A high-level investigation will be carried amidst speculation a Yen Bai Party official received a doctorate degree after only 6 months.
>> Suspect degrees under fire in Vietnam
Ngoc’s Business Administration Master Certificate. (Photo provided by Yen Bai Party Commitee)
According to Dan Tri findings, at the end of 2008, Nguyen Van Ngoc, Deputy Secretary of Yen Bai Province Party Committee, applied for a doctoral training course overseas and the request was granted by the Yen Bai Party Committee. Soon after, Ngoc was sent to Malaysia to study a PhD course in Economics at Southern Pacific University
However, many questions were raised when Vietnamese as well as international doctoral training programs require at least 2 years, but Ngoc, after a study period of 6 months, had already been able to obtain the doctorate degree.
On October 2, 2008, Yen Bai Party Committee granted Ngoc permission to study in the PhD program, but in March, 2009, Ngoc already announced that he had completed the course and as a result, received his doctoral certificate.
After that, Ngoc asked the province to subsidise part of his research fees. This was then documented and sent as a dispatch to the Department of Finance by the Yen Bai Party Committee asking relevant authorities to apply a support policy for Nguyen Van Ngoc.
Accompanying the dispatch was an English announcement letter from Southern Pacific University dated April 9, 2008, about the training course costing USD 17,000. Nguyen Van Ngoc’s name was not once mentioned in this letter, just the program.
Nevertheless, Yen Bai Province’s People’s Committee decided to grant VND 74 million (USD 3,800) to Ngoc on December 31, 2009. This sum included VND 50 million under the province’s policy to attract doctorate degree holders and VND 24 million under the policy to encourage officials to get a doctorate degree (worth VND 1 million a month).
The total time of study was estimated to be 24 months, equivalent to VND 24 million, but it isn’t clear how Ngoc’s study was calculated, considering Ngoc obtained his doctoral certificate in just 6 months. As of July, 2010, according to the Yen Bai Party Committee, they still have not seen or held a copy of Ngoc’s PhD certificate.
Case reported to Central Inspection Committee
The question of whether Nguyen Van Ngoc has obtained a doctorate degree or not, until this point, remains unanswered and unknown to the Yen Bai Party Committee but the Central Inspection Committee plans to find out.
Pham Van Cuong, head of the organising committee of the Yen Bai Party Committee, confirmed that Ngoc, until now, has not submitted a copy of his certificate, but did submit his Business Administration master’s certificate from Irvine University, California, USA dated April 10, 2007.
Dr. Mark A. Ashwill, former Director of the Institute of International Education (IIE) in Vietnam had warned on his blog dated July 2, 2010, at http://markashwill.wordpress.com, of 20 universities that are not recognised by U.S authorised educational testing agencies, and Irvine University, where Ngoc obtained his master’s degree, was included in this list. The list also included Southern Pacific University.
Most of the listed universities are online universities and some are often known as diploma mills for having little or no academic prerequisites for people to enroll into their courses.
With this information provided by DTiNews, the Standing Committee of Yen Bai Province has ordered Ngoc to give an explanation on the speculation surrounding his doctorate certificate and the university where he attended. In order to further clarify this matter, Yen Bai Party Committee has also reported this case to Vietnam’s Central Inspection Committee in hopes that an answer will be found.
