cyyz wrote:Any schools that offer Free College/university Programs for it??
CYYZ, contact these South African dudes, they can help:
Varsity ‘degrees’ for sale on the streets
Fake qualifications bought for R730 and easily certified by police
MASHUDU MATARI and ISAAC MAHLANGU
06 November 2005
FAKE educational qualifications sell like hot cakes on the streets of the country’s leading cities — and also get certified at police stations.
A three-week Sunday Times investigation has found that fake diplomas and degrees bearing names and emblems of leading institutions go as cheaply as R30 each.
Armed with three job adverts, the Sunday Times team set off to buy the diplomas and degrees needed to apply for the following positions:
•An SABC news researcher requiring a journalism diploma;
•An independent marker at the University of South Africa requiring a computing diploma; and
•A company seeking an accountant.
Qualifications for all three were bought within days at Internet cafés, two in Johannesburg and one in Pretoria – all at a cost of only R730.
When Martin Lan, who sold a diploma to the Sunday Times was confronted on the phone on Friday, he said he was “only helping out”. He denied that he was part of any syndicate.
“I was helping you in particular, not selling. Selling is different from helping,” he said.
When told that Sunday Times was running a story about buying a fake qualification from him, Lan said: “If the allegations are right, then I will say fine.”
The bachelor of commerce degree from Rand Afrikaans University [renamed the University of Johannesburg] cost R100; a national diploma for computing from Technikon Pretoria (now Tshwane University of Technology) cost R600; and a national diploma in journalism from the Durban Institute of Technology was bought for R30.
After they were bought, the fakes were taken to three Johannesburg police stations – Hillbrow, Rosebank and Alexandra – where a copy of each fake was authenticated as “a true reproduction of the original”. They were stamped, dated and signed by a police officer.
Kroll Mie, one of the biggest qualification-verification companies in South Africa, said this week that one in seven qualifications it had been asked to verify had been forged.
Professor Bonganjalo Goba, Vice-Chancellor at the Durban Institute of Technology, said they had been alerted to a “lucrative international trade in forged certificates”.
“The Durban Institute of Technology is as vulnerable as some of the best-known universities in the world,” he said.
CEO Ina van der Merwe said Kroll Mie verified over 20000 qualifications a month and found that 16% of people lied about their secondary qualifications and 18% lied about their tertiary education.
“BCom degrees and business degrees are the most popular to be faked,” she said.
Police spokesman Chris Wilken said police officers only “go according to what is on the original”.
Wilken said police always checked if the copy matched the original document.
“We cannot be phoning each and every university and find out whether the credentials are valid,” he said.
Van der Merwe said there were still many companies which accepted every police-certified copy at face value.
“If a company is not using qualification-verification services, they are in big trouble,” she said.
Van der Merwe said the police stamp convinced employers that the document was legitimate.
“They think there is no need to check it out,” she said.
Joburg-based economist Mike Schussler said the impact of the fakes had a “catastrophic” effect on the economy.
“It diminishes chances for genuine graduates of getting jobs,” he said.
Schussler said fake qualifications also harmed the image of all education institutions.
“I’m very worried about this. I don’t think the country can afford it,” he said.
Van der Merwe said once an employer had found out that a staff member had fake qualifications, it became an expensive business to get rid of them.
She said it was costly to fire a staffer once it had been found that they had attained the job with a fraudulent qualification. Companies could save money by verifying qualifications before employing a person. This would avoid the expense of a disciplinary hearing and subsequent dismissal.
University of Johannesburg’s Professor Derek van der Merwe has described faking of qualifications as “deeply depressing and shocking”.
“This university takes immediate steps to inform the SAPS when it becomes aware of the existence of fake degree certificates,” he said.
However, the South African Qualification Authority is aware that qualifications are being faked en masse.
Cleo Radebe, a senior official at the authority, said it verified five to seven qualifications a day. She said 20% of these could be fake because they could not be traced.
“We have done presentations to almost all government human resources departments about the importance of verification of qualifications,” she said.
Leon Potgieter, CEO of the Oval Offices, a recruitment agency, said: “Fake qualifications are a huge issue and this is exacerbated by high demand for jobs.” His company carried out what they called a “water-marking process” which verified a prospective candidate’s academic credentials and other records.
Willa de Ruyter, a spokesman for the Tshwane University of Technology, said it viewed fake certification seriously and took legal steps if it discovered its name was being used on fraudulent qualifications.
Goba said he would call for a joint “hard-hitting” strategy from all universities at the next Higher Education South Africa meeting to curb the trade.
“Our standing position is that we will, without the slightest hesitation, prosecute both the holder and the forger of the dummy certificate,” he said.
