Fake Degrees for the Big Boys in Pakistan

In the past if you had the money you could buy anything, even happiness. That’s if happiness came through acquiring a university degree. Not much has changed over the years, except that it got easier to buy a degree.

Fake degrees have been sold in Pakistan for a long time. Now, though, the scope of it has enlarged considerably with many shady outfits offering degrees in return for little or no work. A degree of choice is yours for a fraction of what it would cost to attend university and do the hard work. Old methods, of course, continue with enhanced brazenness, as the recent case of degrees’ fraud at Sialkot illustrates. It was there that blank degree certificates from the Allama Iqbal Open University and other public and private degree-awarding institutions were recovered. A gang of three acquired these certificates in connivance with the universities’ officials. This serious offence, has elicited no comment from the national education authorities, and the press has failed to follow-up on this story. Have the lax officials under whose noses this happened been punished, and have systems been installed to avoid a repeat?

Global competition and the increasing pressure on jobs nationally has triggered many shady businesses to innovate beyond the old fashioned way of stealing degree blanks. Efficient delivery of any (fake) degree certificate from accredited universities is now possible from a variety of sources advertised in prestigious journals such as the Economist and in Pakistani newspapers. The money needed compared with proper university charge is negligible and you can have a degree certificate of choice within days, thanks to the internet. Academic work, if required of the aspirant, is minimal.

Cheap degrees from the North

There are safety engineers at nuclear plants and biological weapons expert, at NATO headquarters and at the Pentagon who have phony degrees, according to a recent CBS News report. According to Alan Contreras who cracks down diploma mills for Oregon state, “you don’t want somebody with a fake degree working in Homeland Security … or teaching your kids or designing bridges.” CBS reports that they found employees with diploma mill degrees in sensitive departments such as the new Transport Security Administration, the Defence Intelligence Agency and the Department of Treasury and Education. Kennington University, which was forced out of business in California and Hawaii was the alma mater of Florida State Rep. Jennifer Carroll, who just stepped down from the National Commission on Presidential Scholars.

When some of these people were questioned they said they worked hard and thought their degrees were legitimate. Being cornered, they are clearly trying to hoodwink others. The US Council for Higher Education Accreditation, http://www.chea.org , lists all the US accredited institutions, and there is little chance that such otherwise well-informed people would fail to carry out this elementary check.

The law has caught up with several and will increasing bite hard. In the following cases, credit goes to the prestigious US weekly the Chronicle of Higher Education (www.chronicle.org) for exposing fake degree holders, which led to their expulsion. Tulane University fired a part-time instructor, as was, ironically, Michael Davis, a member of the Accrediting Council for Independent Colleges and Schools. Davis had a doctorate from Saint Regis University, which claims recognition from the government of war-torn Liberia, and requires virtually no academic work. He was booted out of the board.

Action against the bogus degree outfits has also begun in the UK. In early 2003 a joint operation of the US and UK authorities closed down 14 made-up institutions and which were used by hundreds of unqualified people, mainly in North America, to gain professional jobs.

The UK government is already questioning the American University in London (AUL) about the use of the word “university” in its title. This unaccredited “university”, was founded by a Pakistani nuclear chemist, Dr Khurshid Khan (deceased). A Guardian report of Sept 9, 2003, mentions a visit to AUL to talk to Dr Hussein Alzubaidi, an Iraqi, and current chancellor and CEO of the “university”. His office is above a betting shop!

They have 500 students paying Pounds 4,975 a year to do a range of degree up to PhD, which are offered in nearly 30 subjects ranging from accounting to urban planning. Its degrees are not accepted in UK, or anywhere else, as it is an unaccredited university offering sub-standard courses.

I checked Alzubaidi on the web and there seems to have been nothing published by him. This is a characteristic he shares with, Peter James Sage, the chancellor of the UK affiliate of Preston University – the newly enlarged Halifax University, which like Preston is unaccredited. To avoid scrutiny, neither AUL, Preston nor Halifax show a faculty list. This is contrary to standard practice for all accredited universities. (Preston has 15 campuses in Pakistan, three of them being chartered, i.e. accredited by Pakistan, while the parent university remains unaccredited in the US, where it is headquartered. Preston, like AUL, has a Pakistani founder.)

Fake degrees here too

It was in 2003 that I interviewed two persons (one with a bachelor’s and the other with a doctorate) for a faculty position at a new university in Lahore. The unusual names of the universities prompted me to check them on the Internet and my suspicions were vindicated. The person with the doctorate claimed that he had flown over to London from Canada to do some required practical computer work for six weeks at the American University in London (AUL at www.aul.edu). An internet search quickly led me to look at its connections in Pakistan. Looking deeper led to many strange connections…

The website http://www.aul.edu/pakistan.htm lists AUL affiliated institutions in Pakistan, all of which looked suspicious. These were brought to the attention of the Higher Education Commission with a request that they investigate the AUL link. The website shows five others in Punjab and Sindh] If the Punjab and Sindh governments wish to restore their educational authority, they should, in tow with HEC, check out the AUL affiliates and similar dubious institutes.

The Islamabad-based Pakistan Futuristic Foundation and Institute’s (PFFI) founder obtained a degree from AUL. He has, in turn, supervised the AUL PhD thesis of the Rector of the National University of Modern Languages (NUML), also in the capital. Confirmation of this came from the Dean of the Faculty of Advanced Integrated Studies (FAIS) at NUML. She is in-charge of all PhD research at the university.

The FAIS is the brainchild of the founder of PFFI. It probably took shape around the time that PFFI severed its link with AUL, and moved its AUL-registered PhD students to NUML, then known as NIML (“I” stood for Institute).

Three NUML PhD theses are available in the HEC’s library, but not in NUML’s. The Dean of FAIS told me that NUML would only make them available in their own library after the convocation is held. The awardees have of course already started being referred to as Doctors. NUML has not had any convocation since Nov 2000 (when it awarded the first PhD), which ought to an annual event for any good, functioning university.

It struck me that NUML has awarded PhDs in record time. Prior to 29 May 2000, NUML was an institute (named NIML) affiliated with the Quaid-e-Azam University (QAU). PhDs were awarded to two English department professors (one of them the department’s head) in Nov 2000 and May 2001. That’s a PhD in 6 months after getting chartered!

More seriously, the head of the University Grants Commission from 1997 to 2001 managed to get a PhD in Education in June 2001 from NUML. His thesis had been submitted to NUML “through” the PFFI. On relinquishing charge at the UGC he moved to the vice-chancellorship of QAU. It was during his term of service at the UGC that NIML’s charter was considered, and that’s exactly when he was registered as a student there. The UGC (that later became HEC) is an institution which funds universities and gives recommendations for the award of a charter to a university.

If the work on the three theses started prior to NIML getting a charter, their outline of research work required approval by the Board of Advanced Studies and Research of QAU, of which NIML was an affiliated institute prior to May 2000. That no reference to any NIML theses exists at QAU was confirmed by a notable academic with access to such records there. According to the same person, NIML may not have authorization from QAU to offer any degree above Master’s.

NUML has now many thousands of students, with several hundreds registered in the MPhil and PhD programs in many subjects, according to one of its faculty members. Here’s an institute that lies in the shadow of the HEC, the body empowered to maintain standards in our universities. The way out of the current mess is clear, but it will require great resolve and courage. Let’s hope that exists.