Fake USM degrees on sale online for RM4,888 each

 Tuesday July 3, 2012

NIBONG TEBAL: Twenty people paid RM4,888 each to a syndicate that sold fake Universiti Sains Malaysia (USM) degrees, police investigations revealed.

Penang acting chief SAC II Datuk Abdul Rahim Jaffar said they banked in the money into eight different accounts under the name of a 26-year-old man, one of the three suspects arrested.

He said the syndicate promised to upload the names of the buyers onto a USM database using a special software but then did not even respond to any phone calls after the money had been banked in.

“Initial investigations determined there was no inside job,” he told reporters at the south Seberang Prai district police headquarters in Jawi, near here, yesterday.

Spot the difference: Prof Omar Osman showing the logo on a genuine USM certificate against an old one on his coat.

 

SAC II Abdul Rahim said the syndicate might have started its operations about four months ago, adding that the price of a “certificate” signified good luck.

The brains behind the syndicate is a 24-year-old woman, a former USM student.

A police source said that she had a Facebook account offering the fake scrolls which had garnered 516 “likes”.

Besides the former student, a 25-year-old woman and the male suspect were nabbed at a house in Kampar, Perak, on Saturday.
Police seized several computers and a soft copy of a USM scroll in one of the computers.

In GEORGE TOWN, USM vice-chancellor Prof Datuk Omar Osman said employers could verify with the university if they had doubts over the authenticity of certificates produced by their interviewees.

He advised employers to ask them to show their academic transcripts during the interviews. “Each bears a unique serial number of that undergraduate. This cannot be falsified.

“We also have the Gazetted Graduate Convocation Book, which is a physical database with the particulars of all the graduates.

“We have produced 120,000 graduates since our establishment,” he added.

He said other unique characteristics of a USM certificate included the university's watermark and seal.

Those who wish to verify the authenticity of USM certificates can contact 04-653 2193 or e-mail pro@usm.my.

By S. ARULLDAS and TAN SIN CHOW newsdesk@thestar.com.my

  

Ex-student behind fake degrees

Monday July 2, 2012

EORGE TOWN: The brains behind two online degree mills that allegedly churned out fake Universiti Sains Malaysia (USM) scrolls is a former student of the university.

ntv7 - "USM DEGREE FOR SALE" : THREE NABBED IN ONLINE DEGREE SCAM »

Three people have been arrested for selling fake degree certificates online.

A police source said the 24-year-old woman had a Facebook account offering such scrolls and this had garnered 516 ‘likes’.

She and two others – another woman, aged 25, and a man, 26 - were nabbed at a house in Kampar, Perak, on Saturday.

Several computers were seized in the raid. A soft copy of a USM scroll was found in one of the computers.

The source said a younger sibling of one of the suspects could be a USM student.

The university had lodged a police report on the matter, which is being investigated as cheating under Section 420 of the Penal Code.

Vice-chancellor Prof Datuk Omar Osman said the university conducted an internal investigation before lodging the reports with the police and the Malaysian Communications and Multimedia Commission on Friday.

The university has since improved the security measures of the university scrolls.

A check by The Star had revealed that a “full degree package” was priced at RM5,888 and was non-negotiable, with the document delivered within a week.

A downpayment of RM400 has to be deposited into a bank account online and a photocopy of the applicant’s MyKad e-mailed before “work” on the degree could begin.

Penang commercial crime investigations chief Asst Comm Roslee Chik said the police were investigating if there are other syndicates selling such university degrees.

Meanwhile, Higher Education Minister Datuk Seri Mohamed Khaled Nordin said those looking to get a university degree should earn the qualification.

“As far as I know, USM is the first university in Malaysia that has become the target of such a syndicate,” he said yesterday.

He told reporters at a function in Pasir Gudang that his ministry would study security methods used in other countries to stop syndicates from producing fake degree certificates and selling them to students.

Mohamed Khaled said it was currently difficult to determine if a degree certificate was genuine or not as there was no standard design for it.

By ZALINAH NOORDIN and DESIREE TRESA GASPER newsdesk@thestar.com.my 

Job-seekers not so street-savvy these days; Top American graduates heading to India for employment!

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Did you know famous Rod Stewart had football trials at Celtic and dug graves?

