This guest post was authored by Eng. Jacob Kudzayi Mutisi.
Be careful who you refer to as Doctor! After reading what is happening in Tanzania, “Tanzania fires 9,932 civil servants over fake degrees” and here in Zimbabwe, “Jail time for fake degree holders” by our Minister of Higher Education, Jonathan Moyo. What is the situation in Zimbabwe?
There is reported to be a growing number of instances of misrepresentation and forgery in the production and reporting of degree results and other academic qualifications in Zimbabwe. Furthermore, there are universities that are springing up from North America, South America and Asia, which are dishing out these dubious qualifications without one even one entering a single lecture, which the Zimbabweans are acquiring in droves.
It’s a global growing industry. See this video report on the phenomenon of fake degrees to understand more.
Verifying degree results and qualifications are an important part of the recruitment process for employers of graduates, and for Higher Education providers recruiting first degree graduates onto postgraduate courses and research programmes. The production of fraudulent documents, or fake degrees and diplomas, has been going on in Zimbabwe, but it is only in the last five years that educational fraud or ‘fake qualifications’ have really become a worldwide problem. With the recent being,” Zimra boss cooks academic papers”.
Degree fraud can come in several forms, all of which are illegal. This includes bogus universities and degree mills, fake certificate websites and fraud by false representation. Bogus universities and degree mills operate purely to make money, from enrolment fees, premium phone lines, course fees and ‘life experience degree’ awards, and in doing so provide a means for fraudsters to obtain authentic-looking degrees and associated documentation from unaccredited institutions, which the Minister of Higher Education, Jonathan Moyo was referring to.
This type of fraud is becoming more sophisticated, with credible websites and verification services often modelled on their authentic counterparts, including the direct lifting of content and sections of material from genuine university websites.
In Zimbabwe we have Institute of Chartered Accountants of Zimbabwe, Zimbabwe Institution of Engineers, Engineering Council of Zimbabwe, Institute of Chartered Accountants of Zimbabwe, just to name a few that must be used to verify the qualifications of our fellow countrymen and women.
The UK government has introduced the Higher Education Degree Datacheck (HEDD). HEDD is the UK Higher Education’s official service for candidate verification and university authentication. It was launched in 2011 with funding from the Higher Education Funding Council for England. It provides enquirers with the ability to verify a candidate’s academic credentials or authenticate a university or college in the UK.
The remit of the service is to protect UK universities, employers and graduates from degree fraud. Zimbabwe can introduce a similar online system where qualifications can be verified by just entering the name and date of birth and all the information is displayed. Some of the people being paraded as the best brains in the country have obtained dubious qualifications and hopefully, these can be named and shamed.
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16 comments
Sure its a global problem but I dont see how the problem van be solved with an online degree check? How then will one check a USA degree?
Jacob has put his finger on a huge problem world-wide, institutions that issue pieces of paper stamped “degree, certificate, or diploma”. To answer Langton’s question: There is no way save by reputation. It used to be that we had an association whose stamp of approval was an indication of basic quality. Now, however, their system has been gamed to the point where it is no longer a means of telling basic quality from trash.
In the USA we have a proliferation of high-cost/low-quality institutions that water down courses to make it look like every student is passing, and ultimately graduating. This stems from the “every child deserves a degree” mantra, the lack of preparation students receive in K-12, and their general lack of upbringing. There is also the matter of for-profit institutions trying to increase their incomes by stretching far to the left of the performance-ethic curve to increase enrollment. One often sees, for instance, courses called second-year graduate being really second-semester freshman, and “doctoral dissertations” that are really just reports on undergraduate-level senior projects (at best). As one observes this declining situation, one should not be surprised that America is falling behind in STEM, and not just in test scores.
That Tanzania and Zimbabwe have dealt strongly with this situation sets a good example for the rest of the world. Even if people have paid out money over a period of time and engaged in low-level courses, degrees received from high-cost/low-quality institutions are worthless. Industry is certainly not fooled and will not hire such “graduates”. You can spend a lot of time and a lot of money only to damage your reputation. While usually informal, companies keep black lists or white lists. Black-listed institutions’ graduates are never hired. White-listed institutions’ graduates are the only ones hired. Do not fall into that trap.
Had our problem been on poor quality it was going to be understandable. In USA now the problem is now more on fake on campus and fake online colleges eg Atlantic International University , Kentsville University, Daltown University. They claim accreditation whilst they are not, for AIU they have dubious, ie those accreditation agents who are not approved by USA. Its really a pity for international students who are falling for this. As for the quality of Education in Universities and colleges, lets not go there else 60% of graduates will not like it! I have seen not even half baked graduates but very raw ones from local Zimbabwean Universities, I have seen many graduates not having clue on a 101 theoretical concept….
