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20/05/2015

According to the AICTE, more than 300 institutes are providing courses like MBA, MCA, Mtech without the council\'s approval.

22/01/2014

How did Mathew Martoma, who was expelled from Harvard Law School in 1999 for forging his transcript, get into the most selective business school in the U.S. two years later?

That is a question admission officials and consultants are asking about Martoma, 39, who is currently on trial for federal insider trading charges in New York.

The Class of 2003 Stanford MBA worked at SAC Capital Advisors, the hedge fund run by billionaire Steven A. Cohen. He is accused of using illegal tips on drug trials to create the most lucrative trade ever based on inside information. Martoma is the eighth SAC executive to face insider-trading charges. The prior seven have been convicted.

Spokesperson Barbara Buell confirmed that Martoma – who would later go on to work at SAC Capital Advisors, the hedge fund run by the billionaire Steven A. Cohen – enrolled at the university in 2001 and graduated with an MBA in 2003. He joined SAC Capital as a health care stock portfolio manager three years after getting his MBA degree.

Martoma’s expulsion from Harvard for creating a false transcript was disclosed in court papers unsealed last week. The documents reveal that Martoma changed some of his first-year law school grades from B’s to A’s. He then sent the forged transcript to nearly two dozen judges when he applied for federal clerkships.

Then, during a Harvard disciplinary hearing to determine whether he should be expelled, Martoma reportedly tried to cover his tracks by creating a fake paper trail that included fabricated emails and a counterfeit report from a computer forensics firm that Martoma had created to help conceal his activities. Martoma reportedly told law school administrators that he had falsified his transcript as a joke and did it mainly to impress his parents.

After Harvard kicked him out, Martoma, who at the time was known as Ajai Mathew Thomas, legally changed his name to Mathew Martoma in 2001, the same year he arrived on Stanford's campus. It is not known what name Martoma used on his Stanford application. A professor then at Duke University, where Martoma earned his undergraduate degree, had described him in a recommendation letter to Stanford as ”extraordinarily intelligent,” ”remarkably analytic” and “wonderfully fair-minded.”

In all probability, Martoma slipped through the cracks because he simply lied about important details on his application and Stanford failed to check those facts or omissions. A dozen years ago, few if any schools routinely ran background checks on applicants. None used Google or social media to investigate MBA candidates. ”Adcoms have raised security in the past five years or so and it is now routine for admitted kids to go thru some nominal check after admission and before matriculation,” says Sandy Kreisberg, founder of HBSGuru.com, an admissions consulting firm.

"A typical check is that the school registers with Kroll, and as a candidate you have to give Kroll contact information of employers and recommenders," adds Kreisberg. "Then Kroll hires some kid in India to call those people and find out if you really worked there or if Mr. X wrote that recommendation. There are lots of variants of that, but that is the template. This is not a foolproof system, especially when dealing with the likes of a focused and expert fraudster like Martoma, but this security space is always a cat-and-mouse game or an arms race."

In fact, his name change also would have complicated matters. “If he legally changed his name right before applying, they might not have gotten a hit at the time,” says Shawn O’Connor, founder of Stratus Prep, an admissions consulting and test prep firm. “Finally, if he never said he attended HLS, it would have been substantially harder for them to find this then if he did say he attended and just said he dropped out or something (since then they would have known to check this with Harvard). But if he didn't say he attended Harvard, I wonder how he accounted for those years on his resume/application."

Stanford's application would have required Martoma to disclose his expulsion from Harvard. "Our application includes questions asking applicants about attendance, academic status, and disciplinary actions at other institutions," explains a spokesperson for the school. "Expulsion from another institution due to fraud, if it were disclosed or known, would create a serious impediment to admission."

For Stanford, the bigger question today is whether it should revoke Martoma's degree because he obviously lied his way into the school's prestige MBA program. "One issue is, if Martoma's application omitted the HLS expulsion, what is Stanford going to do?," asks Kreisberg. "There are cases where schools revoke diplomas after the fact, for situations involving fraud and omissions in the application. Stanford could do that, but it may not be clear how much of his circa 2000 application they still possess."

19/01/2014

DEGREE mills that churn out 'graduates' at the drop of a hat are the sort of dodgy outfits we link with shadier parts of the world, but the problem is a lot closer to home and threatens to harm Singapore's name as an education centre.
Small as it is, the country appears six times on a list compiled by Oregon's Office of Degree Authorisation (ODA).

The American state has strict laws regarding the use of qualifications from unaccredited institutions and those dubbed 'degree mills' or 'degree suppliers'. It requires that a person's business cards, CV and letterhead declare if his degree is from an unaccredited university.

The term - degree or diploma mill - has been used in the United States and around the world to refer to 'substandard or fraudulent colleges that offer potential students degrees with little or no serious work'. They range from those which are simple frauds - an address to which people send money in exchange for a degree - to those that require some nominal work from the student but do not require the college-level study normally required for a degree.

Oregon's laws make its list one of the most comprehensive compiled by a state government body in the United States.

It names six institutions here as offering unaccredited qualifications: Cranston University, Templeton University, Trident University of Technology, Vancouver University Worldwide, Westmore University (Westmore College) and Lee Community College.

[ed. Buxton University, possibly from Singapore, is also on the list.]

Names of institutions go on the list if there are queries made by members of the public. Checks are carried out on the status of the university both in the US and with foreign governments before they are put on the list.

Checks by The Straits Times found that Westmore University's website is hosted by a company operating out of Science Park.

Vancouver University Worldwide, which was ordered to be shut by the Canadian government two years ago, had offered its courses here for a few years.

Several insurance industry professionals have MBAs, while some even have doctorates, from the university.