Monday Starters - By Soo Ewe Jin

DID you know that Rod Stewart had football trials at Celtic and worked as a grave digger before starting his music career by singing on the streets across Europe? Or that Michael Dell’s first job was as a dishwasher at a Chinese restaurant earning US$2 an hour?
Image via CrunchBase
What about your first job? There are many magazines, including Reader’s Digest, that have at one time or another, run a column simply entitled My First Job.

Of course, they only interview the famous personalities but I am sure even ordinary people like us have extraordinary first-job experiences to share.

Rajan Moses is well known in the journalistic fraternity but what he shared in The Star last Tuesday (The Star, where I cut my teeth, see below) contains an important lesson for all of us, especially the thousands of unemployed graduates out there.

Rajan was studying mass communications at Universiti Sains Malaysia when The Star came into existence. He wanted to be part of this racy new tabloid so he rode his motorcycle to the Weld Quay office to try his luck and see if he could get his break into journalism.

Rajan wrote how he managed to slip past the guard on duty and headed straight to the office of the legendary KS Choong, the founding editor of this newspaper. As he was talking to the secretary, Choong peered through the glass window from his desk and beckoned him in. He had a strict face, but was surprisingly kind and gentle.

“When I told him that I wanted to intern at the paper, he smiled and said yes. He gave me my first break and told me I could be The Star’s USM correspondent, and even said that I could work full time with the paper in Kuala Lumpur during my three-month varsity vacations,” Rajan wrote.

From that first break, Rajan went on to have an illustrious career not only in The Star but in other media organisations at home and abroad. He is currently with Ogilvy as a senior media adviser.

I find recollections like this very rare these days. There was a time when people would do all sorts of things to get a job, but these days, many of them expect the job to be handed to them on a silver platter.
I believe we were more street-savvy those days and we knew how to take the initiative. When I tell fresh graduates that they do not need to wait for advertisements to appear before they apply, they are not too convinced.

After finishing my Form 6, I decided to write in to all the newspapers to see if they would offer me a job.

The National Echo was the first to respond. The kind and gentle Choong at that time had moved to The Echo which had been revamped to be also a tabloid to challenge The Star. He brought along many of The Star’s pioneers with him.

At the interview, the first thing he said was, “So you are the fella who is always writing letters to the editor. I didn’t know you were still in school then. You had so many good comments on current issues. When can you start?”

So, for a princely sum of RM135, I started my journalism career as a cadet reporter.

For the next job I applied for, I was surprised I was even called for the interview because I thought I had flunked the pre-entry written test.

One section required us to explain the meaning of 20 rather bombastic words.

I didn’t know any, so I wrote, “If I had a dictionary with me, I could give you the meaning of these words. But if I have to use a dictionary to read a newspaper, then these words certainly don’t deserve to see print.”

There was still an hour to go, but I handed in my test paper and walked out of the hall. Call it bravado or whatever, but the editors appreciated my candour. I was interviewed and I got the job.

Deputy executive editor Soo Ewe Jin wonders what young people do to get a job these days besides giving us those templated CVs that are strong on style but weak on substance.

The Star, where I cut my teeth

WAS one of the pioneers who had the good fortune to work with The Star at Weld Quay in Penang soon after its birth. The Star was the launching pad for my eventual success as a seasoned journalist, correspondent, chief sub-editor and editor with the international news agency Reuters, the national news agency Bernama and the Business Times, spanning a period of over 32 years.

I believe I owe a care of duty to The Star and its founding editor K.S. Choong, who gave me my first break.

The launch of The Star in September 1971 had a great impact on Penangites who were so used to the existing newspaper fare that the arrival of something new perked them up. Finally, an alternative paper to read had arrived, and a racy tabloid at that!

Newspaper boys sold the first editions of the new paper late into the night on Penang’s streets, and The Star created quite a buzz.

It had a picture of a Page 3 girl daily (very much like what the The Sun and Daily Mirror did in London) and bright, bold and interesting human interest stories and pictures which sparked much local interest.

As an undergraduate at Universiti Sains Malaysia pursuing a Mass Communications degree, I was on the hunt for an internship to learn more about my passion – journalism. I saw in The Star my guide and mentor.
Plucking up courage one fateful day, I rode my motorcycle to the Weld Quay office to try my luck and see if I could get my break into journalism.

