There have been at least four reported cases of students fraudulently forging or altering their college certificates this year, a development worrisome enough for regional educators to broach the issue during a quality conference here.

LONDON. we have to establish the legitimacy and the validity of all documents

At the inaugural Caribbean Area Network for Quality Assurance in Tertiary Education (CANQATE) conference last week, heads of three institutions reported that in separate incidents three Jamaicans and a Nigerian presented forged or altered certificates.

They had tried to use the fraudulent documents to gain entry to three institutions and, in one case, to land a job.

The most recent of the four cases occurred just over two weeks ago. It involved a former student of the Northern Caribbean University (NCU) who tendered an NCU certificate with a forged name in an attempt to gain employment at a bank.

According to NCU vice-president of Academic Affairs, William Smith, the bank contacted the institution after observing that the certificate was signed - not by the president of the institution, as should be the case - but with the mispelt, forged name of UCJ's executive director Dr Ethley London.

"The potential employer had called (us) and we simply informed the employer that this was not a graduate of NCU," Smith told the Observer at the conference in Runaway Bay, St Ann, on Thursday.

Months earlier, the UCJ encountered two similar cases. In one case a Nigerian female seeking entry into a nursing school in Jamaica used a letter from the UCJ that gave an altered assessment of her Nigerian certificate.

"The letter said what her certificate passes would be equivalent to and it did not measure up to the requirements for nursing," Grace Gordon, senior accreditation officer at the UCJ, said.

"The first one (nursing school) she went to thought it (the certificate) wasn't authentic because she had actually changed something on it. It could be either the grade or she put on an additional subject. They drove her away. The second place actually took it and called the UCJ."
When she was contacted by a second institution about the same matter, Gordon said she alerted all the other nursing schools across the island.

The Mico Teachers College has also been targeted at least three times over the last year by corrupt students. But these were largely foreigners, said principal Dr Claude Packer.

"We have had a few applications from (students of) African states. Probably in a year, we get about three applications. Generally they are not Jamaican students, just students who apply from other places around the world."
In all instances, the students were never reported to the police.

According to Dr London, the general approach by the UCJ and the institutions have been to correct the misguided students and deny their application.

One role of the UCJ is to assess certification for students with non-Jamaican certification who want to either work or study here. The scrutiny is intense so falsifications are likely to be detected.

"We have to be very careful. We take great care . because we have to establish the legitimacy and the validity of all documents," Dr London said.

International statistics make a link between increased student mobility across international borders and the rise in forged certificates and diploma mills.

In the United States, corrupt agencies which sell fake diplomas via the Internet rake in an average of US$200 million per year, according to Rebecca Cooke, an evaluator from Educational Credential Evaluators in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, who spoke on the topic: 'The Dilemma of Forgery: Altered Documents in an International Context' on Thursday, the final day of the three-day conference.

She said with the Internet has come a flood of scams, operated and perpetrated across nations.

Socio-economic and other conditions have made students desperate for any available means to achieve a better future. New technology has also made the production of phony documents fast, inexpensive and easy. "Because of the elusive nature of forgery, there is no hard data on how many fake documents are escaping our view," said Cooke.

"Educators are constantly asking about the latest trends in forgery. Where are the documents coming from? Who should we be wary of?"

Her presentation gave details on how to recognise a forged or altered document.

"The way of curbing it is to focus on the people using these degrees and enforcing laws that are very tight," said the evaluator.
Institutions should also keep their academic records in secure storage at all times she said, and limit access to them.

Mothers can't father

Trousers in Denim

Cream of the 'Crop'