Fake degrees galore

The Supreme Court on Thursday summoned the heads of local airlines, including Prime Minister Shahid Khaqan Abbasi, as the boss of a private airline, in connection with fake degrees held by many pilots and members of cabin crew. While four private airlines have asked for more time to verify the educational qualifications of their staff, the report submitted by the national carrier, PIA, is quite distressing. According to it, degrees of 24 out of 451 pilots, and 67 of the 1,972 cabin crews were found to be fake, those of 124 pilots are still under process. If that is not bad enough, the report goes on to acknowledge that seven pilots holding bogus degrees are still working with the airlines on stay orders. It is unclear though if the degrees pertain to academic qualifications or technical training to fly planes. In either case, they are putting at risk the lives of thousands of passengers.
The apex court has also taken notice of common complaints about lawyers using counterfeit law degrees, as well as appearing before courts without obtaining the requisite licence. The court has directed all bar councils to report on the issue within a month, also issuing a notice to the Higher Education Commission (HEC) to have its officials cooperate with the bar councils in authenticating the educational qualifications of all members of the legal community. The problem though is more widespread. It may be recalled that after the Musharraf regime made graduate level education a condition for participation in elections, quite a few politicians had acquired fake graduation degrees. That disgraceful resort to deceit by successful candidates was exposed because their rivals had thrown them legal challenges. Surely, there are many such fraudsters buying and selling degrees, keeping duly qualified people out of various fields of national endeavour. The tendency is just another manifestation of corruption that seems to have become the new normal. A former Balochistan chief minister did not think much of defending legislators with fake degree saying "a degree is a degree, real or fake." He, though, was better known for his blundering behaviour than anything else.
As the HEC Chairman told a Senate Standing Committee on Federal Education and Professional Training, a major source of this unsavory practice are dubious educational institutions. He seemed helpless to check them as he called for stronger regulations to control the mushroom growth of commercial universities. Governments at the centre and in the provinces must take serious cognizance of the issue and do all it takes to clean up the education sector of fraudulent practices.