Jeff Meyer/flickr
Diplomas from fake Universities are becoming easier and easier to acquire online. While some students are merely getting duped, others are using them to pad their resumes. Here are some tips you can use to avoid hiring one of them.
There are nearly 5,000 colleges in America, but some would have you think that this total is rising faster than it really is. In the world of online education, more and more schools have been opening, all of them equipped with cutting-edge websites featuring smiling students on sun-drenched quads.
One video straight from the website of Newford University features the head of the law school bragging, “We host one of the most renowned faculty in the world.” Except Newford University has no faculty at all. Nor any actual students. It is an entirely fabricated school.
Locating the Problem
According to a recent article in the New York Times, a mysterious Pakistani software company called Axact is behind the recent proliferation of fake colleges and universities around the internet. Hosting at least 370 college websites, the only thing real about the schools that Axact promotes is the money they generate.
Each year, Axact rakes in over ten million dollars from this elaborate, fraudulent network. In supplying each of these legitimate-sounding schools — “Rochville University” and “Barkley University,” to name a couple — with fake accreditation bodies and testimonials, Axact has been able to con thousands of people with their system of deception.
And yet not all of those who “attend” the schools that Axact hosts are doing so out of ignorance. Just as Axact is capitalizing on an increased focus on higher education in the workplace, some people have been taking advantage of these pay-to-play fake universities.
Both Axact and its knowing users are also aware of the recent boom in online education, having seen it become more and more accepted as a legitimate way of padding one’s resume. These people have come to see the acquisition of such an “experience” as hugely advantageous to their careers — the possibility of buying a degree from a fake school and sneaking it by an HR team has become tempting, and is being used more and more often.
Halting the Trend
For current employers, this comes as a jolt to the system. While the acquisition of forged diplomas has always been a threat, this mostly existed in a pre-internet era, a time when it was much easier to notice a fake. Today, with the rise of the world wide web, it can be much harder to keep track of the ever-growing network of fraudulence that looms in the distance.
In this time of deception, companies need a way to retain their confidence as they move forward in their hiring initiatives. But without the correct resources, it can be easy to get bogged down and become unnecessarily suspicious of legitimate applicants. This is where Integrated Security Services comes in.
It is imperative any background investigation should include an education check, regardless of whether the school is a legitimate university (to confirm an applicant’s degree) or a suspicious online program. And Integrated’s well-trained team of private investigators will be able to sort through the trail of lies that companies like Axact leave in their wake.
Our team is diligent, meticulous, and familiar with the ways in which these counterfeit colleges and universities work. With their expertise, they will be able to let you know whether or not the applicant you’ve been thinking of hiring has an educational record you and your company can stand behind.
