Lies, damn lies and degrees
SOME of the world’s greatest innovators dropped out of university; some didn’t even bother going. Steve Jobs, Bill Gates and Mark Zuckerberg are held up as revolutionary business leaders without a shred of academic documentation to their names.
The rest of us need a piece of paper to show our qualifications. However, more of us are being exposed for lying about academic qualifications, and it suggests that bits of paper — rather than hard work, integrity and ability — are regarded as a passport to business success.
Lying about a qualification should preclude anyone from ever holding a senior management job, never mind sit on a board.
It’s time for recruiters and human resources consultants to do some serious introspection about how they measure skills.
Acting SAA CEO Nico Bezuidenhout was forced this week, for the second time in two years, to deny that he’d ever lied about his qualifications, listed in the 2011 and 2012 SAA annual reports as a BCom and an MBA. The airline says its records show he has no such qualification and they were put into the reports in error. There is no answer from the airline as to why it sought to amplify the qualifications of one of its most successful executives.
This month, SABC chairwoman Ellen Tshabalala, herself under investigation for apparently lying about Unisa qualifications, gave chief operating officer Hlaudi Motsoeneng authority to act as CEO of the SABC. Motsoeneng is accused of faking his matric qualifications.
Absa was left red-faced at the time of the collapse of J Arthur Brown’s Fidentia scheme when one of its nonexecutive directors, Danisa Baloyi, also on the board of the failed entity, refused to quit her position on the bank board. The bank fired her, and it later turned out that Columbia University, from which Baloyi claimed to have a PhD, had no record of her completing her studies. Absa said at the time that it had taken her credentials in good faith.
Qualifications are important, but are they the be-all and end- all? Sure, you need to make sure that your financial director has a CA(SA), that your doctor’s degree means that he can find your spleen and that your lawyer can tell his eventualis from his directus, but in the business world, does it really matter if your brightest stars have an MBA?
The only time it should matter is if they lie about it.
Modern technology and Photoshop go a long way to creating authentic-looking qualifications. If you want your qualification to withstand some light interrogation, there are institutions happy to sell you a passable degree. Earlier this year a BBC Newsnight investigation uncovered that the American University of London was prepared to sell a study-free MBA degree with no academic work required. The price tag? A mere R40 000. All you need is a castiron constitution and the ability to make people believe you know what you are talking about, and you’re set for life — until you’re caught.
Pallo Jordan, formerly known as Dr Jordan, did the decent thing earlier this year when he was exposed as having lied on his CV. He claimed to have qualifications from the University of Wisconsin-Madison and the London School of Economics. It turned out to be fiction. “Dr Pallo Jordan” added gravitas to a courageous career in the ANC in exile and exuded confidence in the various ministerial posts he held after 1994. Ironically, he would probably have got the jobs anyway as a result of his dedication and hard work. Ultimately, he did the right thing.
More should follow his example.
Bruce Whitfield PhD (not) is an award-winning business writer and broadcaster. Genuine certificates can be produced on request.