>> Fake degrees become a real problem
Police in Hai Ba Trung District, Hanoi, on June 5 arrested a 31-year old man for forging fake degrees.
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| Phan Van Cuong (Photo by CAND) |
Phan Van Cuong’s photocopy shop on Tran Dai Nghia Street actually specialised in making and providing fake foreign language certificates, bachelor and master degrees all with authentic looking official stamps.
Basic certificates went from VND300,000 (USD14.55) to million of dong for university graduation and master degrees.
Police raided the shop on the morning of May 25 catching Cuong in the act of selling fake degrees to Chu Van V. and Chu Van H. The seized two sets of foreign language certificates and bachelor degrees which were supposed to have been awarded by the Vietnam National University.
Cuong confessed to police that V. and H. had ordered Cuong to produce six forged certificates for VND1.91 million (USD92.70). They had paid VND400,000 (USD19.5) to Cuong as a deposit and were set to pick up the certificates on the morning of the raid.
The certificates had been forged by Cuong’s partners, but he had produced the undergraduate degrees himself.
The police also confiscated six screen printing frames with seals of the People’s Committee of Van Chuong Ward, Hai Ba Trung District; three frames with Hanoi University of Technology, National Economics University and University of Civil Engineering seals and two cartons of degrees and certificates.
The police are further investigating the case.
Buy-a-thesis
With students rapidly approaching their deadlines for submitting their thesis, shops offering off-the-shelf academic works are doing a roaring trade.
Posing as a customer, a Dantri reporter visited a shop on Tran Dai Nghia Street, Hai Ba Trung District, near the National Economics University. The shop’s motorbike attendant was confident enough to call out that the shop offered all types of graduation papers to our reporter.
Once inside, the Dantri reporter was told to sit at a computer, while the shop assistant added “credit” into a search box. Dozens of complete graduation thesis appeared on the screen, with the customer only having to replace the current name with their own to complete their graduation essay.
The graduation papers are divided into specific topics with a common price of VND30,000 (USD1.45) per word file. If the customer wants to buy in bulk it can cost as little as VND25,000 (USD1.25) a thesis.
Students can either copy the files onto their USB or they can be sent by email.
Nguyen Van N. from the National Economics University, said, “This 100-page thesis costs just VND30,000, its cheaper than the cost of hiring a typist. I had to select themes done several courses ago, so that, my teachers won’t recognise the topic.”
At the nearby HQ photocopy shop, word files are sold at VND500 a page, with a printed page costing VND700.
The owner said that “all papers have been written by students who have hired shops to type up their original documents, we then save them onto our computers for sale, so they’re the real thing. We’ve got a huge range of master and doctor thesis”.
The area around the University of Social Sciences and Humanities in Thanh Xuan District is a veritable market of social science documents.
A Hanoi Police official when asked, said that students who originally wrote the graduation papers had not registered their academic work for copyright, so shop owners had passed them off as their own products. In most cases, the original authors would have no idea their papers had been stolen.
Bustling market for off-the-shelf thesis
Printed graduation papers publicly on sale
Trading in graduation papers on Tran Dai Nghia Street