CNN is carrying an article titled, "Fake Diplomas, A Booming Business in China." Apparently the Chinese government has been trying to crack down on the practice, but with limited success. Here's an almost amusing example of what has been taking place: What's interesting is that the West has apparently been critical of the practice -- Talk about the pot calling the kettle black. Well, democracy may be eluding China, but capitalism seems to have found a foothold. Here's a link to the full article: CNN
I am pleased to say that I have recently returned from China where I visited (among other places) the city of Hefei, which is the capital of Anhui province. I was told that Hefei is the home of 19 universities. Before you become too impressed, I was also told that the total enrollment for some of these universities is only one or two dozen students. I was informed that graduating high school students take comprehensive examinations that are used to test their knowledge but also their aptitudes. The exams are quite difficult and one has little choice in appealing the results (you can wait and take the exams again the next year). It's easy to imagine that in this sort of environment, a person who finds themself locked out of the school of their choice, or the career of their choice, might resort to a degree mill. On the other hand, we in the USA have much freedom of choice and we also have plenty of degree mills. Jack
Actually things are much better now when we talk about how many high school graduates can enter four-year colleges in China. 14 years ago, in 1988, there were 45,000 high school graduates in the city of Beijing. About 20,000 of them had the chance to enter four-year universities. Meanwhile, in Hubei Province, there were as many as 230,000 high school graduates. they had to take a preliminary exam first. then 80,000 of them were qualified to take the real college entrance exam. 150,000 of them didn't even have the luck to take the exam. then about 20,000 out of these 80,000 students finally had a chance to enter 4-year universities. at that time, the national college entrance exam for science students was a 3-day 7-subject exam, including math, chinese, english, physics, chemistry, politics, and biology. it was tough. nowadays, there are more universities in China. they also expend the size of the universities so that more high school students have the chance to go to college.
two recent cases: 1. one executive in a chinese web portal company listed a PhD from Barrington University. there were extensive media coverage on this because somebody pointed out that his american degree is not even recognized by US DOE. 2. someone who holds a Harvard PhD was offered 1,000,000 Yuan (about US$120,000) per year salary as a private college's dean. because of the high salary for a dean, media questioned whether his Harvard PhD is a fake. it turned out that the degree is real. then this led to a long debate about foreign degrees. these just show that chinese people are more and more aware that there are a lot of foreign diploma mills. when people list foreign degrees in their resume, others may raise some question marks. recently chinese Ministry of Education points out that there are many so-called joint degree offerrings in China by a chinese university or company and a foreign university (a lot of frequently discussed non-USDOE-recognized universities in this board) are not recognized by MOE and invalid. But still, many people go for it because it is quick as the previous article says.
