Baldo Minaudo’s Blog

The Toronto Star recently conducted an investigation that showed a former York University student fabricated dozens of degrees, and another got into Osgoode Hall Law School with a degree purchased from a diploma mill. York University has now brought in new tougher controls.

The investigation revealed that a former York University student Peng Sun was producing near perfect copies of York University degrees for $3,000.  Peng Sun had claimed to the investigator that he had produced hundreds of York and University of Toronto degrees in the four years he had been operating.  To my knowledge, as of yet Peng Sun has not been charged or even arrested.  He graduated from York University’s Atkinson School of Administrative Studies in 2007 with a bachelor’s degree in human resource management.  Needless to say, this reflects poorly on the whole human resources field, especially since a big part of Human Resource studies is ethics. Did you say ethics? What’s ethics?

As I follow this development I ask myself how is it that these individuals are able to get away with this? More importantly, how can we spot it and avoid being taken advantage of by these individuals who will do whatever it takes to get what they want regardless of the rules?

Two things:

1. Engage your critical mind and question how and why the person you are dealing with is saying, doing and making the decisions they are.  Be observant of their level of competence, vocabulary and general acumen in the area. There have been a number of times over the years when someone has stood in front of me claiming to be a graduate of a Canadian university and one in specific claimed to be an M.B.A. graduate.  Yet, they could barely speak English and their spelling (never mind sentence structure) made them ineffective at communicating.  I just couldn’t see a Canadian university letting them graduate. One time I was having problems with my heel and when I went to speak to a so called ‘Chinese Medicine’ practitioner he told me that my foot was missing a muscle and that I should stop doing all sports or I would be a cripple by the time I was a senior.  I saw two Chiropractors after that and they booth said that I had all the muscles (after laughing) and that the problem was caused by my IT band being tight.  Sevreal treatments later I was healed and continued with my jogging, rollerblading and weight training.

2. Ask for their credentials and investigate them.  The Chinese Medicine man above claimed to have been a physiotherapist.  Yet, he had no Canadian training.  His certificate was from some institution in China I had never heard of and didn’t know how to verify.  A search on the internet couldn’t help either.  It is better not to deal with such individuals if you can’t be sure.  Better to be safe than sorry.

This issue is essential for our society. What is the use of having universities at all if anyone can say they graduated to get whatever job or client they want.  What about safety standards? 

I’d like to leave you with a thought - how many individuals are out there now that are practicing medicine or some other profession and never even went to University? How can you be sure the next time you are in need of some professional help that the person on the other side of the desk is capable of giving you quality care?  Do yourself a favour and call their professional association or degree granting institution to make sure they’re qualified.

You can verify a degree from York University at www.yorku.ca/roweb/services/yuverify/ with some basic biographical information about the person (first and last name, date of birth, etc.) or their York University student number.

Be careful out there!

This entry was posted on Monday, November 23rd, 2009 at 3:58 pm and is filed under Commentary. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.