Counterfeiters are reportedly finding ways to foil China’s new electronic registration system for university diplomas.
In February, the Ministry of Education instituted a national system in which recent graduates are given identification numbers with their diplomas, to become part of an electronic registry intended to counter the widespread counterfeiting of diplomas.
According to government statistics, 600,000 fake diplomas are circulating in China, although many officials suspect that the actual number is much higher.
Employers and universities can now type a person’s identification number into the new electronic diploma-registration system to check whether the person graduated from the university and, if so, from what department and in which year.
It seems, however, that counterfeiters can easily get their hands on diplomas with identification numbers.
According to the Beijing Youth Daily, networks of counterfeiters, in addition to printing fake diplomas, can supply them with the numbers as well.
The article says the counterfeiters, who have infiltrated local education bureaus and universities, are selling diplomas with real identification numbers for hefty prices.
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South Africa’s auditor-general is investigating a provincial department that appears to have embezzled money from a scholarship fund.
Up to $3.3-million may have been taken, although the amount and the identity of the apparent embezzlers isn’t clear.
The auditor-general is investigating the financial office of the provincial government of the Eastern Cape, which gets $827,000 a year from the federal government for a scholarship fund that is supposed to benefit 650 to 700 students from the impoverished province. At least some of the scholarships have gone unpaid as far back as 1997.
An accounting student from a technical college in the Eastern Cape, wishing to remain anonymous, said when he was told he had a scholarship, he was ecstatic. No one in his family could afford to pay his tuition. But he began to suspect high-level corruption when his college refused to release his examination results because his fees had not been paid by the provincial government.
Zama Mpondwana, a representative of the department under investigation, insisted that all of the scholarships had been paid. “To our knowledge no student has launched a complaint,” he said.
But the auditor-general’s office said it had, in fact, received complaints from a number of students who had not received their scholarship money.
The office is writing letters to all of the students who are supposed to have received scholarships to determine who has been paid and who has not.
http://chronicle.com Section: International Page: A39
