Bogus colleges in the United Kingdom
Encyclopedia
In the United Kingdom
a bogus college is a fake college
or university
used as a means to enable people from overseas to apply for a British student visa and consequently reside in the United Kingdom, usually for illegal work purposes. They have also been set up as a money making scam. Bogus colleges are often established to sell fake qualifications which have no official accreditation
, or as part of an immigration and visa scam, allowing people to enter the UK as students.
In order to tackle the problem of bogus colleges the British Government
established a register of approved education providers in 2005. The register requires potential applicants for student visas to prove that they would be attending a legitimate college or university during their stay in the United Kingdom. The Home Office
appoints accreditation bodies to inspect any colleges which wish to take international students. However, the register came in for criticism in 2008 after the government admitted that since the register's establishment almost half of the institutions on the list had been struck off following inspections. The system has been revised a number of times since its establishment.
In April 2009 the UK Border Agency
introduced tougher rules for international student
s coming to the United Kingdom. These included fingerprinting and checking potential applicants against security and immigration watchlists.
diplomas in business management and IT
, charging between £2,500 and £4,000 for each qualification. Immigration officials became suspicious about the college - which is unconnected to Cambridge University - after the Home Office received 2,542 applications for post-study visas in a period of two months. When police subsequently raided the premises in December 2008 they discovered just three classrooms and eleven desks. Students registered with the college were told that their visas were invalid and that they must return home.
In another instance of bogus college activity, a 2009 Home Office investigation was launched after the British newspaper The Times
presented evidence that hundreds of men from Pakistan
's North West Frontier had paid at least £1,000 to a gang to be admitted into bogus colleges, while some paid £2,500 for fake diplomas, attendance records and degrees. A total of eleven colleges were established in London
, Bradford
and Manchester
, including one which had enrolled eight terrorism suspects arrested in Manchester and Liverpool in April 2009. The college had three small classrooms and three teachers for 1,797 students.
The Home Office inquiry followed an investigation by The Times which compiled a dossier on bogus colleges that included details of another college which claimed to have 150 students, but secretly enrolled 1,178 and offered places to an extra 1,575. Two Liverpool universities admitted they had given places to four "graduates" from one of the bogus colleges, the Manchester College of Professional Studies.
-based National Distance Learning College, which operated between 1999 and 2001 and offered distance learning courses in computing and business related subjects which it claimed were accredited by official qualification bodies such as BTEC
and City & Guilds
. Some 80,000 students signed up for courses, paying an estimated £16 million in fees, only to later discover that their qualifications had no official recognition. Money paid to the college by students - and government grants - were transferred into the personal bank accounts of its directors.
United Kingdom
The United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern IrelandIn the United Kingdom and Dependencies, other languages have been officially recognised as legitimate autochthonous languages under the European Charter for Regional or Minority Languages...
a bogus college is a fake college
College
A college is an educational institution or a constituent part of an educational institution. Usage varies in English-speaking nations...
or university
University
A university is an institution of higher education and research, which grants academic degrees in a variety of subjects. A university is an organisation that provides both undergraduate education and postgraduate education...
used as a means to enable people from overseas to apply for a British student visa and consequently reside in the United Kingdom, usually for illegal work purposes. They have also been set up as a money making scam. Bogus colleges are often established to sell fake qualifications which have no official accreditation
Accreditation
Accreditation is a process in which certification of competency, authority, or credibility is presented.Organizations that issue credentials or certify third parties against official standards are themselves formally accredited by accreditation bodies ; hence they are sometimes known as "accredited...
, or as part of an immigration and visa scam, allowing people to enter the UK as students.
In order to tackle the problem of bogus colleges the British Government
Government of the United Kingdom
Her Majesty's Government is the central government of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland. The Government is led by the Prime Minister, who selects all the remaining Ministers...
established a register of approved education providers in 2005. The register requires potential applicants for student visas to prove that they would be attending a legitimate college or university during their stay in the United Kingdom. The Home Office
Home Office
The Home Office is the United Kingdom government department responsible for immigration control, security, and order. As such it is responsible for the police, UK Border Agency, and the Security Service . It is also in charge of government policy on security-related issues such as drugs,...
appoints accreditation bodies to inspect any colleges which wish to take international students. However, the register came in for criticism in 2008 after the government admitted that since the register's establishment almost half of the institutions on the list had been struck off following inspections. The system has been revised a number of times since its establishment.