I had long hair then (which was the vogue among students), but managed to slip past the guard on duty and headed straight to the office of the Editor-in-Chief, K.S. Choong.

I told his secretary that I wanted to see him. Choong peered through the glass window from his desk and beckoned me in. He had a strict face, but was surprisingly kind and gentle.

When I told him that I wanted to intern at the paper, he smiled and said yes. He gave me my first break and told me I could be The Star’s USM correspondent, and even said that I could work full time with the paper in Kuala Lumpur during my three-month varsity vacations.

It was indeed an honour to be a Star reporter then. It opened many doors for me in Penang – people started recognising this rookie reporter – and with my enthusiasm bursting, I started seeing stories everywhere and in many things.

One of the biggest stories I ever broke as the USM correspondent was about how forged coupons were used by a syndicate at a major USM carnival, which resulted in the organisers losing thousands of ringgit.

The work – for which I was paid by the column inch (that is, the length of the story) – earned me about RM50-RM60 a month, good supplementary income for a poor student.

Then when the long university vacation came around mid-year, I was despatched as a reporter with The Star in KL where the paper at that time was circulating a few thousand copies. I was paid RM100 a month.

The KL office was then headed by bureau chief Maureen Hoo, who taught me a lot about writing news stories by re-writing my copy and who was generous enough to let me go out and pound the streets to find really rare and interesting stories.

There were five or six staff in the rather small KL office in a building in Jalan Silang in downtown KL. The Star was really small in KL.

Then we moved to the Jalan Travers office in Bangsar, where the circulation department, advertisement salesmen, and editorial department were all housed in one place for the first time in KL.

At that time, in 1972-73, The Star circulation was only a mere 8,000 copies, and we had to fight hard to get our KL stories in the Penang-centric edition of the newspaper.

Lady Luck poured her fortune on me when I got my first front page byline after witnessing a major fire at a rice/padi godown alongside the railway line near the Brickfields/Jalan Travers junction. Police estimated the fire had caused millions of ringgit in damage, quite a large sum at that time.

It was truly gratifying to see my name on the front-page story, and I remember showing it to my parents, relatives and friends. I think I still have a copy of it somewhere at home.

Soon after came another front-page byline from me in The Star when a tall and well-endowed Australian stripper I had interviewed in KL several weeks before was found walking around bald, naked and in a drug-induced daze along Batu Feringghi beach in Penang.

My experience as a reporter for the then under-dog newspaper was really exciting.

On one assigment, our photographer, the late Mok Yong, and I interviewed two sales representatives of the “Perfumes of the Orient” company at their stand in the Federal Hotel in KL. Soon after the article and photo came out, the local perfume company wrote to my editor and booked a whole year’s worth of advertisements in the paper.

I received a congratulatory letter from the boss because, as the under-dog newspaper then, it was tough getting advertising revenue.

Upon graduation from USM in 1974, I joined The Star full time as a journalist in Penang at the Pitt Street office. I remember I was paid RM125 a month, although I was a graduate, and given an increment of a mere RM15 a year.

It was not the money I was working for. My friends who had graduated along with me from USM were earning about RM650-RM800 a month in government service or as graduate trainees elswhere.

I chose to remain in The Star despite the low salary because of my passion for journalism, loyalty to the paper that gave me my first break, and the great company of senior journalists who taught me the ropes.

That was when I met former greats who believed in the cause and laid the foundations for The Star to become the great paper it is today.

I remember the valuable guidance and counselling from pioneer Star journalists and editors like K. Sugumaran, Charlie Chan, Mohanan Menon, R.D. Selva, Gobind Rudra, Tony Rangel, R. Pachymuthu, Khoo Kay Peng, Tony Chew, Alan Tan, Soon Boon Phin, S.P. Cheah, Robert Ang, Robert Kuan, Sri K. Nayagam, and a host of others.

In November 1975, having earned a solid base in journalism and becoming well honed in reporting news at The Star, I made the decision to leave Penang and return to Kuala Lumpur to work for Bernama as a news executive.

There was no looking back after that.

In 1983, I was head-hunted by Reuters to join the KL bureau. I went on to become the pioneer Malaysian journalist to be posted by an international news agency to the United States – Chicago and Washington DC, between 1987 and 1991.

