Forgery and the freshman
It may have been only a coincidence that the very day the Indian and Australian Prime Ministers signed a bilateral agreement on migration last week, news emerged that two universities Down Under have decided to adopt tighter scrutiny of applications by students from six Indian states. The reason for the blacklisting, presumably, is the phenomenon of fake educational certificates being submitted by many students from those states. Even if this indeed was a coincidence, it is a matter of concern. It shows higher education in these states in a bad light and calls for action by the Union government to clean up the mess.
The two universities, Federation University and Western Sydney University, have clarified that it is not a ban they have imposed but tighter screening for students applying from Punjab, Haryana, Gujarat, Uttarakhand, Uttar Pradesh and Jammu & Kashmir. The move follows the detection of a higher rate of rejection of applications from these states due to dodgy educational certificates submitted by the applicants.
However, this is not an isolated development. Last month, five other Australian universities announced similar action on applications from eight Indian states, including those named above. Australia is not the only country where educational credentials submitted by Indian students have come up for adverse scrutiny. Canada, UK and the US have reported similar certificate scams, and launched even more stringent actions, which not only present difficulties to students with genuine credentials but also damage the reputation of India’s higher education.
The proliferation of fake certificates is incongruent with the Migration and Mobility Partnership Agreement signed by Narendra Modi and Anthony Albanese last week. The pact is aimed at exchange of students, graduates, researchers and businesspeople and will allow 3,000 highly skilled Indians to go to Australia to work in areas such as information technology. A major part of the deal concerns the mutual recognition of educational qualifications by Australia and India as a way to ease university travel to either country.
From Albanese’s exuberance for educational ties with India, it is clear that Australia sees this country as a huge higher education market. However, while courting students from the sub-continent, Australian universities are also wary of them going to campuses Down Under with fake certificates, dropping out of courses to join the illegal workforce. Several universities have reported high dropout rates since work rules were relaxed for foreign students recently.
It would be unwise for India to be affronted by the action taken by Australian universities. The proliferation of fake certificates is a problem regardless of where they are submitted. The phenomenon is linked to other grim problems India must confront. One is the huge problem of youth unemployment, the statistics of which are truly frightening. This is fuelling desperation among the youth, particularly in states like Punjab, UP and Bihar to escape to other countries by any means possible. This is showing up in the ever higher number of illegal migrants turning up on European shores, or across the southern and northern borders of the US.
Another problem with this phenomenon is the collapse of state-funded higher education in India outside of the IITs and a bunch of specialised institutions. It is a serious matter indeed if university degrees are available in the flea markets of New Delhi. It should be altogether more worrisome if the real credits are worth no more than the fake.