Wednesday, July 15, 2009

Would Singapore become another Mexico?

Brookes Business School was ordered to close by the MOE for issuing fake degrees. Now its subsidiary, Stamford Global Learning is also ordered to close. The former had 400 students while Stamford Global has 40. How would this affect Singapore's reputation as a world class education centre?

Would Singapore be avoided like Mexico from the H1N1 flu, in this case, fake degree flu? To quote an affected China student, 'If people in China hear about this, fewer of them will come to Singapore.'

This is not the first time such things happened. Is it so difficult to avoid such a mess? Just a few phone calls to the universities concerned will do the trick. Maybe it is too troublesome, too big a job. Maybe it is nobody's responsibility. Oh, free market, self regulations, caveat emptor.

Now I am wondering how serious is this fake degree flu and how far it is going to spread. Totally irresponsible.

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