After 20 successful years with Reuters as bureau chief in Thailand, Myanmar, Cambodia and Laos, chief subeditor in Hong Kong and Singapore, I returned to KL and worked for the Business Times as executive editor for several years.

Today I work for Ogilvy, a PR and advertising agency, still keeping my links with journalists as senior media advisor.

When I look back at my early days in The Star, I feel a sense of warmth and gratitude.

My mind races back to the many things I learnt that gave me the foundation to become a journalist, of those who gave me great friendships and taught me the ropes and, of course, some of the funny, weird and interesting news situations that I encountered as a rookie.

Most of all I remember and thank the late founding editor, K.S. Choong, for giving me that first break.

RAJAN MOSES, Kuala Lumpur

Top American graduates heading to India for employment

Breaking tradition, top American graduates are heading to India to find jobs and opportunity. Many believe that having experience in India is an important addition to their resume in this increasingly globalized world. Some say that its easier to find a good job in India than in the United States, as India's economy is growing while the US economy is predicted to shrink within the next year.

Malaysian Universities need decolonization, relook the ratings & rankings!

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Decolonization of universities begins with us

 1 July 2011 By Zainon Ahmadnewsdesk@thesundaily.com

PETALING JAYA (June 30, 2011): They were knocked off their pedestals just as rudely as Saddam Hussein statues were pulled down from their mountings after the Americans and their mostly western allies overran Baghdad in 2003.

Among them are such gods of science and mathematics as Sir Isaac Newton, famous for his law on why apples fall.

He was pilloried for allowing his fear of the Church of England to deter him from publishing some of his best discoveries – his true masterpieces.

Others who were knocked down included people like Keppler, Descartes and Einstein. And so was Galileo who invented the telescope but was in trouble with the Catholic Church when he could see too far into the heavens.

All these bashings and the questioning of the assumptions on which human knowledge is based took place during the three-day International Conference on Decolonising Our Universities that ended on Wednesday in Penang.

It was the fourth in the series of Multiversity Conferences organised by Citizens International and Universiti Sains Malaysia.

Nicolaus Copernicus is remembered mostly as a mathematician and an astronomer but few know that he is also a monk and it was because of this that his claim that the earth moves around the sun and not the other way round as was originally believed was easily accepted by the church.

But the conference was told that he was not the revolutionary scientist he has been made out to be.
He was a just a common plagiarist. He merely translated the work of Ibn Shatir of Damascus.

It was also told that few academics, scientists, mathematicians, astronomers and other researchers were really free of the influence of Christian theology because for centuries the church was the key consumer of the products of the western university system and therefore had to remain loyal.

The conference was told that anyone who challenged the church had to suffer and it was for that purpose that the Inquisition was instituted.

Rival institutions also suffered and this was the fate of the great university complex of Alexandria, of which the famous library was a part.

Many wondered aloud whether Christian theology still influences western academicians and brought up the brilliant Stephen Hawkings whom most Malaysians know only as the writer of a small book, A Brief History of Time.

Hawkins wrote many other books and some contain quite a bit of Christian propaganda. He even attempted to reconcile the Big Bang of a few billion years ago with the Bible story of creation in seven days some 6,000 years ago.

Many other gods of science and mathematics, as the world know of them, were also called liars. The great 16th century cartographer Gerardus Mercator whose maps and charts helped the Europeans to reach the East was so fearful of the church that he did not acknowledge his non-Christian and especially Muslim sources.

Another great god of science and mathematics, Albert Einstein, was dragged down from his Olympian heights when it was disclosed that his formula on the theory of relativity was corrected by Indian scientist and mathematician C. K. Raju recently.

The expose by the scholars and participants from 20 countries help to convince those who were still hesitant about the need for efforts to decolonise universities – still very much Eurocentric – in Asia and Africa that the knowledge they had been “brainwashed” into believing as being universal was not universal at all and based on false assumptions.

It was also meant to provoke re-thinking about the assumptions they had made based on discoveries and ideas of western scholars published in western academic journals, that nothing should be accepted as universal truth without careful scrutiny.

