SA’s fake degrees shock
Safeguarding integrity of the national qualifications framework is paramount
HIGHER Education Minister Naledi Pandor is shocked at the dramatic increase in the number of fraudulent qualifications reported over the past five years.
The total number of fraudulent foreign qualifications and South African Qualifications Authority (Saqa) certificates of evaluation came to 2 263 over this period.
“There is an upward trend in the number of misrepresented qualifications detected,” Pandor said.
She was responding to a written parliamentary question from the ANC’s Juli Kilian, who had asked about the role of Saqa in safeguarding the integrity of the national qualifications framework.
Pandor said there were 47 reported fraudulent qualifications in 2010-11, 37 in 2011-12, 76 the next year and 62 in 2013-14.
However, the number grew to 106 in 2014-15, only to drop to 92 in 201516, 24 in 2016-17, then jump to 982 in 2017-18 and 385 since April this year.
Pandor said Saqa had been tracking qualifications since 2005.
“Until 2015, Saqa paid Umalusi for every school-leaving record that was verified.
“There was no agreement in place between Umalusi and Saqa in 2015-16 and this led to a relatively high number of school-leaving qualifications not being confirmed as misrepresented qualifications in 2017.
“The relatively high number in 2017-18 is due to those qualifications being confirmed as misrepresented qualifications to Saqa in 2017.
“Furthermore, the Qualifications Council of Trade and Occupations (QCTO) began submitting their misrepresented qualifications to Saqa in August 2017.
“This also accounts for the higher number of misrepresented qualifications in 2017-18,” Pandor said.
She said that despite the high number of fraudulent qualifications in 2017-18, the total was still less than 1% of the qualifications that were verified.
Pandor also revealed there were 892 fraudulent foreign qualifications, with 201 reported in 2016-17 and 444 in 2017-18.
“The 444 misrepresented foreign qualifications reported in 2017-18 include 89 qualifications that were brought to the attention by a whistle-blower,” she said.
“These purported to originate from a university in Ghana, and Saqa representatives personally visited the university to check the authenticity of these qualifications.”
Pandor also said the high number of forged Saqa certificates of evaluation detected by the Department of Home Affairs was alarming.
The department began reporting on these certificates in 2015.
“Saqa responded to the trend by piloting the eSaqa certificate of evaluation and rolled out the project as a permanent feature in this financial year.
“It is important to note that the Department of Home Affairs can identify forged certificates of evaluation because the foreigners are unable to bypass all the security features on the certificates,” Pandor said.
“Furthermore, Saqa provides access to its database via the internet so that the officials from the Department of Home Affairs can verify the Saqa certificates of evaluation easily and quickly.”
Asked if the government verified qualifications before appointing civil servants, Pandor said all provincial and national departments were required to verify qualifications with Saqa.
“Some government departments are using the services of Saqa to verify the qualifications of public sector employees,” she said.