Breaking the Diploma Mill
Since 2003, cases of people who fell victim to fraud committed by these study-abroad agencies has raised public attention.
China Central Television (CCTV) reported on several common tricks used by these agencies. Some lie about their certification, what they could do for their customers ability and the situation overseas to unknowing clients. They would pocket the customers’ money, shirk their responsibilities when caught.
“These institution and individuals took advantage of Chinese parents’ aspirations for their children and their blind trust on foreign-related companies, in order to make profit unethically and organize illegal activities,” said the report.
In response, the Ministry of Education launched the website of Foreign - related Education Information Supervision Network (FE Network) on 2003. The network lists of legal foreign education institutions and study-abroad agencies that have gained the recognition of the Chinese government.
The website also publishes national policies updates, important events and notifications related to foreign education.
Every study-abroad related agency in the country needs to submit annual report about its business situation and future plans to local education and policy departments.
Failing to do so or if the report is problematic, the State Administration for Industry and Commerce has the right to force the agencies to rectify and reform until they meet the requirements.
Improved regulations and policies plus a rising middle class in China have meant more and more students are able to study overseas.This, in turn, led to increasing competition to get into good schools.
Some agencies try to convince students that they should first study so-called preparatory courses in the countries they wanted to go to before applying to universities.
“Some classmates of mine chose to study at community colleges first in the U.S., then apply to other universities after that,” said Shan Tongxun, a girl from Beijing who is now studying in New York.
But some students soon realise that shelling out a lot of money to the agencies was no guarantee for places at top universities.
“There are tough criteria such as high scores in the SAT and other academic evaluation,” said Shan.
Coco Ren, a school mate of Shan in Beijing, agreed.“Some hard working students do end up in good universities after community college,” Coco said.
Some though are misguided in the approach to getting an oversea education. In some cases, the diplomas they were awarded turned out to be fake, or invalid.
Tang Jun, for example, became notorious in 2010. He was the founder of a consultant company who claimed to have worked for some big companies such as MicroSoft. Tang was accused of lying about going to had The California Institute of Technology in his book by Fang Zhouzi, a scientific writer who is well known for his campaigns against various pseudoscience and fraud in China.
Also, the school where he gained his doctorate degree, Pacific Western University (now California Miramar University), was a “diploma mill” that’s not qualified to issue doctorates.
According to Chicago Sun-Times, Pacific Western University’s license was suspended between 1994 to 1996, yet Tang claimed that he gained the degree in 1995.
Tang and the authenticity of his diplomas stirred a heated debate. In 2011, Tang admitted in an interview that he bought a diploma from Pacific Western University for $3000 U.S.
“That was because I felt shameful that I didn’t have a doctorate degree,” said Tang in the interview, “I have to say it was out of vanity.”
The scandal of Tang Jun’s fake diploma rang alarm bells for these diploma mills. The Ministry of Education then published a list of unqualified universities which study-abroad agencies tried to cheat their customers into attending.
Here’s the USA part of the list:
- Dickinson State University
- California American University
- Pacific Western University (now California Miramar University)
- Armstrong University
- Nation University
- Kennedy-Western University (now Warren National University)
- Honolulu University
- International East-West University
- Barrington University (now University of Atlanta)
For students who wanted to go abroad for just a short period of time, usually within six months, these diploma mills were easy to get admitted into. Graduation is guaranteed. Their names sound bona fide and often good enough to lure students with poor academic performance to fall victim.
“Some small agencies would get kickbacks for each student they send to these diploma mills,” said Ren. “They (those schools) need students, the students need a diploma and the agencies need money”.
Mr Shui, co-founder of a study-abroad agency, Hiture, agreed. “ The Ministry of Education listed the recognised agencies in the FE Network,. These are the ones that can really recruit students in China for service for universities overseas.”
For universities which have difficulties recruiting students, these study-abroad agencies are a good help.
“As long as you have the money and a reasonable score,
you can get in those universities”
, said Mr Shui. “The Ministry’s regulation in 1999 cut off those agencies that cooperate with foreign ‘diploma mills’ effectively.”’
In 2014, the Ministry of Education released a policy to maintain the quality of Chinese students’ oversea education.
According to FE Network, students who want to go abroad need to get a certificate from the Chinese embassy at the country where they studied in order to prove the authenticity of their foreign diplomas.