Students have often assumed calculus, the subject they learn in mathematics, is of western origin.
Nothing is further from the truth. It was stolen from India by the Jesuits, said Raju who said the mode of calculation was important for navigational purposes.

It helped Vasco da Gama to reach the Cape of Good Hope and Goa.

According to Datuk Shad Saleem Faruqi, emeritus professor of law and legal adviser, Universiti Teknologi Mara, who is also visiting professor at Universiti Sains Malaysia, the Europeans think nothing of falsifying history.

He said everyone seems to think that the Johannes Gutenburg’s printing press, developed in the 15th century, was the first in the world when a number of western scholars were aware that Pi Sheng had already developed one in 1040 but little is said of him.

Likewise, the West seems reluctant to acknowledge scholars from India, China, Africa and those from the Muslim world and promotes the idea that the Bologna monastic school was the first university.

Thus, few know about the great universities of Taxila, Nalanda, Zaytuna and Nanjing which preceded Bologna.

On legal education, he said, it is still very much western-centric and lamented that despite the existence of local law programmes since 1972, the Legal Profession Act continues to recognise foreign (mostly UK) law degrees and qualifications.

On the Act’s permission to foreign lawyers to be admitted on an ad hoc basis to argue special cases, he was cynical to the idea of inviting Cherry Blair as a human rights expert when there are hundreds of local ones.

Fortunately, the judge was not an Uncle Tom and he rejected her application.

Because of this, the conference agreed that while the physical colonisation is long gone – hopefully so, said some – the mental colonisation is very much alive.

Thus the call for the need to purge the “West in us” before efforts to decolonise can truly begin.

VC: Relook varsity ratings

By RICHARD LIM  educate@thestar.com.my

GEORGETOWN: Rankings promote intellectual hegemony and there should be a different method of appraising universities, said Universiti Sains Malaysia (USM) vice-chancellor Prof Tan Sri Dzulkifli Abdul Razak.

“The rankings are designed to ensure that universities remain on top, tapping into the best brains of developing countries in the process.

“The aging population has resulted in tremendous demographic shifts in certain Western nations and their universities need bright foreign students to fill up the gaps,” Prof Dzulkifli told The Star.

Prof Dzulkifli added that USM was one of the six core members of the Alternative University Appraisal (AUA) initiative which seeks to identify the strengths of participating universities.

Instead of ranking the universities, the initiative encouraged participating universities to leverage their strengths and share best practices for mutual benefit.

At a press conference after delivering the inaugural address at the International Conference on De-colonising Universities yesterday, Deputy Higher Education Minister Datuk Saifuddin Abdullah told academics not to “blindly ape the West.”

Saifuddin said hegemony was reinforced through subtle ways and the promotion of university rankings was one such move.

Earlier in his speech, Saifuddin encouraged greater collaboration among Asian varsities.

He said many Western theories were being used to address local problems and this sometimes made things worse as the theories were not designed to suit the local context.

Decolonising our universities

COMMENT By PROF SHAD SALEEM FARUQI

Western chemistry had its predecessor in Eastern alchemy, Algebra had African roots, and Arabic was at one time the lingua franca of science and technology.

AN ongoing international conference in Penang is examining the issue of intellectual enslavement in Asian and African citadels of learning. Luminary after luminary are pointing out that education in Asia and Africa is too West-centric. It blindly apes Western universities and Western curricula.

Our university courses reflect the false belief that Western knowledge is the sum total of all human knowledge.

The books prescribed and the icons and godfathers of knowledge are overwhelmingly from the North Atlantic countries.

Titles written by scholars and thinkers from Asia and Africa are rarely included in the book list. Our curricula exhibit lack of awareness of the Asian and African contributions to civilisation.

Any evaluation of right and wrong, of justice and fairness, of poverty and development and of what is wholesome and worthy of celebration tends to be based on Western perceptions.

Eastern ideas and institutions are viewed through Western prisms and invariably regarded as primitive and in need of change.

The imperatives of globalisation have further tilted the balance in favour of the Anglo-American world view.

Encapsulation: It was my privilege to point out that all human beings are encapsulated by time and space. We are all susceptible to narrow religious, racial and communal perspectives.

Our whole life is a process of expan-ding the horizons of thought and adding to the islands of k

On the same score, North American and European world-views are also limited by their own social experience.

