The Opinion Pages | Editorial
A Rising Tide of Bogus Degrees
By
THE EDITORIAL BOARD MAY 20, 2015
It is hard to believe that the Pakistani government was unaware of a major scam orchestrated by Axact, a software company based in Karachi that operates a global network of fake online schools that sell bogus diplomas. But ignorant or not, the government, which
raided Axact’s offices on Tuesday, had little choice but to act
after a report by Declan Walsh in The Times disclosed clear connections between Axact and at least 370 education websites, many of which claimed to represent online universities and high schools based in the United States. The scam had existed for years and reaped many millions of dollars.
The problem of bogus degrees and predatory schools goes well beyond one company in Pakistan. Still, the startling revelations that one outfit could cast such a wide net of duplicity give Congress and federal regulators the incentive they need to become much more aggressive at exposing fraudulent companies that pose as legitimate schools for the purpose of selling bogus degrees or luring people into costly but useless courses that lead nowhere.
According to The Times’s account, Axact’s bogus empire consists basically of the online descriptions of elegantly named and beautifully depicted schools with names that sound very much like those of respected American colleges — Columbiana, Barkley and Mount Lincoln.
This is, in fact, an elaborate online confection; behind these names there are no professors, no courses and no campuses that offer degrees with real accreditation. The sites added a further patina of legitimacy by referencing recruitment agencies, language schools, fake accreditation organizations.
Some customers are essentially complicit in the scam, reaching out to Axact for the express purpose of buying fake degrees. But people seeking a legitimate education have been seduced into enrolling in online courses that never materialized or cajoled into believing that their life experiences were sufficient to earn a diploma. In one instance, a woman who called to inquire about a high school diploma was surprised to receive a diploma in the mail after taking a 20-question test online.
The websites linked to Axact provide everything from high school diplomas for about $350, to doctoral degrees for $4,000 and above. Salesmen sometimes impersonate American government officials, then bully customers in buying forged or falsely acquired State Department certification documents for thousands of dollars. Meanwhile, the company has denied any wrongdoing.
Axact, however, is hardly the only actor in this arena. In their book titled “Degree Mills: The Billion-Dollar Industry That Has Sold Over a Million Fake Diplomas,” the former F.B.I. agent Allen Ezell and his co-author, John Bear, set forth staggering statistics about comparable or similar frauds.
They assert that there are 3,300 unrecognized universities worldwide, many of them selling degrees at all levels to anyone willing to pay the price, and that more than 50,000 Ph.D.s are purchased from diploma mills every year — slightly more than are legitimately earned. The fact that fake medical degrees seem particularly easy to come by raises obvious safety concerns.
Congress, which has paid only glancing attention to this problem, needs to focus on it in a sustained way. That means getting federal agencies to devise a coherent plan for curbing these kinds of abuses.
http://www.nytimes.com/2015/05/20/opinion/a-rising-tide-of-bogus-degrees.html?_r=0
Unfortunately, this scam goes beyond the owners. Almost all employees were also involved in scamming & while they may have felt some pressure, they can't absolutely claim innocence.
Employees were berated, threatened if they did not meet targets: Former AXACT employee
Last Updated On
20 May,2015
LAHORE (Dunya News) – A former employee of AXACT corporation has claimed that employees at her workplace were berated and threatened if they did not meet their targets, reported Dunya News on Wednesday.
The former employee has claimed that leaving the organization after serving for some time is not easy.
She further claimed that if AXACT feared that a degree-deal would go astray, it would refund the customer and deduct the fee from the pay of the call agent.
The former employee has said that call agents would be berated and abused if they did not meet their monthly target while legal action used to be taken against any employee that dared to speak up against such practices.
She revealed that every employee at AXACT knew the dubious nature of the business that the company dealt in after training period of 3 weeks but could not back from the job as they felt that all doors had been closed on them.
Employees were berated, threatened if they did not meet targets: Former AXACT employee | Pakistan | Dunya News
Why I left Axact: The inside picture
By
Kasim Osmani
Published: May 20, 2015
ISLAMABAD:
While Axact claims to be the world’s leading IT company as suggested by its slogan, most of its office floors (at least in Defence) are occupied with agents, who operate in the Middle East region luring Arab/international individuals with certified US degrees on the basis of their professional experiences.
These degrees range from Bachelor’s, Master’s and PhD (Axact even prepares a thesis for you, if you don’t have enough time or skills!).
Agents are advised to use Bayt.com or LinkedIn as a source to find customers, who are in turn told that either of these organisations forwarded their profile for consultations.
As a matter of fact, while I was working at Axact, Bayt.com – the largest job search engine in Middle East – warned Axact not to use their name as a source. We were then advised to use LinkedIn or else manipulate the script somehow.
Axact agents tell customers the main reason why big corporations do not hire them is the absence of a degree that they can get while sitting at home.
The script read like: “You don’t have to take classes or listen to online lectures, or take pains for admissions and other documented procedures. Just log on to our university website and our Senior Academic Officer will enrol you. It takes less than five minutes and you receive internationally certified/attested degree within a couple of months solely based on your professional experience.”
Indeed, there is no criterion for professional experience of the applicant. You may even get a PhD degree with as minimum as one year of experience. It is all situational and manipulative. The only thing that matters is paying the enrolment fee, and then continuing to pay until your accounts are squeezed dry.
Once a customer pays the enrolment fee, he is in the trap. Now, senior agents (closers) would call him from time to time asking more and more money for attestations from embassies concerned and/or shipment charges.
It was quite an embarrassing and decisive day for me to quit Axact when a customer was probably fed up with paying extra attestation/registration fee.
The senior agent asked him to wait for a moment so they could bring Mr ABC from the Egyptian embassy on a conference call to guide him further as to why that attestation was mandatory.
Indeed, there was no one from Egyptian embassy. Rather, it was one of senior Axact agents who spoke like native Arabs. He sat beside the agent who was already on phone and pretended to be talking from the embassy. They ultimately got him to pay more for that attestation.
This is one out of hundreds of calls each day.
As for the universities that offer degrees on basis of professional experience, they all are virtual and have no physical address though they appear to be located in the US (and so do the agents tell the customers). According to the NYT report, these university websites are registered in Cyprus and Latvia.
The punch line for all this business is “a degree solely based on professional experience”. An idea that dates back to the end of World War II, when many retired soldiers were jobless and the US government issued special provisions allowing soldiers to obtain academic degrees on basis of their experience.
Whatever I have said above is, I say on oath, 100% true. I have tried to give a neutral inside picture and want the readers to decide whether it is legal or not. This is what has been going on at Axact for years.
I left Axact within a month of my joining the sales department. According to the agreement, we were bound not to disclose the nature of our job as people generally cannot understand it.
Today, all I want is proper investigations that can declare this creepy business as legal or illegal and take action accordingly since it is a matter of Pakistan’s reputation in the entire world and it is about education, the holiest of human professions.
Why I left Axact: The inside picture - The Express Tribune
