Fake Degrees

An interesting news item had come out in March 2015, and I have been waiting to see suitable reactions from the educational world. To my surprise, there has been no significant reaction. The country has treated the shocking news as something routine! I refer to the story of an 8^th standard dropout who passed himself off as a Professor of Power Systems using forged documents and was teaching in an engineering college near Chennai during the last three years.  Visit

http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/city/chennai/Class-8-dropout-becomes-engg-college-professor-lands-in-jail/articleshow/46489649.cms

When some Indians use fake degree certificates to get into positions they do not deserve, they are robbing every Indian graduate to some degree. One way of reducing such fraud is to have every educational institution run a service to verify degrees/diplomas online. The user should scan and upload relevant documents for verification and pay online something like Rs 250 per document, for the service. The verifying institution would send the document back with a stamp saying “verified on at if the document is authentic.  If the verification takes longer than 24 hours, the fee should be refunded. Automating the service for verifying future documents, introducing a unique Doc-ID, introducing safeguards to protect student privacy are all worth considering. Obviously, the Ministry of Human Resource Development needs to take responsibility to implement such measures to build-up the credibility of Indian degrees and diplomas.

However, it would be foolish to assume that such measures alone will rectify the rot that has set into our educational institutions. I assume that a selection committee probably chaired by the Principal of the college, the Head of the Dept., and a couple of professors must have “selected” the candidate for appointment as a professor! In some universities, the committee would include a representative of the Chancellor of the University. All these worthies in the committee have got away scot-free! Presumably, they all have “genuine” degree certificates! What about the management of the Institute that must have collected fees from the students, to have them them taught by illustrious teachers?

If even an educational institute cannot find a difference between a real teacher and a fake one, what does the industry do? Can you blame them when they write off the bulk of the colleges, ignoring all applications from their students? They need only to “short-list” 30 or 40 institutions for campus recruitment.

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