It all started with a series of emails from educational institutions with flashy names “Save 75 percent on your Ph.D. now,” “Continue your postgraduate degree with no admission fees, limited-time offer.”
Like any average Internet user who does not want to waste his time going through spam and phishing emails, I either delete those messages or report them to my spam filter application. Like most of you, I am sure, I receive tens of such emails on a daily basis, most of them just fill my junk email folder, and some pass through and find their way to my inbox, those emails carrying the scent of academia do catch my eyes.
Recently, I started receiving phone calls from the United States. I do not usually answer calls from international numbers unless I am expecting one, but due to the persistence of those calls, and the fact that my sister and her family is in the US on a scholarship, I thought it might be a call that I wanted to receive.
The call was from someone posing as an official of a university somewhere in Maryland, United States. He had an offer for me — an instant admission to their Ph.D. program for only $200. I decided to play along and started to ask about the university and its history and programs. He was well prepared with a nicely written script. He even forwarded me a link, without even asking for my email, that I could follow to read more about the university and the programs it offered. Interestingly, the guy did not ask about my prior qualifications, and in which discipline I wanted to pursue my Ph.D. When I raised this issue with him, he said that he was familiar with my qualifications because he had visited my LinkedIn profile. And you know what, he offered me a better deal, sign up now and skip a year of preparation, as my work experience was enough for that. I had to hang up on him, and refuse to take the subsequent eight calls. It is just outrageous to be fooled in such a shameless and blunt manner.
This incident came to mind with the breaking news of the scandal unfolding in Pakistan these days. At the heart of the scandal is an organization named Axact, a software company based in Karachi. It has been accused of pulling an international scam to sell fake online degrees and diplomas.
The company is said to be operating around 370 websites of phony universities — all of them showing beautiful campuses with smiling students and passionate professors and endless lists of testimonials and accreditation from non-existing institutions. According to a former employee of the company, this whole virtual empire relies on 2,000 employees, working in shifts around the clock to cater to the needs of customers willing to be lured with discounts and relaxed admission policies.
The estimated revenues of the company were in several million dollars per month, hopping from an offshore account to another to avoid tracing and legal obligations.
“Customers think it’s a university, but it’s not,” said Yasir Jamshaid while talking to The New York Times, a quality control official who left Axact in October. “It’s all about money.” Unfortunately, the Gulf region is a major target of such companies. According to the report, “One Saudi man spent over $400,000 (that’s around SAR1.5 million) on fake degrees and associated certificates.
Axact is not the only player in the market of phony degrees and forged diplomas, nor it is the one that could be called the inventor of such practices. It is an old practice that flourishes in environments where true qualifications and professionalism are of no importance. In such environments, regardless of your real qualifications, your scientific mind and practices, that piece of paper alone is enough to put you ahead in the game.
Sadly, the practice of buying fake degrees is widely embraced in this part of the world. A couple of years ago, a Twitter hashtag was created, and I believe it is still alive, to expose a number of well-known Saudis who had allegedly bought postgraduate degrees from phony educational institutions. Without the help of such fake degrees, these people would not have been able to acquire their current professional positions and social statuses.
We should discuss and revise our educational and professional practices. To put the real value on a person’s expertise and hard work rather than blindly looking at his or her acquired degrees. Moreover, in the days of the Internet, there is nothing easier than double-checking the accuracy of submitted degrees and diplomas from any university in the world. Maybe by developing some effective mechanism to verify educational documents, we can close the door on scammers and fraudsters.
