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Addressing Fraud in Higher Education Verification: Insights from the 2005 Project in the Former Soviet Union

This report discusses the 2005 Verification Project, focused on assessing the validity of higher education documents from the Former Soviet Union and CIS nations. Highlighting the high incidence of fraud, with over 800 Russian sites offering fake documents, the study illustrates the inspection process, including the verification of 83 cases, 60 responses, and detection of fraud in prior evaluations. Key findings reveal that demand for original documents significantly aids in identifying fraudulent applications. Future verification methods will emphasize suspicion-based scrutiny to enhance authenticity in educational credentials.

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Addressing Fraud in Higher Education Verification: Insights from the 2005 Project in the Former Soviet Union

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  1. Verification Project 2005Former Soviet Union and CIS NOKUTs fagseminar om godkjenning av utenlandsk høyere utdanning Oslo, November 2-3, 2009 Eva Raimondos-Møller International Rådgiver, CIRIUS

  2. Motives for engaging in verification project • Many more or less founded rumours of fraud from different international recognition offices, universities, etc. • More than 800 Russian internet sites offering a variety of fake documents at differentiated prices • A high number of assessments from the Soviet area at the Danish recognition office – about 18 % of all assessed cases on average from 2000-2005 • The insecurity the caseworkers have felt handling this area • A Russian (Ukrainian) student worker at the time was day-to-day responsible for the verification letters

  3. Soviet Union, former Soviet and Baltic states

  4. The Verification Project • All documents of higher education to be verified – only on suspicion before • Period July 1 to December 31 of 2005 – 6 month • No prior evaluation of genuine or false • Contact via telephone to registrars office or letter/fax to the rector of the university • All answers on paper: letter, fax or e-mail • No assessment until we get an answer during the verification period – notification of delay • When trial period is over – then decision on the cases with no answer. If no suspicion then assessment.

  5. Cases by country - total of 83 cases

  6. Applicants’ age in 2005 and male/female ratio: 11/71

  7. Main findings – genuine or false, applicants sex, verification time, whom to ask? • Total number of cases: 83 • Total answers: 60 • Verified genuine: 59 • Verified false: 1 • No answers: 23 (16 with no suspicion we assessed anyway after a long wait) • 7 cases were not processed • Rektor or the student administration answered in 4 out of 5 cases

  8. How long must one wait? • We waited on average 52 days for an answer • More than 3 in 4 cases got an answer within the norm period of 2 month • Late answers and unsuspected non-answers waited up to 4 month

  9. Conclusions • The amount of fraud was not higher from verifying ALL documents that what we find now on suspicion • We ask for original documents in almost all cases since 2006 – because it is possible to detect fake documents • Those that don’t send in the originals are not investigated further, maybe an undetected group? • Demand originals ….. Good way of automatic sorting away? • In the future: • We ask for originals and verify on suspicion and “odd” info

  10. Verification project Poland • In 2008 the British UK-Naric office announced fake documents from Poland to be a major problem, so Denmark investigated: • Verification period: November 1 2008 to June 15 2009 • We received 35 ordinary applications and had 31 positive answers • 4 remaining cases had no answer obtained by Summer – these were the last cases to arrive at the office • The 4 remaining cases were not suspicious so we have closed the verification project concluding that Denmark does not see the same problem of false documents from Poland • Conclusion: in the future we verify only on suspicion

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