“The so-called ‘diploma’ from diploma mills is nothing but
a piece of waste paper”
, said in a notification of FE Network.
In 2015, a gang of five people, who sold fake diplomas to Chinese people for between 100,000 and 200,000 RMB, were caught by the police.
One of the defendants admitted in the court that she faked the registration of a non-existent university with an American partner. In fact, there was no staff or teaching facilities. It was not recognized by the U.S. or China, but it could still “issue” postgraduate and phD diplomas to those who paid for a fake diploma. (Read the original report [in Chinese])
Government regulations in recent years have raised public awareness of “fake diplomas” and “agencies”. But the advertisements for these agencies are still everywhere.
On an international book-reading online community, Goodreads, a one post in Chinese claimed it could provide fake diploma and transcript for students in need.
The company said that they have experience in providing certificates from famous universities in Australia, Canada, UK, New Zealand, U.S., France and Germany. An Australian public university, Southern Cross University, was specially named in the title.
The post stated that it aims to help Chinese students who “need a graduation certificate when going home during the Lunar New Year”, who “fail on too many subjects and need a certificate to find jobs” and more.
With a WeChat number posted as contact, the company claimed its location to be at Hong Kong.
At the same time, hot destination for study-abroad have also strengthened their control over “titular universities” and their students.
In 2016, a Chinese girl were repatriated from the US just because she was found by the customs that she had told her friend “I don’t like this school, it’s just a title” on a chatting app.
US custom said that they suspected the student identity of this girl.
The Struggle of Visa
Although the very first group of education institutions in Mainland China was established as early as in the 1990s, the real market of study-abroad agent and consulting business didn’t start to fly till 2005, before which time the study-abroad services in China were mainly focus on destinations like Canada, the United Kingdom, Australia and other European countries.
The difficulty of getting a US student visa before 2005 has to account for that.
At the beginning of this industry in 1990s, most education institutions were focus on English teaching and testing taking skills. As the gate of international universities just opened, professional English training and experience sharing for TOEFL, GRE tests were treasury resources for millions of Chinese students who dreamt of going to a better place.
However, since “911” territory attack in 2001, US, as a main target that Chinese students would apply, tightened the visa policies.
As a result, even that more and more Chinese students, by virtue of of their hardworking and assiduousness, got cheerful results from the universities they applied, still failed to go abroad because of the strict rules in visa examination.
According to a news release for Consulate-General of the People’s Republic of China in Houston on September of 2004, the visa reject rate for Chinese applicants was as high as 30 to 65 per cent at that time.
Before 2005, 95 per cent of the visa applicants were required to come for fingerprint and an interview in the embassy.
At the same time, each visa officer had only averagely 3 minutes to determine whether this person could go to the US due to the high volume of applicants. Once the officer came to the conclusion that this person had the inclination to stay in US, the application would be rejected.
A lot of Chinese people then were the “victim” of the strict visa rule. Mr Zhao, the co-founder of study-abroad agency Hiture, were rejected for three times before 2005, he ended up going to Singapore instead of the US for further education.
“Even a full scholarship from Ivy League can’t guarantee you a visa to the US”
,said another co-founder of Hiture, Mr Shui: “let alone other universities’ admission offers.”
“There were a visa officer in US Embassy in Beijing at that time, he was called ‘full-scholarship killer’. The normal way he rejected students’ visa was that, he’d asked how many schools did you get the scholarship, why you choose this one over others at first; then he’d claim that you only want to go to the US because this school offers you scholarship. As a result, he would say that you can earn more in US, thus you have the tendency to immigrant,” said Mr Shui.
Yu Minhong, the founder of New Oriental Education, which is the biggest English education institution now in China, also experienced the failure of visa application for years. Eventually he gave up and start the business of English teaching in China, which led him to today’s success.
In response to the market need, education institutions before 2005 begun to offer help on visa application. They provide model visa interview, materials checking and other relative trainings.
Based on various students’ visa application experience, one of the famous study-agent today, Taisha.org, even concluded and published an online guidance, named “the Art of Visa” in 2006 in order to help Chinese people better understanding the process of application and what they can do to take control of the interview conversation when facing the visa officer.
Numerous fake documents in the application profiles and a lot of illegal Chinese immigrants inside the border of US were also part of the reason why the applications were handled, said an anonymous visa officer said in the news release in 2005.