However, due to their colonial ascendency (which has not abated and has simply taken on new forms) and due to their military and economic might, their perspectives pass off as universal, transcendental and absolute.

Politically free, mentally enslaved: For instance, legal education in this country is primarily British based.

It is profession-oriented not people-oriented. Despite the Asian context, it does not emphasise need-based programmes.

It does not highlight the burning issues of the times the plight of the marginalised and the downtrodden and issues of corruption and abuse of power.

Students are not trained or encouraged to walk in the valleys where the rays of justice do not penetrate.

The syllabi are fashioned on British LLB and Bar at Law courses. Education is textbook based rather than experience based. The structure of the course, the topics covered, the books prescribed, the icons of knowledge are mostly from outside Asia.

The expatriate lecturers and external examiners are mostly from the North Atlantic countries. Asian books, Asian theories and Asian scholars are generally not regarded as fit for such recognition.

This is despite historical evidence that Chinese, Indian and Persian universities predated universities in Europe and provided paradigms for early Western education. Cultural and scientific renaissance flourished in the East long before the European renaissance.

Everyone knows about the Gutenberg printing press. Very few know that Pi Sheng developed one in 1040. In science, Galileo, Newton and Einstein illuminated the firmament but not much is known about Al-hazen and Nasir al-Din al-Tusi.

Western chemistry had its predecessor in Eastern alchemy. Algebra had African roots.

The philosophical musings of Plato, Aristotle, Kant, Satre and Goethe can be matched by Ghazali, Ibn Rushd, Mulla Sadra, Yanagita Kunio, Shenhui, al-Mutanabbi and Kalidasa.

Durkheim's and Weber's sociology must compete with Ibn Khaldun and Jalal Al-Din Rumi. Freudian psychology had its corrective in Buddhist wisdom. The Cartesian medical model has its Eastern counterpart in ayurvedic, unani and herbal methods.

Very few are aware that Arab Muslims were central to the making of medieval Europe. From the 8th to the 13th centuries, Arab and Islamic cultures were at their zenith and were renowned for their science and learning. Aspiring scholars from all over the world flocked to these citadels of education.

Arabic was at one time the lingua franca of science and technology. A large number of texts written in Arabic were translated into Latin without acknowledgment.

Plan of action: So what should be done? It should not be part of our agenda to try to ask European and American universities to include the treasures of the East in their syllabi. Whether their worldview should be enriched by the insights and reflections of the East that is their problem.

Our concern is that our own universities should first of all shed the slavish mentality of blindly aping Western paradigms.

Secondly, we must embark on a voyage of discovery of our ancestors' intellectual wanderings. We must seek to rediscover the intellectual wonders and heritage of China, India, Persia, Mesopotamia, and other Eastern and African civilisations.

Our aim should never be to shut out the West or be insular. Let the wearing of blinds be the speciality of someone else. Our aim should be to be truly global, to give our students a bigger picture of knowledge and to increase their choices.

In the background of pervasive Western intellectual domination, indigenisation would assist a genuine globalisation.

Also, this discovery of our treasures should not be as an exercise in flag-waving nationalism. Its aim is ameliorative.

Diversity and pluralism of knowledge systems is vital for meeting many of the moral, social and economic challenges of the times.

For example, Asia should offer a critique of the ethnocentrism of Western scholarship by pointing out that a middle class Western lifestyle and what that entails in terms of the nuclear family, the consumer society, living in suburbia and extensive private space may neither be workable nor desirable in the modern world.

Growth for the sake of growth is the ideology of the cancer cell and some brakes on “development” policies and some reconsideration of what amounts to the good life is in order.

Humanity is living on the verge of a precipice, afraid both to climb and to fall. But the ground is slipping beneath us. It is time for a dialogue between civilisations, a mutual process of learning from each other and a building of a garland of wisdom with blossoms from many Eastern and Western gardens.

Shad Saleem Faruqi is Emeritus Professor of Law at UiTM and Visiting Professor at USM.

Check related links: http://multiworldindia.org/events/
Penang Conference
Fourth Multiversity Conference
“Decolonising Our Universities”
June 27th – 29th 2011
Venue: Paradise Sandy Beach Resort, Tanjung Bungah, Penang, Malaysia