fees for classes commencing next August tote up to about £45,500 (RM252, 506).
So when someone offers you a degree for RM20,000, there’s cause to be wary.
“I’ve been approached by an agent who was trying to ‘sell’ me an MBA. He said I didn’t have to go for weekend classes and that I could get my qualification within a year,” a human resources manager says.
“You don’t even have to attend the graduation! Your certificates will be mailed to you and you just have to pay the money.”
According to a study conducted by the Society of Human Resources Management in the US in 1999, about 28% of job applicants falsify their academic records, says JobStreet.com regional communications head Simon Si.
“When we go to campuses to give talks on how to land a job, we always tell students that honesty is the best policy during the job application process. Some companies value integrity above all other things.”
Si adds that sometimes, students select courses based on the cost of the programme and how easy it is to get the qualification.
“My advice for those who ‘sincerely’ want to further their studies is: If someone says you can get an MBA for RM8,000 without attending classes, you should check first.”
The saying, “better safe than sorry”, holds true when it comes to career advancement. Getting a bogus qualification may seem the faster and cheaper approach to upgrading your qualifications, but Sean* didn’t want to risk it when deciding on an MBA programme last year.
The 30-year-old engineer says he did not have the time to verify if the MBAs he found online were authentic.
“A bogus degree is a shortcut - if you are not found out. But if you are, it’ll probably signal the end of your professional career,” he says.
Instead of checking out online options, Sean feels it is safer to enrol at a public university, where students get to interact with coursemates and professors. He did just that, and his entire programme cost about RM80,000.
Doreen John, coordinator of MACEE’s Educational Advising Center, says there are several ways to verify if a programme offered by an American university is authentic, besides checking with MACEE.
Prospective students can check with the Council for Higher Education Accreditation (CHEA; www.chea.org) and the Distance Education & Training Council (DETC).
“It is important to be sure that the accrediting body or council is legitimate. Institutions that grant bogus degrees will say that they are accredited by certain associations. However, these associations could have been started by the same people who run those institutions that grant bogus degrees,” John says.
On obtaining an MBA through distance learning, which gives students, especially working adults, greater flexibility, she adds: “These programmes can be attractive because they are usually less expensive. And, of course, you save on travel and living costs overseas. They can also save time, besides being very flexible.
“But the people-factor is vital in an MBA programme. With distance learning, the student may not get to meet with other students or the professors, face-to-face.”
Finding out that an employee has lied about his credentials is every HR manager’s nightmare. From experience, Si says that a face-to-face interview session is the best time to pick up signs that tell you something is amiss about a candidate’s credentials.
“Most of the time, companies don’t track an employee’s record once they hire him, unless something happens,” he notes.
Carrefour Malaysia HR director Mohamad Fauzi Hassan says his company adopts a systematic approach when it comes to verifying questionable tertiary qualifications.
“If the name of the university does not sound familiar to us, we will check with MQA (Malaysian Qualifications Agency) and JPA (Public Services Department) to narrow down the search.” When his HR team members are in doubt about degrees and documents, they will contact the university involved.
“Every certificate has a serial number, like a birth certificate, and we will verify the number with the university. If it’s a professional degree, like engineering or law, we will go to professional bodies and check if they recognise that particular university.”
After gathering all the necessary facts, the final step is to “confront” the candidate.
“We will tell him that we are not confident about his qualification and start asking him questions,” Mohamad Fauzi says.
These would centre on the name of the vice-chancellor during the time the candidate was at the university, his lecturer for a particular subject, the number of subjects he took during a specific time, the location of the institution, and so on.
“You can tell from a person’s body language if he is telling the truth. If he’s lying, normally, he’ll ‘surrender’ on the spot.”
Mohamad Fauzi says if a candidate’s qualifications are not genuine, he will not be hired.
“If he is already working for the company, he will be dismissed for false declaration of personal details and violation of the company’s Charter of Ethics.”
And in case the candidate thinks he can get away with the same ploy in the next company he joins, here’s news: some employers do share information about their ex-employees.
“It depends on the HR manager,” says one who’s based in Kuala Lumpur. “For me, if a company calls and asks about one of my former employees, I would tell the truth. Why do you need to protect a person who has done the wrong thing? When he leaves the company, he will carry the ‘disease’ with him to another. Telling the truth is one way through which I can make a difference.”
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