USA’s government education agency is part of the problem. The monopoly operated by our Department of Education takes people’s money and then forces parents to send their children to specific schools, usually not of the parent’s choice. There is no sense of quality nor choice. There is no accountability and no focus on education as the main goal. Parents who might be able to afford to send their children to decent schools can not because of the money taken from them to fund the farce operated by the government.
One can point to all manner of “accreditation agents”. Most were created to add “a sense of quality” to high-cost/low-quality institutions. The one agent that had once been a mark of basic quality can no longer make that claim, given the number of institutions who have “earned” their accreditation while still being of low quality.
Zimbabwean politicians are becoming notorious for fake degrees, the First Lady did her PhD in an impressively quick timeframe, Walter Mzembi went from ‘engineer’ to Dr. overnight with an online doctorate in business administration from an online university in the phillipines?!? Why are we accepting this tomfoolery.
There is online verification.
Just not visible to you as it is not public, and actual verification involves exchange of private details.
You didn’t do your research first on how institutions verify qualifications.
Don’t be lazy
What is the online verification link? What is the process? That claim that such exists is not sufficient.
It’s not visible to you. It is between institutions, between their governing councils and associations of higher learning.
You won’t see it dumb nuts! Ask the institutions. Or are you lazy to consider that option, Ph.D?
If you’ve worked with academic administration you would know. Particularly in the admin side. Processes and systems already exist. You all think you’ve invented or come up with the idea.
Sorry to disappoint you!
It’s up to the employer to verify your qualifications, regardless of the presence of a online portal to do so. In Zim there’s a quasi-parastatal that requires your to bring original copies of your certificates which are sent to a recruitment agency for verification. That’s being diligent! I don’t think the companies that haven’t been verifying qualifications will start to do so simply because there’s an online portal.
Aside from that, the incompetence of the individual with a fake qualification will surely come to light over time. If it doesn’t, then your company has a problem which is bigger than fake qualifications.
It is easy to verify that the “degree, certificate, diploma” was received. It is very difficult to verify the quality. Many organizations, especially government, hire, retain, and promote on patronage criteria, not merit. So, incompetence is not a strong criteria once hired. What fixes that problem is accountability. But, that has to start from the top. Where industry is concerned, customers have to be willing to go elsewhere for services and products. Where government is concerned, citizens have to vote for the good of the nation and its people, not for the next set of handouts.
The quality is even easier to verify. There is what they call accreditation, governed by institutional associations…that determine, grade and rate qualifications according to baseline standards. Do you know ZIMCHE?
Like I said, for a PhD or PhD wannabe, you’re pretty lazy to do a simple thing that pales to the expected levels of indepth study and research.
“Accreditation” is a meaningless term today. There are many “accreditation” agencies created simply to give apparent value to worthless institutions. Even the one we used to trust in the States has been gamed to the point where its accreditation has little value as a metric of value.
What you are saying is contradictory to everthing the article stands for, because if you are hired or retained based on patronage then it essentially doesn’t matter if your degree is fake or even if present.
Even though that MAY happen, I doubt that MANY organisations do that as you claim. Parastatals and quasi-parastals have grading systems in place for positions stipulating the minimum requirements for certain positions, Even when nepotism is in play, one must have the required qualification. In the private sector, similar or even more stringent measures are applied, one wonders where these MANY organisations are.
The rest of what you have said is irrelevant to the discussion as they are reforms not related issue at hand.
In Zimbabwe we have ZimCHE – Zimbabwe Council for Higher Education that evaluates all foreing degrees and gives them equivelance rating with a local degree, we also have ZimSEC which does the same but for high school certificates, the process costs quite a bit and the responsibility is on the degree holder to have their qualification “localized”, the employer should just ask for ZIMCHE certificate BUT those who are actually benefitting from these fake degrees are too high up to be asked any questions!
I localized my foreign qualification through ZIMCHE, they needed my degree copy, academic record and $300, i was told the process involved gettinng in touch with my Old University to share the curriculum of each course i did then they sent my evaluation of Head of Departments at local universities who determined if what i did was of any value, i was given equal evaluation to a local Btech, the systems are there and in place
The problem is rampant everywhere.Recently we found similar problem at https://www.jobsindurgapur.co.in .The problem is insidious.