Daily Times, Sunday, June 18, 2006
POSTCARD USA: Fake doctor, holy terror nailed —Khalid Hasan
The joke is that a man whose BA is fake also brandishes a PhD. The one decent thing Shaukat Aziz can do is to sack him and have him charged with fraud and impersonation. AL Hussain should also stop broadcasting his mealy-mouthed exhortations to the citizens of the Islamic Republic to become good Muslims
Faryal Virk, my young friend from North Carolina, wants to know why it has taken the Higher Education Commission all this time to decide that “Dr” Aamir Liaquat Hussain’s BA degree is fake. She suggests that the “Government of Pakistan should hire some kid with an Internet connection as a consultant for a few thousand rupees a month (heaven knows they’re dishing out hundreds of thousands of rupees for people doing nothing, so this would just be a drop in the ocean) to check on the foreign academic credentials of our esteemed leaders.”
Since the government of Pakistan is not going to pay any attention to Ms Virk’s public-spirited suggestion, I decided to hit a few keys myself after watching Germany net that last-minute winner against Poland. The commission or its godfather, the chemist turned higher education czar, Dr Atta ur Rehman, should have exposed this mountebank after a number of smashing stories Shaheen Sehbai wrote for his online journal South Asia Tribune, proving conclusively that both “Dr” A Liaquat Hussain and his degrees were fake.
The official announcement made on June 13 says that the BA (Islamic studies) degree submitted to the Election Commission by Hussain has been issued by a “college” which is “not listed among the accredited/chartered institutions of the US”.
As Ms Virk said, all the learned registrar of the University of Karachi, who issued this amusing finding had to do was get a kid to go on the Internet. I am no kid but I did follow Ms Virk’s capital suggestion and here is what I found. The Trinity College has no physical existence. Like Aamir Liaquat Hussain, who sings and simpers on that Channel that cannot stop drilling its name into its poor viewers’ ears every five minutes, it is utterly insubstantial. It is an operation set up to sell degrees from the lowest to the highest to anyone who will remit the required fee.
Aamir Liaquat Hussain’s BA cost him $240 and his doctorate (I take it he obtained it from the same “university”) set him back by $575. Since he looks the type who dresses up, his academic robes, which are also on sale, would have cost him $540 (BA) and $720 (PhD). The joke of course is that a man whose BA is fake also brandishes a PhD. The one decent thing Shaukat Aziz can do is to sack him and have him charged with fraud and impersonation. AL Hussain should also stop broadcasting his mealy-mouthed exhortations to the citizens of the Islamic Republic to become good Muslims.
According to the website of Trinity College and University, of which the minister of state for religious affairs is an “alumni”, it is “an organisation, registered in Dover, Delaware, USA and runs its degree programme from Spain. There are no country residential requirements for the award of degrees from Trinity, yet any official body requiring confirmation of the awards made would be supplied with confirmation of awards made. Under present legislation these awards are perfectly legal.”
Since the world is full of Aamir Liaquat Hussains, the Trinity College notes that while “it is becoming increasingly common for job specifications to state that a Degree is also a requirement, it is also a fact that having a degree enhances the holder’s chance of attaining an interview. It is also common that people who have a working life, full of experience... have little or no formal qualifications. Many people have operated at a level of expertise far in excess of their paper qualifications but are unable to obtain an interview when seeking new positions because the right qualifications do not appear in their CVs. The arrival of ‘selection by computer’, where CVs are surveyed electronically and only those containing the acceptable ‘buzz words’ are passed through to the final human selection, are likely to be successful, the necessity of having the right qualifications is of increasing importance.”
Trinity College (clever name since it makes you think of Cambridge) under the sub-head “Don’t Get the Wrong Idea”, declares without blushing, “It should be said that no-one is trying to ‘degrade’ the efforts of those who have succeeded in completing a degree course, especially in an Engineering subject or indeed any other subject for that matter; rather many employers and agencies often fail to adequately answer that question as to why a degree qualification is preferable to a lifetime of experience in many subjects — clearly however there are subjects where a formal degree qualification is a precursor to the practice of a particular profession, the Medical profession is probably the immediate example and we don’t issue such degrees. If your chosen subject is not listed, please don’t despair, we will consider awarding degrees in any subject, given your experience.”
People, Aamir Liaquat Hussain’s alma mater states, want degrees for different reasons, such as prestige, addition to letterheads to enhance business, gain qualifications missed out earlier, win recognition for experience gained in a given field or to follow a particular interest. Is there an ethical question involved, the sponsors ask? Their answer: “Only in as much as there is no formal course or examination as the award is based on your previous experience.”
Here are the helpful hints Trinity College provides to the world’s Aamir Liaquat Hussains. “The pitfalls are that a potential employer must be sure that you know your subject, there is no point applying for a position in which you have no knowledge or experience of, yet why should you be precluded from having a chance at an interview on the basis of a paper qualification.” (I am not responsible for the Trinity College’s punctuation or lack thereof).
There is also a Correspondence Accreditation Association, which will “confirm your awards to any enquirer. Upon written request, we confirm the degree awarded, its date and subject, this is normally all that is required from any inquirer. We can also supply Transcript of Studies at a cost of £30 ($50) and Legal Declarations of the authenticity of your degree certificates at a cost of £30 ($50) each. Not everyone needs transcripts since most European institutions do not supply them, but we will supply them on the basis of your degree and your experience where required.”
The list of subjects in which degrees from BA to PhD can be bought is too long to be reproduced here. The only missing discipline is medicine, but engineering is included. I hope the next bridge in Karachi is not built by a Trinity engineering alumni. One subject in which no degree is unfortunately on offer is journalism, otherwise for a fee of $575, I would have got myself a nifty PhD.
Khalid Hasan is Daily Times’ US-based correspondent. His e-mail is khasan2@cox.net
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