100 likes | 214 Views
Verification Project 2005 Former Soviet Union and CIS. NOKUTs fagseminar om godkjenning av utenlandsk høyere utdanning Oslo, November 2-3, 2009 Eva Raimondos-Møller International Rådgiver, CIRIUS. Motives for engaging in verification project.
E N D
Verification Project 2005Former Soviet Union and CIS NOKUTs fagseminar om godkjenning av utenlandsk høyere utdanning Oslo, November 2-3, 2009 Eva Raimondos-Møller International Rådgiver, CIRIUS
Motives for engaging in verification project • Many more or less founded rumours of fraud from different international recognition offices, universities, etc. • More than 800 Russian internet sites offering a variety of fake documents at differentiated prices • A high number of assessments from the Soviet area at the Danish recognition office – about 18 % of all assessed cases on average from 2000-2005 • The insecurity the caseworkers have felt handling this area • A Russian (Ukrainian) student worker at the time was day-to-day responsible for the verification letters
The Verification Project • All documents of higher education to be verified – only on suspicion before • Period July 1 to December 31 of 2005 – 6 month • No prior evaluation of genuine or false • Contact via telephone to registrars office or letter/fax to the rector of the university • All answers on paper: letter, fax or e-mail • No assessment until we get an answer during the verification period – notification of delay • When trial period is over – then decision on the cases with no answer. If no suspicion then assessment.
Main findings – genuine or false, applicants sex, verification time, whom to ask? • Total number of cases: 83 • Total answers: 60 • Verified genuine: 59 • Verified false: 1 • No answers: 23 (16 with no suspicion we assessed anyway after a long wait) • 7 cases were not processed • Rektor or the student administration answered in 4 out of 5 cases
How long must one wait? • We waited on average 52 days for an answer • More than 3 in 4 cases got an answer within the norm period of 2 month • Late answers and unsuspected non-answers waited up to 4 month
Conclusions • The amount of fraud was not higher from verifying ALL documents that what we find now on suspicion • We ask for original documents in almost all cases since 2006 – because it is possible to detect fake documents • Those that don’t send in the originals are not investigated further, maybe an undetected group? • Demand originals ….. Good way of automatic sorting away? • In the future: • We ask for originals and verify on suspicion and “odd” info
Verification project Poland • In 2008 the British UK-Naric office announced fake documents from Poland to be a major problem, so Denmark investigated: • Verification period: November 1 2008 to June 15 2009 • We received 35 ordinary applications and had 31 positive answers • 4 remaining cases had no answer obtained by Summer – these were the last cases to arrive at the office • The 4 remaining cases were not suspicious so we have closed the verification project concluding that Denmark does not see the same problem of false documents from Poland • Conclusion: in the future we verify only on suspicion