Exciting new opportunities for purveyors of fake qualifications
Earlier posts have reported on particular examples of fake university degrees including a scandal in Pakistan and the entertaining story about a dog which was awarded an MBA. Now University World News reports on the new growth area for fake qualifications:
Degrees from Western universities have become so prized in China in recent years that degree mills and fake certificate producers have mushroomed, making the country one of the world’s major producers of bogus degrees – not just for customers in China, but across Asia and beyond.
With an ongoing crackdown by Chinese authorities and the ubiquity of genuine degrees from the US, UK and Australia among Chinese graduates, the shadowy industry appears to be moving into lucrative new areas – professional qualifications designed to smooth the way into coveted jobs.
“A foreign degree used to be seen as ‘gold plated’ in China. It’s no longer the same because now lot of Chinese students come back from universities in the US and UK,” said Ning Guan, strategic development manager at UK Naric, the National Recognition Information Centre, which specialises in identifying and tracking bogus degrees on behalf of UK universities and large companies recruiting internationally.
“China’s labour market has become more demanding. Before, you could go back [to China] and get a good job. Now you need a professional qualification to go with your foreign degree to get a decent job. So there is definitely a market opening up for this kind of qualification,” she told University World News.
It’s an interesting development with the growth in fake professional certificates, eg in accountancy and vocational subjects, alongside more traditional forged degree certification particularly noteworthy. It goes to show that perhaps a fake degree alone isn’t enough to get on in the job market these days.