In April 2009 the UK Border Agency
UK Border Agency
The UK Border Agency is the border control body of the United Kingdom government and part of the Home Office. It was formed on 1 April 2008 by a merger of the Border and Immigration Agency , UKvisas and the Detection functions of HM Revenue and Customs...
introduced tougher rules for international student
International student
According to Organization of Economic Cooperation and Development , international students are those who travel to a country different from their own for the purpose of tertiary study. Despite that, the definition of international students varies in each country in accordance to their own national...
s coming to the United Kingdom. These included fingerprinting and checking potential applicants against security and immigration watchlists.
Notable examples
One of the most high profile cases of a bogus college is the East London based Cambridge College of Learning, which sold several thousand fake postgraduatePostgraduate education
Postgraduate education involves learning and studying for degrees or other qualifications for which a first or Bachelor's degree generally is required, and is normally considered to be part of higher education...
diplomas in business management and IT
Information technology
Information technology is the acquisition, processing, storage and dissemination of vocal, pictorial, textual and numerical information by a microelectronics-based combination of computing and telecommunications...
, charging between £2,500 and £4,000 for each qualification. Immigration officials became suspicious about the college - which is unconnected to Cambridge University - after the Home Office received 2,542 applications for post-study visas in a period of two months. When police subsequently raided the premises in December 2008 they discovered just three classrooms and eleven desks. Students registered with the college were told that their visas were invalid and that they must return home.
In another instance of bogus college activity, a 2009 Home Office investigation was launched after the British newspaper The Times
The Times
The Times is a British daily national newspaper, first published in London in 1785 under the title The Daily Universal Register . The Times and its sister paper The Sunday Times are published by Times Newspapers Limited, a subsidiary since 1981 of News International...
presented evidence that hundreds of men from Pakistan
Pakistan
Pakistan , officially the Islamic Republic of Pakistan is a sovereign state in South Asia. It has a coastline along the Arabian Sea and the Gulf of Oman in the south and is bordered by Afghanistan and Iran in the west, India in the east and China in the far northeast. In the north, Tajikistan...
's North West Frontier had paid at least £1,000 to a gang to be admitted into bogus colleges, while some paid £2,500 for fake diplomas, attendance records and degrees. A total of eleven colleges were established in London
London
London is the capital city of :England and the :United Kingdom, the largest metropolitan area in the United Kingdom, and the largest urban zone in the European Union by most measures. Located on the River Thames, London has been a major settlement for two millennia, its history going back to its...
, Bradford
Bradford
Bradford lies at the heart of the City of Bradford, a metropolitan borough of West Yorkshire, in Northern England. It is situated in the foothills of the Pennines, west of Leeds, and northwest of Wakefield. Bradford became a municipal borough in 1847, and received its charter as a city in 1897...
and Manchester
Manchester
Manchester is a city and metropolitan borough in Greater Manchester, England. According to the Office for National Statistics, the 2010 mid-year population estimate for Manchester was 498,800. Manchester lies within one of the UK's largest metropolitan areas, the metropolitan county of Greater...
, including one which had enrolled eight terrorism suspects arrested in Manchester and Liverpool in April 2009. The college had three small classrooms and three teachers for 1,797 students.
The Home Office inquiry followed an investigation by The Times which compiled a dossier on bogus colleges that included details of another college which claimed to have 150 students, but secretly enrolled 1,178 and offered places to an extra 1,575. Two Liverpool universities admitted they had given places to four "graduates" from one of the bogus colleges, the Manchester College of Professional Studies.
Other examples
An example of a bogus college run as a scam is the MiddlesbroughMiddlesbrough
Middlesbrough is a large town situated on the south bank of the River Tees in north east England, that sits within the ceremonial county of North Yorkshire...
