The year 2021 began with two huge news stories on fake degree rackets. One was the story on the Manav Bharti University (MBU) in which as many as 36,000 fake degrees were busted. The second being an even bigger racket which was active all over India and was recently busted by the Mohali police. The latter racket is reported to have issued over 1,000 fake degrees and certificates of various courses from schools, colleges and universities, including 16 government and private universities as well as school boards. These recent developments have only reinstated the importance of education verification as a crucial part of the hiring process and policy.
Trends in Education Verification
Education frauds have been brought to light time and again with busting of several fake degree rackets in 2011, 2018 and now in 2021 making the need to get education documents verified and re-verified in a periodic manner – an absolute necessity in the hiring process. To bring in a more discerning understanding of education frauds, we have compiled a report comprising the Trends in Education Frauds in India for 2018, 2019 and 2020. According to the recent Annual Trend Report, we found that:
- Fake degree submission constituted for nearly 28% of education discrepancies in 2020 in India.
- Degrees from fake universities constituted for nearly 27% of education discrepancies in 2020 in India.
- Talking about industry-wise education discrepancies, the BPO industry tops the charts at 10.4% in 2020, followed by Private Insurance Companies.
- The north and west parts of India have consistently been the top regions with significant education discrepancies.
- The education discrepancy trend has not witnessed a drop in the last three years and has increased marginally in 2020 as compared to 2018 figures.
Education check – an absolute necessity before hiring
After checking the education discrepancy trends, verifying education documents remains one of the most crucial checks before hiring a candidate. It not only helps in verifying that the right candidate with genuine education documents has been hired but also helps in reducing the reputational risks that the company might face if their employees are found to have submitted fake / forged degrees and certificates to land a job.
The right solution
The only way to ensure that genuine candidates are being hired is to add a layer of education check in your employee background screening process. AuthBridge, India’s largest authentication technology and background verifications company, offers a completely digital employee onboarding and background verification experience which not only makes it easy for the candidate to submit their documents online but also helps the HR to track document collection, submission, and the document verification process in real-time.
iBRIDGE , our one-stop web platform automates the entire hiring ecosystem comprising,Employee background verification Document Collection and Onboarding with client-end processes that can be customised to suit specific requirements, enabling quick turnaround time for fast-track decisions. With a vast array of 200+ checks such as, Identity Verification, Education Verification, Address Check, Employment Check, Police and Court Verification among others, our onboarding and verification products ensure that you hire the right candidate safeguarding your organisation from the risks of reputational frauds
Source:- Hindustantimes, Digitallearning, firstpost