A few Singaporeans were also found to have degrees from Cranston University and Templeton University. Both are listed as online universities, based in Singapore and possibly Nevada.

The Palin School of Arts and Design in Bras Basah lists Trident University of Technology degrees, but Palin officials say that currently they are not offering the degree programme in advertising and design.

ODA's list says Trident was denied approval by the state of Wisconsin and it was never legal in New Jersey as claimed.

But what was surprising was the presence on the list of Lee Community College. The private school has a CaseTrust for Education quality mark and is popular for its diploma courses in counselling and psychology.

The Straits Times found that the school, in Maxwell Road, also offers a degree from the American University for Humanities (AUH), which a staff member said is accredited by the American Academy for Liberal Education.
(ed. Judging from the absence of any useful information in English on the AUH website, it is hard to believe that AUH is capable of fulfilling its claim of offering genuine American style liberal arts education.)

ODA's website has this to say about the American university: 'New name for American University of Hawaii, which was closed by court order. Operations claiming accreditation from The American Academy for Liberal Education in Lebanon do not meet Oregon legal requirements and degrees are not valid here. Degrees issued from Delaware are not valid in Oregon.' (For details, read "A Tangled Tale in Tbilisi" here.)

Although the school has been offering degree courses for years, a check with the Ministry of Education (MOE) revealed that Lee Community College is not approved to offer any external degree programmes.

An MOE spokesman said the matter would be investigated.

It warned that new regulations require all private schools to seek permission from the new statutory board, the Council for Private Education (CPE) before offering external degree programmes, including online programmes.

Non-compliance may lead to deregistration of the private school and prosecution of its officials.

Lee Community College's chief executive, Dr Frederick T**e (ed. see below for Fred T**e's suspect doctorate), said the school spent over $100,000 (ed. probably grossly exaggerated) to seek accreditation for the degree programme, which was from the American University for Humanities in Tbilisi, Georgia.

It was accredited by the American Academy for Liberal Education (AALE), a recognised accrediting agency in the US for liberal arts institutions, but was rejected by the MOE.
__________________________________
[ed. misleading assertions by Fred T**e
AALE accredited AUH in Tbilisi in 2006, raising doubts among US academics about AALE's own credibility (here).
It appears that Lee Community College (LCC) sought, but has not gained, accreditation from AALE for its liberal arts program offered in conjunction with AUH. (here)
LCC had been awarding bachelor's degree in counselling psychology, using AUH's name, for years without any accreditation.
A degree in counselling psychology, being a professional degree, is not a liberal arts degree. AALE's accreditation, even if granted to LCC, would not cover such a professional degree anyway. ]
___________________________________

Dr T**e did not explain why the school continued to offer the degree despite the MOE rejection. He would only say that the school is now seeking MOE approval to run other degree programmes from the US.

Mr Alan Contreras, the administrator for Oregon's ODA, said Singapore never used to feature on the ODA's list.

'The problem Singapore has is that it opened the door to private post-secondary education without establishing a serious governmental oversight process to make those providers prove that they are legitimate,' he said.

'In effect, your government has allowed its name to be used inappropriately because only government authorised colleges can issue genuine degrees.'

Mr Contreras also warned: 'Without enforcement of standards by the government, anything goes. This is why thereputation of degrees issued in Singapore is falling.'

The MOE said that under the new laws that will come into effect by the end of the year, the Council for Private Education will run checks on these claimed partnerships.

'These measures will help ensure that dubious programmes offered by degree mills will not be permitted by CPE to be offered in Singapore,' said the spokesman.

But the new laws have come too late for a 26-year-old who attended evening classes and did course work for over three years for an AUH degree from Lee Community College.

The administrative manager hopes the new laws for private schools will ensure that only valid degrees are offered here.

'I took up the degree because I was interested in a counselling career. I spent more than $20,000 of my hard-earned money to study for the degree. Now I find out that it is worthless.'


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More on Singapore degree mills
(source)

Cranston University, Templeton University – these two printers seem to specialize in account management courses. It’s worthwhile noting that Templeton U is registered under a Las Vegas PO box number (IR here I come!), and offers discount coupons for its courses on Merchant Circle.
Trident University of Technology – From a writeup in Palin U: “A long standing tradition of academic excellence in the field of Business and Technology education. This year the university was re-named Trident University of Technology to signify its continual growth and improvement as it looks ever forward to fulfilling its mission of becoming an internationally recognised, world-class university of technology.” And to try to escape the banned list, no doubt. The website is, of course, down.
Vancouver University Worldwide – From a cached webpage (the actual VUW website was listed by my security software as a malware site, so please don’t go there) “Vancouver University Worldwide is (1) a consortium of globally-dispersed constituent and affiliate member colleges and programs, and (2) conducts a collateral ‘external’ aggregate-learning degrees process.” Translated: (1) you can’t really track us down if you’re looking for a refund, and (2) we print degrees.
Westmore University – The official website looks a free blog site, with nothing very much on it. Domain is for sale, if you’re interested. The cost of a degree ranges from $400 for a high school degree to $1500 for a PhD. Imagine: for the cost of paying a few years of (new) HDB taxes, you get to be called “Doctor”.
Lee Community College – The crowning glory. This is the shop that you pass by everytime you want to take a coffee break at Telok Ayer Food Market. Specializing in “psychology” and “counselling”, it offers external degree courses despite the small problem of MOE not allowing them to do so. MOE said they will “investigate”. You gotta feel sorry for the China students who plonked down US$20K for these soon-to-be-shut-down course programs.

19/01/2014

Verify India International Education

18/01/2014

Hi Guys share your views and ideas of fake certificates, While fraud exists everywhere,uncovering waste and fraud in the public and private sectors.