-based National Distance Learning College, which operated between 1999 and 2001 and offered distance learning courses in computing and business related subjects which it claimed were accredited by official qualification bodies such as BTEC
Business And Technology Education Council (BTEC)
The Business and Technology Education Council is the British body which awards vocational qualifications. Such qualifications are commonly referred to as "BTECs"....
and City & Guilds
City and Guilds of London Institute
The City and Guilds of London Institute is a leading United Kingdom vocational education organisation. City & Guilds offers more than 500 qualifications over the whole range of industry sectors through 8500 colleges and training providers in 81 countries worldwide...
. Some 80,000 students signed up for courses, paying an estimated £16 million in fees, only to later discover that their qualifications had no official recognition. Money paid to the college by students - and government grants - were transferred into the personal bank accounts of its directors.
See also
- Diploma millDiploma millA diploma mill is an organization that awards academic degrees and diplomas with substandard or no academic study and without recognition by official educational accrediting bodies. The purchaser can then claim to hold an academic degree, and the organization is motivated by making a profit...
- Essay millEssay millAn essay mill is a ghostwriting service that sells essays and other homework writing to university and college students. Since plagiarism is a form of academic dishonesty or academic fraud, universities and colleges may investigate papers suspected to be from an essay mill by using Internet...
- Educational accreditationEducational accreditationEducational accreditation is a type of quality assurance process under which services and operations of educational institutions or programs are evaluated by an external body to determine if applicable standards are met...
- Accreditation millAccreditation millAn accreditation mill is an organization that purports to award educational accreditation to higher education institutions without having government authority or recognition from mainstream academia to operate as an accreditor. Implicit in the terminology is the assumption that the "mill" has low...
- Unaccredited institutions of higher learningUnaccredited institutions of higher learningUnaccredited institutions of higher education are colleges, trade schools, seminaries, and universities which do not have formal educational accreditation....
- List of unaccredited institutions of higher learning
- List of unrecognized accreditation associations of higher learning
- .edu.eduThe domain name edu is a sponsored top-level domain in the Domain Name System of the Internet. The "domain is intended for accredited post-secondary educational U.S. institutions" and this intention is strictly enforced....
- Gillian McKeithGillian McKeithGillian McKeith is a Scottish nutritionist, television presenter, and writer. She is the former host in the UK of Channel 4's You Are What You Eat and Granada Television's Dr Gillian McKeith's Feel Fab Forever, and as of 2010 presents Eat Yourself Sexy on the W Network in Canada...
- Job fraudJob fraudJob fraud refers to fraudulent or deceptive activity or representation on the part of an employee or prospective employee toward an employer. It is not to be confused with employment fraud, where an employer scams job seekers or fails to pay wages for work performed. There are several types of job...
- Mickey Mouse degreesMickey Mouse degreesMickey Mouse degrees is the dysphemism built from the common usage of the term "Mickey Mouse" as a pejorative. It came to prominence in the UK after use by the national tabloids of the United Kingdom to label certain university degree courses worthless or irrelevant.- Origins :The term was used by...
- Name It and Frame It?Name It and Frame It?Name It and Frame It? is a self-published 1993 book by Steve Levicoff about unaccredited Christian colleges and universities, exploring the accreditation process and the nature of legitimate and illegitimate unaccredited institutions of higher learning. The fourth edition contains updated...
- Underwater basket weavingUnderwater basket weavingUnderwater basket weaving is an idiom referring in a negative way to supposedly easy and/or worthless college or university courses, and used generally to refer to a perceived decline in educational standards....
- Who's Who scamWho's Who scamA Who's Who scam is a fraudulent Who's Who biographical directory. While there are many legitimate Who's Who directories, some individuals have created Who's Who scams that involve the selling of "memberships" in Who's Who directories that are created online and through instant publishing services...
- List of animals with fraudulent diplomas
External links
- How to avoid bogus schools, colleges or universities UKstudentlife.com