An estimated one in 20 potential hires in Malaysia has fake qualifications while one in 10 has credentials from unaccredited institutions, as per a report by a corporate fraud investigation agency.

Datuk Seri Akhbar Satar, who is the Managing Director of Akhbar & Associates, an agency that conducts background checks on potential hires for companies, said 5% to 7% of the people that they investigated had fake degrees while 10% to 15% had degrees from unaccredited universities.

Akhbar added, “Many of these people with fake degrees are applying for senior management jobs and it happens in multiple industries, including banks, clinics, and hospitals.”

Akhbar was responding to an Al-Jazeera documentary into fake degree mills in Pakistan that threw light on those who bought fake qualifications, including PhDs and Masters, from Axact, a Pakistani firm known for degree mills. In that list are possibly over 80 Malaysians with local addresses.

The 101 East documentary revealed that thousands of these fake degree holders were found to be working as doctors, nurses, teachers, and engineers in South-East Asia, including Malaysia, Singapore, and Thailand. Also, over 370 fake online universities, which claim to be based in the US, are linked to Axact, among which are Brooklyn Park University, Nixon University, and Newford University.

Malaysia was “one of the worst” when it came to people buying fake degrees as per Akhbar as the background-checking practice here was poor.

While fake degrees continue to be a menace to organizations, the Malaysian government has put the quality of higher education a priority as an important factor in producing competent human resources and talent to support national advancement. It is in this direction that it had set up accreditation systems through the Malaysian Qualifications Agency (MQA) and other professional and regulatory bodies. Employers can check online the lists of accredited programmes offered by Malaysian higher education institutions through the Malaysian Qualifications Register (MQR) as well as other professional and regulatory bodies.